An Ode to Old CDs

Things are going okay this week . . . I thought I was going to have an anxiety attack Monday morning over my public affairs story and my opinion column and my three reports due for Race, Gender and the Media, but I made it out just fine. I don't know why the stress got to me all of the sudden, but I'm sure it was a long time coming. I know this semester is stressing me out in so many ways even if I can't recognize it right off.

Tonight I'm home early and have lots of stuff to do for class but I've just wasted an hour and I'm sure I'll waste more time before I do anything. It's great being in college.

Being home early got me sifting through my CD book looking for something to put on when I ran across my New Radicals album. They had one chart song, "You Get What You Give," when I was in tenth grade. This was one of the first CDs I bought and loved. I listened to it all the time and sang the songs to Topper. (I do more singing at the barn to him than anywhere else.) I'd forgotten how genuinely fun the CD was--drugs, porn, love, technology, hippies and one of the best similies I've ever heard: "I'm crying like a church on Monday." (Hot damn. That's good writing.)

My favorite song always was, still is, and always will be "Mother we just can't get enough," the opening track. It reminds me the Stones, vaguely, from their "Sympathy for the Devil" days. It has lyrics that make me sing as loudly as I can.

That's really all this post is about. Listen to this CD if you have it; if you don't, go buy it at a second-hand place or download it. It's the only album the guy ever did, but it's quality.

This week is going to be just fine, I can tell.

The lyrics, a bit edited for my personal liking, because the song rocks out:

"There's something about you, tears me inside out whenever you're around. There's something about you, speeding through my veins until we hit the ground. And there's something about this rush--take it away. It made me feel so good. I get a feeling . . . you get a feeling . . . we got a feeling . . . like we could die.

"Mother, we just can't get enough, we just can't get enough. Lover, we just gotta get it up, we just gotta get it up.

"There's something about you, tears me inside out whenever you're around. And there's something about you that makes me fly--you're a heart attack, just the kind I like. And there's something about your kiss, haunting and strange, that makes me feel so good. I get a feeling . . . you get a feeling . . . we get a feeling . . . like we're alive."