A Side Bar to Yesterday's Blog

I woke up at 5am this morning, restless and confused. My back was aching from standing on my feet too long yesterday and I couldn't seem to fall back to sleep. I put Newschannel 4 on to catch-up on the world's overnight happenings and dozed off after hearing that more Westerner's had been killed by the extremists in Mumbai, India. Not a great note to fall asleep on but I managed to fall into a deep slumber for a few more hours until I was awoken by the sounds of Barry Manilow singing on The Today Show. Can you all guess what he was singing? He has a new album out with a collection of 80's songs...is that a good enough hint? As I turned over to my right side, half asleep, I heard Barry Manilow bellowing out his best Star Search version of, you guessed it, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," at 8:45am. I immediately opened my eyes in disbelief. "What the hell is with this song?" I thought to myself but I must have said it aloud, waking Vic up, who instantly cut into a version of Chattanooga Choo-Choo, a family favorite that Manilow covered last years on another compilation.

My question still stands: How far have we moved forward since 1988? In a time when leg warmers are making a strong comeback, The new Killer's album sounds like a bad rip-off of Eurasure and The Communards and heavy metal is slowing creeping back into our lives (Gun's n'Roses' Chinese Democracy) our culture hasn't evolved very much. Why can't we create something new?

In closing, I just want to let you know that I never owned a Rick Astley tape but I did dance my ass off to his song many a time in my favorite Albany new wave joint called Quintessence back in the day.