I’ve never felt more stuck in my entire life as I have in New York – I have never felt more like an outlier, an outcast, a misfit, an injured athlete who looks back at the game they once played so well with a quiet disdain for those who came after.
Since the day I was born, I felt like I was too old for Sesame Street – after all, I was reading decades-old National Geographics in kindergarten (mostly for the Kodak 35mm camera commercials, or the occasional pre-deregulation airline ad). But I’m never too old to become obsessed with something like German Sesame Street!
If there was ever a song that was entirely overlooked at the time, and continues to rest in obscurity today, it is the song “Giant” by The The, from 1983.
I can still remember the first time I heard “Take A Chance On Me” by ABBA – it was so different, so interesting and unlike anything I had heard before, that I almost erupted in a cheerful enthusiasm that is the closest to a Pentecostal moment I’ve ever had before.
Swedish auto exports might have been booming in the 1980’s, but the second biggest export industry, ABBA, was in a state of flux. The polyester divorce between those that crafted (Benny + Bjōrn) versus those who sang (the Agnetha and Anni Frid bookends) meant that a lot of things were done or not done to apply a more modern coat of paint on the public personae of these free agent honeys.