{"id":736,"date":"2012-06-13T21:37:27","date_gmt":"2012-06-14T01:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westwoodvalley.com\/?p=736"},"modified":"2012-06-13T21:37:27","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T01:37:27","slug":"my-musical-evolution-part-87-academy-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/2012\/06\/13\/my-musical-evolution-part-87-academy-days\/","title":{"rendered":"My Musical Evolution &#8211; Part 87 Academy Days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It happened so fast. Like a flip of a switch, it seemed that Disco was gone. One moment I was in 8th grade Boogie-oogie-oogie-ing the next, I was in high school. I just realized that I left out a peculiar detail about myself. I had not grown even half an inch since third grade. I was 4 feet 10 and one half inches tall in the third grade and I was 4 feet 10 and one half inches tall my Freshman year of high school. [I&#8217;m 6 feet tall now just in case you were freaking out.] I really think it was all the coffee I drank on the front porch with my mom when I was in third grade. Does this have any bearing on my musical evolution? I can&#8217;t say for certain but I thought I&#8217;d throw it out there in case you saw something I didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m attending\u00a0college prep school in Vermont with students from literally all over the world. It is fall of 1979 and Disco is starting to provoke some surprisingly violent reactions. Music called <em>New Wave<\/em> is starting to fill in that vaccuum where disco used to be. I remember the drive from the airport in Hartford, Connecticut. Does that give you an idea about how small these communities were? I had to fly in to an airport two states away.\u00a0 On that three hour drive was the first time I heard Blondie &#8211; <em>Heart Of Glass<\/em>. It still had kind of a Disco beat to it but different.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Jxpe1oSp_sg\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2052\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2052\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.westwoodvalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/My-First-Stereo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2052\" title=\"My First Stereo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.westwoodvalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/My-First-Stereo-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"My First Stereo\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2052\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">My First Stereo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I instantly liked Blondie. <em>Heart Of Glass <\/em>was a great song that served as a kind of transition from the heavily produced disco songs to a more scaled back and sensible sound. Was it the <em>New Wave<\/em>\u00a0 people were talking about? I\u00a0liked the almost mechanical aspect of the percussion against the atmospheric quality of her voice. She wasn&#8217;t bad to look at either. I bought 45. On my budget, 45&#8217;s were about the best I could do. I eventually would pick up a dozen or so before I could make arrangements to get back to where I wanted to be, albums.It was a new start. Like I had left my elementary school friends behind by going to BFMS, I left my BFMS friends behind when I went to Vermont Academy.\u00a0 A few kids from Bellows Falls Middle School also went to Vermont Academy. Likewise, Kansas, Styx and a few more made the transition to high school with me.<\/p>\n<p>Early on at VA, one thing I realized that my room was missing was a stereo that I could call my own. My cousin Jamie had her own stereo that she got for selling magainzes. It had AM\/FM turntable and 8-Track. I found one in a Sears catalog that had AM\/FM Turntable, 8-Track <em>and <\/em>cassette. Of course I could never afford something like that. After all it was $100.\u00a0I called my dad and more or less begged him to get it and ship it to me.\u00a0 A few weeks later and there it was. I set it up in my room and tuned the radio to my favorite now forgotten radio station and this was the first song it played.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Diana Ross &#8211; <em>Upside Down<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xXNuThvWQeI\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t it weird the things that you remember? The same thing happened when I turned on the deck that I installed in my first car but that doesn&#8217;t happen for a few more years.<\/p>\n<p>My personal music collection had grown somewhat stagnant while I was away at middle school. Like I said before it wasn&#8217;t really a priority and my mother wasn&#8217;t there to finance any music purchases. Somehow, now that I was in high school, it seemed that the opportunity to buy music presented itself more frequently. I didn&#8217;t have a formal job but I would split logs for my Uncle for a stipend.\u00a0I also became a pro at finding discarded beer and soda containers that I&#8217;d turn in to the village market for the 5 cent deposit.\u00a0 Many boxes of pop-tarts were purchased thanks to littering bastards.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It happened so fast. Like a flip of a switch, it seemed that Disco was gone. One moment I was in 8th grade Boogie-oogie-oogie-ing the next, I was in high school. I just realized that I left out a peculiar detail about myself. I had not grown even half an inch since third grade. I &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/2012\/06\/13\/my-musical-evolution-part-87-academy-days\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;My Musical Evolution &#8211; Part 87 Academy Days&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16,88,187],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-musical-evolution","tag-academy-days","tag-blondie","tag-diana-ross","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wrharrison.com\/musicalevolution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}