Vivid Memories #2
It was 2005 and I was obsessed with the movie Breakin’, the terrible prequel to the often-referenced Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Some of the reason why I watched it over and over was the hilarious cheesiness and some of it was the dancing (which was actually pretty fun to watch), but most of it was the music: it had an awesome soundtrack. Of course since I jumped on the bandwagon 20 years too late, the only ways I could hear the music aside from watching the movie over and over again were to get the soundtrack on vinyl, or on an overpriced ($100+) out of print collectible CD, or by finding a track list and assembling the mp3s from Kazaa or WinMX or whatever crappy Napster replacement was still operational. You can probably guess which one I chose.
This was around the time when I had to take my car in for emissions inspection, so when I got to the testing center I cruised in jamming out to Al Jarreau’s ‘Boogie Down’ on my homebrew soundtrack. I gave my car keys to the inspector, a huge old unfriendly-looking black dude with a deep voice, and let him do his thing. When he finished the inspection and gave me back my keys, he looked at me and said in his super deep voice:
“It’s nice to see someone listen to some real music like Al Jarreau.”
I’m not sure who was more surprised: me, at the fact that someone actually recognized something from my latest obscure obsession, or the inspector, from seeing this dorky white kid blasting an Al Jarreau single 20 years after it was popular, but after he said that to me, I felt pretty cool.
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