never was the kind to do as i was told
(or: february 28’s honey from the hive)
posted at 10:50 am by brandon in sweet you rock and sweet you roll
Christopher Cross (with Michael McDonald) — “Ride Like the Wind”
(from The Very Best of Christopher Cross
Picture it: on my way to work Saturday morning, I stopped off at a local restaurant supply warehouse to pick up various and sundry necessities, and as I steered my flatbed cart through the aisles, adding onto it bottles of this and cases of that, this marvelously moody 1980 masterpiece — a top three smash which served to introduce the world at large to Chris Cross, the undisputed king of yacht rock (and, justified or not, still the only artist to ever win all four top Grammys — Record, Song, Album, and New Artist — in the same year) — commenced spilling from the store’s loudspeaker. For the record, there was no one in my immediate line of sight, but it wouldn’t have terribly mattered if there had been, as I literally could not control myself from picking up the exotically electric rhythm bursting into song, regardless of how much of a blithering idiot I may well have looked like; having been born in 1976, I came of age — musically, at least — sandwiched in that brief period between the decline of punk and the rise of new wave, and the tunes that sprung from that time — written and performed by heroes like Stephen Bishop, Hall and Oates, Air Supply, and of course Mr. Cross — continue, to this very day, to grip my soul.
And whenever I hear any of them, I just get happy.
