For a couple years in the mid-80s, my favorite band was Loverboy, the Canadian quintet that recorded the party anthem “Working for the Weekend” and whose lead singer, Mike Reno, was infamous for performing in skin-tight red leather pants. I saw them live in 1986 during their “Lovin’ Every Minute of It” tour… and then somehow I lost track of them for 20 years. Now, like just about every other big arena-rock act from my adolescence, they’re back out there touring again, and I’ve been thinking I’d like to see them a second time. But somehow I keep missing the opportunity. They’ve played Wendover, the Nevada border town a hundred miles west of Salt Lake where the Girlfriend and I go just about every year to see my main man, Rick Springfield (pics from the most recent show here). And I think they played the state fair a couple years back. Missed them both times.

Tonight they’re appearing here in the valley at Usana Amphitheater with Journey and Pat Benatar (another ’80s icon I’d like to see live), but I’m not going to that show either. It’s the Girlfriend’s birthday, you see, and I didn’t want to make her do something I wanted to do on her day, and anyhow we’ve been to Journey a couple times already in recent years, so it just didn’t seem like a huge priority and we were going to talk about it some more, and then all of a sudden the date was upon us, and… well, maybe they’ll play Wendover again sometime soon.

There is a consolation prize, however, in the form of a brand-new Loverboy single and music video I just learned about a couple days ago. The song is called “Heartbreaker” — no relation to Benatar’s “Heartbreaker” — and it’s a cut from the band’s upcoming album Rock N Roll Revival, due to release on August 14. I think this is a great track; I’ve played it at least a dozen times since I stumbled across it. Reno’s voice is still strong (although it doesn’t look like he’ll ever get back into those red leather pants!), the melody is infectious, and the chorus is as instantly repeatable as anything from the band’s heyday. This is the kind of simple, fun song that makes me feel an uncomplicated sense of happiness, especially on a pleasant summer evening when the day’s heat has mellowed into something like a lover’s caress, and the shadows stretch across the road as I make my way home through golden sunlight with the top down…

Just lately, I’ve been teetering on the edge of another one of those funks when I feel like my moment has come and gone, and the Arbiters of Cool have declared all the things I like obsolete and irrelevant, and it’s just as well I don’t have kids because what the hell could I possibly have in common with them at this point? You know, that thing Grampa Simpson was talking about when he said “I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me.” (You see! A Simpsons reference. How passe’ is that? I hate it when I inadvertently prove my own point!)

But then today, just as the Generation Gap was yawning before me like the Grand Canyon and the edge was crumbling under my feet, onto my morning train stepped a pretty young blonde that I would guess was about seventeen years old. (Must… resist… obvious reference to the Stray Cats song…) She wore jeans that were ripped out at the knees, with red-and-black striped tights beneath, and fingerless knit gloves, and the ubiquitous hoodie. She was the sort of girl I would’ve fallen instantly in love with, once upon a far-off time when I was seventeen myself. She was holding an iPhone on which I could see a video playing, and she was bopping her head along to the accompanying music.

I cringed, because I really wasn’t in the mood to have some inconsiderate Damn Kid(tm) who can’t be bothered to wear headphones foisting her crappy music on me. My irritation rose as she sat down right across the aisle from me and turned her gadget toward me so the music grew even louder. And then I caught what she was listening to… and my mouth almost literally fell open from the surprise. It was something I knew. More than that, it was something I like, a song called “I Need to Know,” written by Tom Petty.

This particular version of the song was a live clip featuring my rock-n-roll sweetheart, the eternally sexy (in my eyes) Stevie Nicks, singing the lead while Petty provides the guitar and back-up vocal. In fact, I think it was this very clip here:

Seeing a teenage girl so obviously and unironically enjoying a song that was originally recorded when I was just a kid myself — 1978, to be exact — performed by two people old enough to be her grandparents, gave me such a simple feeling of genuine happiness that I feel foolish even trying to describe it.

My train stop came up just as the song was ending. I debated over saying something to the girl, telling her that she’d dispelled a black fog from my heart, or maybe just that she had excellent taste in music, but I feared coming across as some kind of creep. (It pains me deeply that a grown man can’t even speak to a young girl anymore without worrying that he’ll be, ahem, misunderstood!) So I settled for just tapping her on the shoulder as I passed and saying, “For what it’s worth, I love that one.”

She giggled. She actually giggled. And I had the brief impression I’d made her day as much as she’d made mine.

Then I stepped off the train and started walking toward the office. I noticed I had something resembling a spring in my step. And I was smiling, too.

Thanks, kid. Whoever you were. You don’t know how much good you did this morning.

So, the Girlfriend and I returned from Hawaii early Sunday morning, and what with a brutal case of jetlag and the disconcerting effects of re-entering the humdrum after 10 days in Fantasyland, well… we both kinda forgot about Valentine’s Day this year. And you know, I’m fine with that. Not that I have anything against Valentine’s per se — the idea of a holiday to celebrate love and romance is fine, in principle — but in practical fact, it’s really just another one of those consumption-oriented holidays on which you feel pressured to spend money you don’t have (especially just after returning from 10 days in the most expensive state in the union!) on stuff you don’t need. Seriously, I have a banker’s box down the Archive filled with little plushy critters that are holding hearts and wearing red t-shirts with endearing messages on them, and they’re all adorable and were much appreciated when I first received them, but now they live in the dark shadows of a box in the basement, no doubt dreaming of the long-ago day when they were plucked from the shelves of the Hallmark store and how everything used to be happy and bright but now that’s all gone, and how sad is that? How can I possibly sentence more innocent plush toys to that Phantom Zone existence? What kind of monster would I be?

