The first time I realized my dad may be wrong about some things is when I was nine and Erasure’s Chains of Love came on KYIS.FM and my dad literally just switched off the radio and said, “UGH.” Now, I did grow up in semi-rural Oklahoma, but my father is no redneck, gay-hatin’ hick. He wasn’t like “OH, LIKE BDSM. NOT IN FRONT OF MY DAUGHTER!” He’s a liberal, R.E.M lovin’ lawyer who just likes cheap land. He just hates dance music. A month later he did the same thing to “Bizarre Love Triangle,” and I was officially on alert: Dad’s way wrong about pop music.
When I lived in Chicago, I went out almost weekly to sing karaoke at an under-attended bar called the Jackhammer (by the by, if you’re in Rogers Park - it’s TUESDAYS and say hello to Mark the Bartender who Put Up With Me.) with my friend J.J. I would stick to crowdpleasers - Billy Ocean, “Mr. Brightside,” and JJ, ever versitile, vacilated between “Bugaboo” and Donna Fargo without skipping a beat. Once we sang “No Air” to everyone’s confiusion and pretty much only our own delight - I mean, JESUS, the TRILLING on that song! We always had running lists of songs to do in our heads and one night a stranger -total stranger! Out of nowhere started laying in on “A Little Respect.” Now. What. The. Fuck. That song is out of everyone’s range. It’s a vocal DYNAMITE piece that if it wasn’t so gay would be featured in every Judges Pick The Songs in American Idol. But the guy did fine! And JJ and I shrunk into our Bend Me Over Daddies or whatever Mango vodka was on the cheap that night and knew we’d been bested - for now.
