Music Story #3: Into the Groove

[This is the third post in a sub-series of my music mix series.  It’s basically a story about some music discovery event in my life, so it’s a combo of music info and personal history info.  You can find a list of all the music stories in the mix series list.

This is one I originally published on my work’s Slack channel #tunes.  It’s a shorter post than usual, but I thought it worh sharing nonetheless.]

This sub-series has covered music in various formats.  But they’ve all been about music formats that you buy.  Obviously that’s not the only way we hear music—in fact, one might argue that we hear way more music for free than we ever do paying for it.  And that’s primarily because of one thing: radio.  Or it used to be, anyway, before the Internet came along.  I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with radio.  Here’s a thing which happened to me recently that may help illuminate that.

A week ago today, we packed up the whole family and went to the Renn Faire (I wrote about this last week).  My youngest had never been, and the other two hadn’t been in years (and the eldest’s partner had also never been), so there were six of us.  Obviously we weren’t going to fit in my Prius, so into The Mother‘s SUV we hopped.

Now, The Mother’s SUV is old enough not to have a Bluetooth connection for the sound system; it used to have an “aux” plug that we would just plug our phones into, but the jack got wonky, so we either have to do CD’s, or listen to the actual radio like we’re the Flintstones or something.  For this trip, we decided to do the radio.

Now, when I listen to the radio, I have a very low tolerance for songs I don’t like, and zero tolerance for commericals, so it’s a constant bouncing around of stations.  The Mother has programmed all 12 possible FM stations with something, even if one is country and one is classical, so it’s like we really only had 10 stations.  But it’s an eclectic mix: KROQ, K-Earth (our local oldies station), Jack FM (which there’s one of in every market, I gather), MyFM (current pop music), etc.  We were just as likely to hear Led Zeppelin as Lady Gaga (both of which we did hear on the trip, for the record).

[Brief tangent: I don’t typically like pop, so I would never listen to stations like MyFM in my own car.  Still, there’s almost always one song by every megapop star that I really love.  So I hate Ricky Martin, except for “La Vida Loca,” which is awesome.  Can’t stand Whitney Houston, except for “How Will I Know?” which I adore.  Or, for a more contemporary example, I’m fairly unimpressed by Olivia Rodrigo ... except that “Brutal” is absolutely bangin’.  I’ve never really cottoned to Taylor Swift either, and thus far had also never found her one exception.  But I stumbled across “Anti Hero” on the way to Renn Faire and I was like, shit, that’s Taylor Swift??  It’s great.  (I had a similar reaction to “How Will I Know?” ... for months I was convinced it was the Pointer Sisters and that’s why I loved the song so much.  But I digress.  In my digression.)]

Anyways, there was a fair amount of 80s music, as K-Earth—who originally played like fifties music when i first arrived in Cali—now considers 80s music old.  Bastards.  But, nonetheless, we heard some 80s classics on the ride down, like “Our Lips Are Sealed” by the Go-Go’s, “White Wedding” by Billy Idol, and “Into the Groove” by Madonna.

Then we had a lovely day at the Renn Faire (although it was was more vendors and way fewer entertaining bits than I’d remembered), and we got in the truck again to head home.  On the way, we heard “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s, which wasn’t too surprising ... but also “White Wedding” again.  Then, a half an hour later, there was “Into the Groove” again.  Weird.  I probably hadn’t listened to any Madonna in a few decades—Madonna is less of a megapop-star-with-one-good-song-exception to me, and more like a used-to-be-a-cool-alternative-singer-then-turned-megapop-star-and-so-I-stopped-liking-them type thing.  Early Madonna is great: “Lucky Star” is awesome, “Borderline” and “Holiday” are pretty good too.  Then you get to “Material Girl,” which is still pretty good, and “Like a Virgin” is okay, and by the time you hit “Papa Don’t Preach” I’m pretty much checked out.  So “Into the Groove” is right on that borderline (pun inteneded, I suppose) between good-to-mediocre Madonna and bleaugh Madonna.  So I’ve probably listened to Madonna at some point in the past couple of decades, but certainly not that particular song.

Friday I had jury duty.  My county’s courthouse is about an hour’s drive for me, and it was The Mother’s truck again (for family-vehicle-related reasons).  By this time it was all 80s Memorial Day weekend or somesuch on K-Earth and KROQ was doing some sort of “top 500” thing, so I was mainy back and forth between those two.  And I heard “Into the Groove” again.  And I was like, what the fuck is going on???

Yesterday we drove my middle child out to another city about an hour away (though in the opposite direction) for homeschool prom.  We took the youngest with us and went out to dinner to kill time so we didn’t have to drive all the way to Glendale and back twice in one night.  On the way back home, guess what came on the radio again?  Yes, that’s right: “Into the Groove.” By Madonna.  Again.  A song from nearly forty years ago (I looked it up: it was released in 1985) that I haven’t heard in around twenty years and now I’ve heard it four times in a week.  On the radio.  Which I rarely listen to any more.  What the fuck is up with the universe?  I was ranting in the car a bit about how unlikely it was that I heard this stupid song 4 times in a week when i hadn’t heard it once in the past 20 years, and my middle child opined that perhaps the universe wanted me to refamiliarize myself with the song.  I was like, I was plenty refamiliarized by play #2: numbers 3 and 4 were just redundant.

So, anyway, that’s my random weird radio story for the day.  Or week.  Or month—hell, probably for the year.  I hope.