Cough. Ahem. Wow. Not sure where that came from. Anyhow, I may be content with not doing much of the traditional V-Day thing today, but I also don’t want to come across as a total curmudgeon on the subject, because I don’t feel all that curmudgeonly about it. So in the spirit of acknowledging the day without really engaging too deeply with it, I’ve got a video I’d like to dedicate to my eternally patient traveling companion (and new roomie!), as well as to all you lovers out there in InternetLand. This is most romantic song I could think of today… well, okay, actually it’s the first song I thought of, but whatever, I think the sentiment still applies… Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

It is an interesting (and possibly pathetic — I leave that to your measured judgment) truth about me that I still enjoy most of the musical artists I listened to as a teenager. I’ve expanded my repertoire considerably since then, of course, adding new artists and even whole new genres to the great, swirling mass of music I find pleasing, but unlike many people I know, I’ve never really shed the older stuff… with a handful of exceptions. One of those is the band Styx. Once upon a time, I thought they were the coolest. I had their albums on vinyl and cassette, I wore a t-shirt, I coveted the Velcro-flapped wallet bearing their logo I saw at the state-fair midway booths, the whole she-bang. But at some point over the past 25 years, I just got bored with their sound. Blame the near-constant airplay of “Come Sail Away” on classic-rock radio, I guess.

Even so, there are a couple of old Styx tunes I still like, on the rare occasion I actually hear them anyplace. “Too Much Time on My Hands,” with its insistently throbbing bass line, is a catchy classic, and “Mr. Roboto” is a sublime masterpiece of 1980s kitsch. “Babe” is a lovely romantic ballad. And then there’s “Lorelei,” which is just a damn good rock and roll song. It was originally recorded in 1976, before the music video had fully materialized as a form, so here’s a live performance from 20 years later:

There’s a reason why I chose this particular song for tonight, besides me just plain liking it. The music you most care about is the stuff that resonates, you see, that forms a soundtrack for your life, and that lyric about living together, well… I have an announcement to make.

The woman I refer to here as The Girlfriend, my lovely Anne, is moving in with me tomorrow.

It’s a tremendous step for us both, the first time either of us have lived with a significant other, and it’s long overdue. Embarassingly so. If anyone out there doesn’t already know how many years we’ve been a couple, I’d rather not say, because I am honestly ashamed it’s taken us so long to make a big grown-up move in our relationship. I can’t even fully explain why it’s taken so long, although there’s little question in my mind that it’s mostly my fault. Basically, we found a pattern, and it was comfortable enough, so we stayed there. For years. But now we’re finally moving forward. I’m nervous, but also anticipating nights in front of the fire (I got a gas log for Christmas!) watching crummy old TV shows on DVD, and not feeling like I’m dividing my attention between two households, and all the other little pleasures of cohabiting.

Wish us luck, won’t you? After the way the year has gone so far, we might need it…

In honor of the late, great Etta James, who passed away this morning at the age of 73, here’s her very first hit single and a big favorite of mine, “The Wallflower,” a.k.a. “Roll with Me, Henry,” a.k.a. “Dance with Me, Henry,” from the year 1955:

Not much of a video, I know — although I personally enjoy watching obsolete media technology do its thing — but I couldn’t find any actual clips of James performing the song, and this at least gives you the authentic sound of a nearly 60-year-old recording. The sharp-eared movie aficionado may know this song from Back to the Future — it’s playing in the cafe after Marty decks Biff and runs out with the meatheads in hot pursuit, launching the “skateboard chase” scene. — and it was on the soundtrack album from that flick that I first heard it. So why do I love this song? Well, the Back to the Future connection doesn’t hurt — it’s one of my favorite films, and I listened to that soundtrack a lot back in the day — but mostly it’s just a catchy tune that makes me happy when I hear it, simple as that. Curiously enough, the co-writer and producer of this tune, Johnny Otis, who is often credited with discovering Etta, passed away himself just a few days ago. (He’s probably best known for his own recording of “Willie and the Hand Jive“).

Etta James is most often associated with the song “At Last,” which has become a standard at weddings and was so memorably significant at President Obama’s inaugural ball, and for that record’s sound, she is often thought of as a jazz singer. But she was far more than that. In her time, she performed pop standards, traditional blues, ’60s soul, and even a cover of Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” on her final album. It is her work from the ’50s and ’60s that I enjoy most, though. Like so much from that era, it’s just plain good music. As I said, it makes me happy for no reason… and need we ask anything more of our music?

Oh, in case you’re wondering why tonight’s selection has three different titles, it’s because the song’s original name, “Roll with Me, Henry,” was considered a little racy by the standards of 1955, so it was changed to “The Wallflower.” (Interestingly, the lyrics remained intact, probably because they very obviously refer to dancing and not the innuendo that many would assume, but the title was the important thing for preventing radio executives from tossing the demo before they listened to it). In a later cover version by Georgia Gibbs, both the chorus and the title were switched for the less controversial “Dance with Me, Henry.” Those were very different times, to put it mildly.