IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

I used to play a game in college called “Bet the Bottle Cap.” It’s a simple game that is meant to be played in conjunction with Poker. Here is how you play: place a dollar in the side pot and then affix the bottle cap to your forehead. Once the cap is firmly in place, you cannot touch it. After every hand, if the bottle cap is still on your forehead, place another dollar in the side pot to continue the game. If the bottle cap falls off your head or if you touch the bottle cap, you lose. Last person with the bottle cap still on their head, wins the money.

Every once in awhile when I am watching a sporting event on television, I will open a beer bottle and affix the cap to my forehead to see how long it will stay. It isn’t under the same conditions as when I used to play “Bet the Bottle Cap” many years ago, but it makes me smile as I remember my old college days. It’s like a little trip down memory lane. The added bones these days is that every time I place a bottle cap on my forehead, my kids take the cap off my head and stick it to their own foreheads. Why is all of this important? Because it rained last Saturday!

Rainy days are an adventure in our house. We have two young children who are constantly underfoot and who vie for mine and Stephanie’s attention. We spend rainy days engaged in a multitude of activities and finding a few minutes in the day just for me is always a golden opportunity. It allows me to take a quick breather before “losing” again at games like Candy Land, Monopoly and Uno for the eighteenth time in a row.

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I was filled with anticipation as I ran my fingernail across the edge and ripped the cellophane. The smell of vinyl wafted through the air and intoxicated me as I held the needle over the spinning edge of the disc. As I dropped the needle on my latest album, my euphoria increased as the music started blaring through my bedroom speakers.

I was caught up in this moment of blissful reminiscence the other day as I was downloading the latest batch of songs for my IPod. Music has changed over the years and so has the technology that has delivered music to our homes. I miss vinyl albums, I miss cassette tapes and I am even starting to miss compact discs. But I don’t believe it is the technology that I miss most about music. What I truly miss are the great albums that I used to buy that would grip my imagination from the first song until the very last note of the final cut.

I love these trips down memory lane because it allows me to share stories of my youth with my children. Like when I was a child and music was guitar-centric. And as the 70s turned into the 80s, The Eagles, Queen, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Heart, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Boston, the Police, Billy Joel and John Mellencamp encapsulated the center of the music world. You could listen to every song they wrote and because of the work they put into the recording process, these bands turned out a multitude of hits on every album. Their music had a melody to them and their lyrics would cover any and every topic imaginable. Bono once stated emphatically that all he ever needed was, “a red guitar, three chords and the truth.”

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