The End of a Long Week, Cyndi Lauper, and Kenny Rogers

It had been a long week. Long days and the frustration that often intertwines into their seemingly never-ending nature, where you hit the pillow and can’t fall asleep even though you’re exhausted. Nothing serious. Perhaps that’s why it’s even more tiring. No alarm buttons to fire up the adrenalin. Just a constant stream of meaningless go-through-the-motion exercises.

So I get home Friday night and my wife and I decide we’re going to go out to dinner, but we only get as far as tossing back restaurant names back and forth. I pop open an ice cold beer and it never tasted so good. That first beer at the end of a long week, now that’s a little slice of heaven.

On the stereo is The Essential Cyndi Lauper. Mid-30s married couple just wants to have fun, though I made sure to skip song #1. She Bop reminded us of our middle school revelations of what that song was all about. We kept hitting replay on Track #11 — When You Were Mine, because early Prince’s magic touch is all over that one and you shouldn’t mess with magic. I also mentioned that I’d like to see The Goonies again. Real fans of Cyndi will know why that thought occurred to me.

That was all fun and good, and by now it’s getting late and I’ve tried to keep that first beer rush going with a second and third, but one can only take so much Cyndi Lauper, no matter how essential.

I go over to the stack of CDs, always just one cat jump away from falling over and covering the entire floor. I flipped through our collection: the Honeymoon in Vegas soundtrack, John Mellencamp’s Greatest Hits, Prince The Hits 1, Hem’s No Word from Tom, Coltrane Live at the Half Note, my friend’s Aaron’s "Merry Christmas from Detroit" mix, Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, Ludacris’s Disturbing Tha Peace, Tears For Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair, Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, the Big Bad Love soundtrack, The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour and on and on and on until I came upon Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits. And since it had been while, I really felt like I had struck gold. Solid gold.

When I was a kid, I used to listen to this album — on a turntable, of course — all the time. I knew every word to every song, and I sang it all out loud. And much to the chagrin of my wife, I can still do the same today.

Every hands a winner, and every hands a loser, and the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

Long week, cold beer, late hour and Kenny Rogers. Oh yeah. Turn that music up.

So that’s what we did, and as I listened to and sung along with Kenny, I realized how influential his music has been on something that is very important to me — writing. While listening to The Gambler, it struck me how I not only knew every word, but that I had a set of visuals of that train bound to nowhere, of the passing of a bottle, of a cigarette being crushed out and of a man turning towards the window and fading off to sleep (none of it based on that television movie, by the way, although, yes, I did see it).

There is setting, character, mood, story (beginning, middle and end), and meaning in that song, and there’s a depth to it that resonates. I got it when I was ten years old as well, and I can still see, hear and feel it now.

Same thing with Coward of the County. I mean, who doesn’t get a little chill up their spine when Tommy stops and locks the door?

This all brought back another memory: I remember connecting headphones to my Dad’s quadruple deck, "don’t touch" stereo system and trying to write new lyrics for the song For Your Eyes Only by Sheena Easton. It may have been the first time I engaged in a non-school related creative writing exercise. I’m sure it was inspired by my extended plays of the story-filled songs of Kenny Rogers.

I’m thinking of influences here in the sense of who influenced me to love the written word. Kenny Rogers? Without the tired bones and bleary eyes, I don’t think this would have occurred to me, but these are the kinds of revelations that come to mind at the end of a long week.