Trapped in the Past

I don't know if it's the rain, or being so close to PLU or what, but I'm feeling nostalgic and sad today for the life now gone that was mine so many years ago.

Music has been a huge, defining part of my life ever since six grade when I someone gave me a little Time-Life FM radio and I stopped listening to my parent's radio station (mostly just KOMO) and started finding music of my own, most notably KPLZ (now STAR 101.5, still with Kent and Allen, but also now with Kurt and Karina - ok-ish - and a syndicated John Tesch show - blech) and KHIT 107 (later K.H.I.T. 106.9 and now has even abandoned the western US's greatest call-letters to be WARM 106.9 - blech blech blech) and then later 107.7 The End (now an awful Adam Corrola show - much funnier in small doses on KROQ in L.A. and music that I can no longer relate to)
and Young Country (now also gone).

Kevin will be quick to note how much KVI I listened to in college but there was plenty of music radio as well. I used to talk about how my Audi held 18 FM presets and in Seattle that still wasn't enough but in L.A., there wasn't enough good stuff to fill 12, let alone 18. Sadly, Seattle radio is pretty lame these days as well. I do have 12 decent presets, but way too many commercials. And when I'm not in my car, I don't listen to the radio. At home we've got MusicChoice on Comcast, when walking I've got my iPod and at work I've got LaunchCast. So even discovering new music is difficult.

LaunchCast will introduce me to new music, but it also plays a lot of older music from back in the day. I enjoy the music, but it always brings up emotions. And today, perhaps mixed with the rain, I'm feeling a little "homesick" for a place in time that has passed on and no longer exists. There will be no more days in Impact working on advertising with the radio up and the lights down. LaunchCast played a Toad the Wet Sprocket song followed by an Outfield song and it simultaneously made me happy and sad. But I guess a problem now is that there isn't enough new music that's
relevant to me to be the soundtrack of my life now. I'm not sure why that is. But I guess it's just part of growing up. It's why kids always accuse their parents of not being relevant or hip, not being with the times and listening to oldies. How sad.

And now an old Bad English song has started and I'm racing along my favorite backroads towards Silverdale by way of the lake and past Doug Hahn's house and up Ridgetop. It was the long way, but it was a road that you could drive fast, but required skill and some loud music. Could we warn kids to enjoy their lives as it's lived, or would that just depress them to know it will slip away at some point? To be sure, to be replaced with new experiences and grand adventures, but history will always seem sweeter in the rearview mirror.