Seger Countdown

Okay, now I am *not* going to do a daily countdown. And I pormise this is *not* going to turn into the "Seger Fan Page" even though the last couple of posts might look like it. Surfing around Youtube brought back some memories of why I'm a Seger fan. I booked a couple of the videos, and if I feel the inclination I may write about them, lol. Then again, maybe not. It's keeping my mind off some other things that I want to avoid thinking about for a few hours, anyway. YouTube is a good way to kill HOURS. But one song on Youtube in particular was my introduction, the song that got me hooked. I'm talking about "Turn the Page" of course ....what a wonderful song this was. It was the summer of '76. We were in between moves at the time, between Bowie, Maryland and England. I was heartbroken at leaving Bowie--I'd made a lot of friends in the year we were there, and had begun to get very involved in high school life for the first time. It was awful to just pack up and leave at the end of my sophomore year, even though I was beginning to get excited about the idea of living in England. (I was still trying to decide if I was nervous at the prospect of living away from my family in a dorm at school, alternating between "PLEASE don't make me go away" and "I can't WAIT to get away from you". On an hourly basis.) We were living in northern Wis, staying with my grandmother while my father was in Spain? Montreal? can't remember. All I really remember is that I had begun to tire of the constant cross-country moves. Although new places were always exciting, I wanted to have friends for more than a few months before we packed up to move again. Our lone rock radio station up here had a bad habit of playing incredibly great songs and then not telling who the artist was--one of my absolute pet peeves, and the reason I love satellite radio so much now. I heard so much good music in those days, from Springsteen to Heart to Steve Miller to the first Boston album--and it was sometimes weeks before I could figure out who the bands were. Darned WIFC, anyway. I do remember the first time I heard this song. I had a small radio that I would turn on in my bedroom as I went to sleep. I happened to be lying there sleepless in the dark late one night, thinking the usual teenage angsty stuff (emo kids had nothing on me in the 70's)... and this quiet slow ballad started playing. I turned the radio up a bit, and lay there transfixed, frozen absolutely still, trying to catch every word of the song. That mournful saxophone, sad enough to bring a hormonally-charged teenage girl who missed her friends to tears. The dreamlike sound of the electric piano. That gravel-over-silk voice, dramatic even in its restraint. The way the singer referred to himself in the third person during the verses, as if he were outside looking in at the lonely traveler who missed his home. The line

..and you pretend it doesn't bother you, but you just want to explode....

Whoa. The story of my life at age 15. A life spent rootless on the road was something I immediately identified with. Yeah, yeah--emotional explosions come with the territory of being 15....but the song stuck with me. I had to find out who this band was!!