<< prev = comments [11] = pings [0] = next >>


prom week day 1
04/28/2008 = 08:47 AM

Monday April 28 - Let's talk about our prom theme songs.

The way prom worked at our school, the Prom Committee members each got to pick a song that was their song of choice, and we, the peons, would get to vote upon which one would be our prom theme.

The rest of prom would consist of all the runners-up being interspersed with the other dance music so we could slow-dance.

When we got the list of choices, I was dismayed, but not surprised. It was 1989, too late for the music I loved (what's now known as "classic rock") and on the cusp of the music I'd learned to love in its stead (what's now known as "garage band," "grunge," "alternative," or "indie," none of which really lent itself well to romance and taffeta).

Much of the playlist was pulled almost directly from 99.9 FM, the easy-listening station out of Bridgeport, and it made me want to hurl.

My first choice, Journey's Why Can't This Night Go On Forever (practically tailor-made for prom), was nowhere to be found.

Nor was Sheriff's When I'm With You (more a love-anthem than a prom theme, but still, incredibly romantic, and with enough guitar that I could live with it, slow-dancewise).

I remember that my neighbor, L, had said to me that, if I had a problem with it, I should have joined Prom Committee, and I had replied that she had no room to talk, because she had dropped Band to be on Prom Committee and that was just a one night stand, whereas Band was more of a relationship.

Plus, she had picked Phil Collins' cover of Groovy Kind of Love as her personal choice, which only proved she had no musical taste whatsoever.

Ultimately, I voted for Richard Marx' Hold On to the Nights, not because I liked it or him, but because it was the most prom-ish of the musical candidates, and if I was going to be coerced into going into prom (which, indeed, was the only reason I was going), I wanted it to be a prom-ish evening, and I did not want to wind up attempting to slow-dance to hip-hop, which made up a surprising number of the rest of the prom committee choices. It was, as I have mentioned, 1989.

Everyone else agreed, and Hold Onto The Night (note the not-quite correct spelling and change of plural to singular, because my classmates were idiots) became the main theme of our prom.

It's been nearly twenty years (oh, my gourd) since prom, and I still cannot hear Hold On to the Nights without recalling sneaking away from my date to the bathroom to floss the seeds of an extremely mediocre virgin strawberry daiquiri out of my teeth (and, subsequently, being obligated to hold J's hair whilst she reviewed inputs of the contraband schnapps she had consumed pre-prom).

Oh, what a night. (But that's another song for another era.)

Tags: prom week

drinking: ice water
watching: a thing about nostradamus on history channel
richard marx: still haven't forgiven him, but have less animosity than i do for solo phil collins