When I was a kid I spent summers at my uncle’s farm in Ontario. All my cousins are older than me – and the youngest was Moira, so she spent the most time with me I guess. In 1980 I was 6 years old, and Moira was probably in her late teens, and I remember memorizing (some of) the words to the Billie Joel tune, Still Rock n Roll to Me, which played on the radio all that summer. Later, in 1983-84, another cousin from Ontario, Rose, lived with us for a year in Montreal. When she left, she gave me two tapes, the first I ever owned: David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, and Queen’s The Works.
And so, here are some more musical memories from childhood:
Billie Joel: It’s Still Rock n Roll to Me.
David Bowie: China Girl
[Note: I think this is the stranges video I’ve ever seen. UPDATE: and that’s stevie ray vaughn on guitar, by the way]
Queen: Radio Ga Ga
[Note: as I write this, the radio tells me that guitarist Brian May was awarded his doctorate today in atstrophysics, from Imperial College London, with a dissertaition titled: “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud”]
In honour of how unhappy I am with Bell Canada for cutting off my phone for a week, telling me twice it would be reconnected without reconnecting, charging me for a long distance plan I did not order, disabling my call answer, and requiring calls to 5 different departments (customer service, credit, technical and repairs, billing, and collections) on 5 different occasions (many departments getting 2 and 3 calls from us, without ever allowing us to get back to the person we were originally talking to – often making us wait, again, in the good old “all our agents are busy” queue … etc etc …), and then having the gall to offer 20 fri**ken dollars for all the headache they caused. Did I mention I am not happy with Bell Canada and their dismal customer service? By the way, today after all the bloody mess they tell us, “Oh the problem is that we are changing billing systems, and half of your account is in one system, and the other half in the other.” Yeah. Thanks for telling me that after a week and a half battling with your idiotic customer service system which insists on telling us that we are at fault. Thanks Bell.
Anyway, here is my heavy metal mix … starting with Hells Bells, in honour of their Customer Service system, and then getting a bit off topic, I guess, but imagine all that Heavy Metal angst focused like a laser beam of pissed offedness directly at the Vice President of Customer Service of Bell Canada, whose name, not surprisingly, is not so easy to find online. But I will find it.
Anyway. Enjoy: AC/DC: Hells Bells
Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills
(here I like to substitute “Bell Canada” for “White Man”)
Black Sabbath: Paranoid
(for a cheerier mixed tape, Kara did an all-OK-Go mix)
Bit late for the Friday Youtube Mixed Tape, but here it is anyway. Tacky tearjerkers from mid-eighties, that are still fun to listen to (for a while anyway):
Foreigner: I Wanna Know What Love Is
Corey Hart: Never Surrender
And, of course:
Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart