Good morning Chalkheads…
1995 is the Flashback year on XRT this morning. I started digging through the songs from the year I turned twenty-nine. There were a lot of choices, but I had to go with the one that scratched my head the most back then.
“Waterfalls” by TLC.
Funny thing is, thirty-one years later, the song actually makes more sense to me now than it did then.
Back in 1995, all I knew was that we kept hearing it over and over during a blurry bachelor party weekend down in New Orleans. A weekend fueled by bad decisions, too much booze, and the kind of confidence only young idiots from Chicago can carry into the South.
One buddy thought he was having a heart attack, so naturally he tried fixing it with a shrimp po’boy. Another genius dumped a tray of beers onto a table full of bikers. They were not impressed with the dipshits from Chicago.
…. and somewhere in the background, every bar and every cab seemed to be playing “Don’t go chasing waterfalls…”
The older I get, the more I realize that song wasn’t really about waterfalls at all. It was about people running toward chaos thinking they were chasing excitement. Sometimes the rivers and lakes you are used to are there for a reason. Stability doesn’t sound glamorous when you are young, but eventually you learn peace has value too.
Still… 1995 was a hell of a year for music.
My future wife was graduating high school. My old girlfriend was dating a Mormon. My parents still had advice, and I was down at the Chicago Board of Trade thinking I had life figured out in the bond room.
Saturday is a big radio day for me. WGN to WXRT to WDCB. Good radio keeps a guy company better than most people do.
Tonight I’m heading to dinner with my ex-wife and my mother-in-law (I didn’t divorce her) for Mother’s Day Eve. Wish me luck. No cocktails for the Oldman though, still on antibiotics. It is going to be a strictly sober performance.
Enjoy your Saturday, Chalkheads.
Go find a little gusto and astonishment out there today…
…just don’t go chasing waterfalls to find it.
