The following is a true story:
Waterford, Michigan. 1982. I’m fourteen years old and off to another night waitressing at Kirby’s Coney Island at The Pontiac Mall. (You were supposed to be sixteen to get a work permit but I lied about my age and nobody checked.) There’s a TV show I want to watch while I’m gone—one with music videos— so I asked my mom to record it for me on the VCR. I’m crazy about music videos, and MTV has not yet arrived in Waterford.
Mom did record the show for me, but she didn’t remember to start it on time so the tape began playing halfway through a song. It was a really cool song by a band I’d never heard of: The Pretenders. Flush with cash from waitressing tips—and by flush I mean I probably had seven dollars—I went to the record store and looked them up. I didn’t know the name of the song but hoped something on the album would jar my memory. Sure enough, I found it: