Episode XIII
1984-87: Lights and Colors

I

Once upon a time, a fourteen-year-old boy began listening to Top 40 music after years of listening to country music.

He was passingly familiar with the genre because of the record-breaking success of Michael Jackson’s thriller. His sister, Meg, played her cassette tape of Thriller often, leading to our hero’s curiosity about music outside of country music. She had records of various hits from the early 80s, such as Toni Basil’s “Oh, Mickey,” Gloria Branigan’s “Gloria,” and Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon.” She also listened to the current Top 40 on local radio stations like B-104, 98 Rock, and D.C. 101.

Eventually, this boy succumbed to the Top 40 genre and mixed it with his current country selections.

That boy was me.

Additionally, my old cousin Veronica began lending me cassette tapes of music she listened to. As she was ten years older, they were a decade behind what was current. She also knew I enormously liked the Electric Light Orchestra, having heard them on the radio in 1979, and became totally enamored with the talent of Jeff Lynne and his band. Interestingly or not, that obsession continues to this day. I’ve studied Lynne, his work, and his style so wholly and utterly that I have little doubt I could call myself his number one fan, and not in an Annie Wilkes kind of way. Maybe.

Veronica introduced me to bands like Styx, Journey, The Eagles, and Chicago (I’m talking Chicago pre-1978 before Terry Kath died…the good stuff).

I also had my parent’s record collection, which truly expanded my musical exposure to bands like The Beatles, to the Ray Conniff Singers, over to Glenn Miller, and back to Gordon Lightfoot. Plus, Mom used to play her tapes in the car when she’d drive with us in the backseat. This exposure included ABBA, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, Kenny Rogers, Linda Ronstadt, etc.

One could say I had a wide range of music genres thrown at me from all directions, and I’m so very thankful that happened. If it weren’t for music, I’d literally have nothing. And that lasted until I was thirty. Music began to seriously suck after that. Now I live in my Gen-X music bubble, where I’m happy as a clam.

Since music was so important to me and the portable receiver unit handed down to me was slowly dying, I begged Mom for a proper stereo receiver. For Christmas in 1983, I got my wish. The truth is, I knew which receiver “Santa” was bringing as I’d spent many trips to Columbia mall looking for the perfect unit. I believe it was Sears that I found the Lloyd’s model. It had everything I wanted and was sexy as hell with the blue digital readout, the L.E.D. signal lights, and all the shiny buttons and knobs.

Seriously, we men are easily amused by such things.

Since it had a tape and record player, the portable cassette player and record player were no longer needed. Everything would be in one package now.

But, like most impatient teenagers, I’d have to wait until Christmas to see it or experience the sheer awesomeness of it. I’d tell you I remember that wait being months. It might’ve been shorter, but I remember it feeling like months. I’m not entirely sure. Real-time and feel time are two clocks rarely in sync. I do know it sat in my parent’s bedroom upstairs, and it would stay there. The best I could do was stare at the large box wrapped in brown paper through a cracked doorway when no one else was upstairs and covet as if I were dying of thirst. So dramatic.

When Christmas came, and I could genuinely and adequately geek out over it, I took it upstairs, set it up on an old wooden school desk from the 50s, and placed it near my bed. The unfortunate part was that there was no place to put the speakers, so they had to sit on top of the unit. If I wanted to use the record player, I’d have to move the speakers to the floor or set them on my bed.

This was one reason I tried my hand at D.I.Y. woodworking in 1984.

II

I’d built a desk…if you’d want to call it that. This task was a moral imperative.

My Lloyd’s DTR, my most prized possession to date, needed a proper place in the layout of my bedroom.

The Mullinix’s who owned the farm across the street also owned the sawmill on the property behind our house. They threw the boards that didn’t pass muster into piles and usually sat there until they rotted. I absconded with several pieces and, with some measuring and improvising, built a desk that I’d stick in my bedroom to have some place for my stereo receiver and speaker to sit. The speakers could now sit on opposite sides of the tuner.

I painted that Tim Burtonesque desk white and hauled that heavy piece of shit through the house, upstairs, across the haul, and into my bedroom. While it functioned as designed, it looked poorly put together. I’d built nothing like that before, and there were certainly no blueprints or guides. Not bad for a twelve-year-old DIYer. Another Gen-X specialty.

III

The time of change and uncertainty I continually reference was in full force by November 1985 when I transitioned to Top 40 music full-time.

It was about the same time I did something about the lack of lights in my bedroom. There was no built-in ceiling light. My only lights were an antique table lamp and a shop light clamped to the top of one of the window blinds. And frankly, they weren’t that bright. So when it was dark, I had to Arthur Dent my way through the room to find one of the lights and manually turn it on.

As the holiday season was upon us, I purchased several boxes of Christmas lights during a trip to Kmart at Carrolltowne mall to staple to my D.I.Y. desk and give my sizable bedroom some more light. Plus, and I’ll just be honest, I have some odd obsession with Christmas lights. I always have. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s an Aspie thing. Don’t judge. I searched the Internet looking for answers. Turns out I’m not the only one. Psychologically, they make people happy. Or maybe those people are Aspies, too.

Or maybe I’m overthinking it; sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. Or a string of Christmas lights is just a string of Christmas lights. Thanks, Freud.

I very clearly remember plugging that first string of lights into the wall socket after securing them to the makeshift desk. Those super-bright multi-colors seemed to light up that half of the room. And for reasons I can’t explain, I was ecstatically happy. I ended up using the rest of the lights I’d bought to line the two windows facing the backyard, one of them over my bed. Now I no longer needed that shitty shop light and the barely illuminating table lamp.

It’s strange, the things we remember. When I turned on the Lloyd’s DTR after plugging in those lights, the song playing was John Denver’s “Dreamland Express.” It goes without saying that now, whenever I hear that song, I remember the night I lit up my first chains of Christmas lights and stared at the twinkling colors in awe.

I didn’t stop there. By the beginning of 1986, I lined all four windows in my bedroom with Christmas lights and the open closet alcove entrances. They were all chained together or extended with multiple extension cords and tied into a pull switch I bought from RadioShack.

Lighting problem solved. I loved spending time in my bedroom at night. Those lights gave it such a unique ambiance. I also had a Vigon Dance-A-Lite that I kept sitting on a shelf in the alcove closet and a sound-activated color organ disco light I kept near the stereo speaker. I’d picked up both at a local yard sale for five bucks apiece.

Then there’s the ultimate downside to that entire project. Back then, when one bulb burned out, the entire chain would go dark. Anyone who’s ever dealt with a chain of Christmas lights that refused to light knows what an epic pain in the ass it is the test each bulb with a known good bulb until discovering the culprit. Sometimes, if one’s lucky, they’d solve the problem by ten or fifteen lights in. Other times that fucking prick dead bulb would be toward the end of a fifty or a hundred light chain.

All my lights were new, so I’d hoped that issue would be a while away.

Still, I wasn’t done. I wanted more lights and, by necessity, more extension cords. I wanted to do the door and the lines where the ceiling met the walls. Since Christmas was over and no more lights were available, I made a deal with Mom that if she gave me the tree lights before we put the tree away for the year, I’d get her new ones next year. She agreed, and I began stringing the older lights where I wanted them.

I’d search yard sales in the Woodbine area for more lights. Sometimes I’d find some. I think it’s fair to say I was balls-deep into my first obsession.

But bulbs would quickly burn out with those older chains, and the Great Hunt for The Offender would begin. The task became more frequent than I’d have preferred. Eventually, I ran out of spare bulbs. The solution was to sacrifice the oldest chain for spare bulbs so I’d have an adequate backup supply.

By the time Amy visited me in Woodbine in June 1986, what I had up would have to suffice until the following year, when Christmas lights would again be available for purchase.

IV

The winter of early 1986 presented an issue I’d not considered. Mice.

The Woodbine house was initially built as a post office in the early 1800s. In the later 1800s, it became a hat shop, a dance hall, and a general store. Finally, by 1920, the structure became a residence. The owners built the rooms we knew as the kitchen and dining room into the original frame. Above those two rooms was my bedroom, which I may have mentioned was sizable. In the 60s, they enclosed the back porch into a sunroom, which we called the family room and a second bathroom.

I suspect the work was partially a D.I.Y. job based on the quality, not all of which would pass inspection. Between that and the sheer age of the original structure, we often had a problem with critters seeking shelter inside during the colder months. Usually mice. They would chew through everything and build nests in the oddest of places.

Those mice would also get into my room. I never saw or heard one, but I know they were there because they began chewing through the green Christmas light wires, usually when it was dark or when I was asleep; otherwise, they’d have fried their little asses into the next life. Often I’d switch on my lights, and a strand wouldn’t light. During bulb testing, I noticed halfway across the floor a fucking mouse had chewed through the wires. Granted, the repair would be easier and less time-consuming, but if this was the shape of things to come, it could get dangerous, especially if the lights were active.

I’d strip the broken wires, twist them back together and wrap them with electrical tape. I’m positive I didn’t do it correctly the first few times I wrapped those exposed wires. Eventually, the tape would loosen up and slide off the exposed area. I’d discover this the hard way when stepping on an exposed wire while the lights were active.

A 110-volt jolt to the foot isn’t an experience I’d recommend.

Eventually, mouse traps were deployed until all the mice were gone for the winter. These were the small prices I paid to live in my personal Utopia.

V

I couldn’t say when the light obsession began.

From birth? I can say when it came time to hang the lights on the Christmas tree as far back as living on Arthur Avenue, it was always me who wanted to do it. Sometimes Charlie would hang up outside lights across the bay window. He didn’t permit me to do those, but I observed, ready to throw the switch to watch them light up.

Sometimes when we’d go skating at Sportsman’s Hall, I’d stand next to Harry’s D.J. booth and watch the light show in the skating arena. Strips of multi-colored lights lined the entire circumference of the rink. Three massive starburst lights graced the ceiling. A large one in the middle and two smaller ones on each side. I’d obsess over the system that made them dance in patterns and chase to and from the center.

Once, Charlie asked Harry if I could see the inside of the D.J. booth, as I wanted to see how the lighting system worked. Harry agreed and allowed me a peek inside the coveted booth. I didn’t know what to expect. What I saw was anti-climactic. The control panel was nothing more than preset buttons with some knobs and sliders. Harry explained there were several presets he used he could manually adjust. Things such as the speed of the light chases, the patterns, the direction, etc.

It was still cool, though.

The setup at Liberty Skate was pretty much the same, albeit newer and more modern.

VI

The Disney Main Street Electrical Light Parade in 1985 was the ultimate light show that entranced me as if I might be in the middle of a petit mal seizure. Float after float of Christmas lights, some twinkling, some solid, accompanied by Mini Moog music. That may have been where the seed of decking my bedroom out with Christmas lights was planted.

However, it wasn’t until Monday, October 19, 1987, that I came face-to-face with the ultimate light show that would leave me breathless, asking, “How did they do that?” 

It’s not enough to stand in awe of a Pink Floyd light show. I had to know how they did it, how it was all assembled.

VII

When Amy still lived in Randallstown, she once called me from one of her friends’ apartments.

Angie was her name. She and Amy were polar opposites. Angie was a few years older than Amy and certainly enjoyed her sexuality. Angie was, not to put too fine a point on it, a slut.

Angie also had an older sister, Lisa, who was sixteen. I don’t recall how it all came to pass, but Amy put me on hold, and Lisa picked up to call her boyfriend, Jeff. I ended up talking to her for a little while. While similar to her sister in terms of promiscuity, Lisa had one goal in life (one she’d prefer Jeff didn’t know). She’d attend as many Billy Idol concerts as possible, hoping to fuck him.

Lofty goals there, Lisa. You and every other whore in the greater D.C. area, no doubt.

I occasionally kept in touch with Lisa and Jeff after Amy and her family moved to Reisterstown. While questionable in moral character, they were friendly people, and I enjoyed having friends, or at least people who liked me and didn’t want to bully me. Plus, they really liked Amy. They thought she was a sweet girl.

Spoiler alert: Amy and I broke up, if you want to call it that, in August 1987. We technically weren’t dating. We were ‘together’ but free to see other people. That was her clause, probably at the behest of Big Irv, who desperately wanted her to date a Jewish boy. He had one in mind, too. David. It was a clear-cut case of Amy not wanting to break up with me formally but wanting to be free to see other people. And she did. She may have even kissed David.

That hurt. Amy, my first love, was also my first genuine experience with heartache. She kept me stringing along for several months while still making her monthly trek to Woodbine to hang out with me. Only by then, the innocent activities we often did were lesser. Hormones were kicking in for both of us, more so for me. Visits that involved walks and talks and hanging around the various spots in the woods behind my house designated as forts were no more. We’d stay in my room and make out. She’d allow me to touch her and remove her clothes, sans underwear, as she wouldn’t ‘go all the way.’

We also had to be careful. Charlie had this nasty habit of sneaking up the stairs, tiptoeing across the hall to the door, and flinging the curtain back, hoping to catch us in the act of something.

My room didn’t have a standard door, just an open doorway. I’d hung a folded bedsheet over it for some semblance of privacy that Charlie didn’t respect. “My house, my rules,” he’d often say. Charlie wasn’t as clever as he thought he was, though. I often heard the stairs creak as he tried to tiptoe up them. It gave us time to redress quickly and sit innocently on my bed.

I’d moved the breakfront and my dresser to sit at the ends of the two single twin beds to provide some cover. Charlie would have to walk entirely into the room to see anything. It was an extra few seconds to our advantage. He’d often stare at us as if he’d not caught us this time, but he damn well would next time.

Whatever, old man! Bite me!

Sometimes I thought Amy was using me as practice so that when it came time to give it up to David, she’d have some experience without giving me her virginity. I could never prove that, but it felt like it on some visits. As good as Amy made me feel, the acts were always a reminder that she was not, in fact, my girlfriend anymore. She’d also stopped calling every night or accepting my calls sometimes because she was too busy with David or her other neighbor, Anne Marie.

I was tired of the pain and the stress our relationship caused me. But I loved her, so I stuck it out, hoping something might change. You know, the textbook definition of insanity.

Soon, Amy would introduce me to Tina, and everything would change, and not in a good way…but not at first.

After Amy was gone and I was neck deep in my whatever-ship with Tina, Lisa phoned me, told me she had an extra ticket to the Pink Floyd concert, and asked if I wanted to go.

Uhh…hell to the yes!

VIII

Pink Floyd was one of those bands I’d heard of over the years, especially after the release of The Wall and the single “Another Brick In The Wall (Part II).”

I liked the song well enough, especially with its discoish backbeat. Besides that, I never paid much attention to them until I met Susannah in February 1987. She was a thirteen-year-old girl I met during one of my solo sessions at Liberty Skate and during one of Amy’s “we’re dating but not exclusive” periods. The first one, I believe. So, technically, I didn’t consider calling and hanging out with Susannah as cheating.

She was an odd personality. I liked and appreciated quirky characters, so I found myself attracted to her. She wasn’t nearly as pretty as Amy, physically, but not all beauty is physical. Or so they say. We may have kissed a few times, but the relationship didn’t go anywhere past that. We mostly just talked on the phone or hung out at Carrolltowne mall. One thing we enjoyed doing together was going to the modest record store at the mall. Sometimes I had enough money to pick up a 45 record or two of current songs I fancied. Susannah used to buy entire albums. She always had money. This was because her father was a doctor, and the family was well off. She’d offer to buy my records too. I’d always decline. I wasn’t comfortable with that.

Susannah was a huge fan of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I remember she bought a vinyl copy of Pink Floyd’s “Animals” during one of our record store visits and was super psyched about it. I’d heard nothing from Floyd past the single from “The Wall.” Susannah mentioned they had a small greatest hits album titled “A Collection of Great Dance Songs.” The title must have been ironic since Floyd isn’t exactly ‘dance music.’ The record store didn’t carry it, so Susannah and I walked to Kmart and found a cassette copy there. I bought it and gave Pink Floyd a fair shake.

It was the first step on the path to another musical obsession. The playing and style of Floyd’s guitar player, David Gilmour, would become another deep dive down the musical rabbit hole. Maybe not quite E.L.O. levels, but damned close.

“Animals” would eventually become my favorite Floyd album, especially after I realized it was a loose working of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” one of my favorite Orwell works.

IX

The summer of 1987 was also one of the years our family went to Ocean City, Maryland, for summer vacation. It would have been the second trip that summer.

Now, I could write multiple chapters about how much I loved going to O.C. as a child and teenager. For many, many years, even after moving away from Maryland in 1993, it was my quintessential ‘happy place.’ A place I’d go to in my mind when life sucked. And funny how everything I like is a preoccupation. It’s definitely an Aspie thing. Don’t judge.

That first day at the beach would become my graduation away from Floyd’s “greatest hits” work to a much broader exploration of their world; The Dark Side of the Moon.

As a music fan and a regular listener of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, I knew Floyd’s “Dark Side” had remained on Billboard’s Top 200 since 1973. Fourteen years as of 1987. That must be some damned fine music to stay relevant for so long. I decided if I was going to spend the money I had from a summer job working with Charlie on his job sites, I’d invest it in what must arguably be Floyd’s best work.

After we arrived at the beach and settled into our apartment rental, I walked to the Gold Coast mall a few blocks away, found the record store, and picked up my first copy of “Dark Side of the Moon.” The terrible situation about buying a cassette tape at the mall, walking back to the apartment with a Walkman, and the full intention of listening to my new tape, was my incredibly poorly thought-out vision of the bigger picture. Cassette tapes were encased in overly giant plastic skeletons that required the jaws of life to open and separate the tape from the obnoxious structure. The individual at the record store couldn’t help me with it, so it forced me to wait until returning to the apartment to find a knife to pry my coveted cassette from its exaggerated confines.

At the end of that journey, I sat on the edge of the wave breaker wall comprising the end of the street and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean. Dusk was setting in as the sun set behind me. The salty air’s smell flooded my senses as the wind blew gently across my face. I pushed the play button of my Walkman, adjusted the soft foam on-ear headphones, and closed my eyes.

The sound of a heartbeat began, followed by a clattering sound that spun around my head in a quadraphonic pattern. The repeating scream of a woman rose, and then the first chords of the song played (E-minor if you’re interested, using three different shades of minor – Dorian, Aeolian, and Phrygian…or the color dark-blue).

I opened my eyes wide, no doubt comparable to someone shooting heroin for the first time as their pupils go wide, leaving a small ring of iris color. Colors exploded inside my head in ways I’d never experienced. It’s part of having synesthesia. When the slide guitar began, I swear my eyes welled up with tears of joy. I now understood, not even a minute and a half into the song, the allure of this masterpiece.

When I hear that song now, I’m always taken back to that warm summer evening in Ocean City, Maryland, as I stared out over the Atlantic, smelling the salt air, feeling the colors in my brain, and inexplicably, the space between the colors. You’d have to experience it to understand; it’s not something I can explain.

I sat on the wave breaker wall for the duration of the entire album, just staring out over the water, lost in a world of the most intense colors and space, but not time. I’d lost track of it. When the album was over, and the heartbeat faded away, night had overtaken dusk, and I was sitting alone in the dark underneath a single dim yellow mercury vapor lamp.

I stood up, walked the length of the block back to the apartment, and explained my absence. I had no regrets. That was the most intense and memorable forty-two minutes and fifty seconds of my life at the time. I’d never forget it.

X

Lisa had an extra ticket to see Pink Floyd and wanted to know if I wanted to go with her and Jeff.

Oh, and they might need a ride to the venue; The Capitol Center in Washington D.C.

Shit. Twist my arm, girl.

I’d already bought a copy of Floyd’s first post-Roger Waters effort, “A Momentary Lapse of Reason,” and was loving every second of it.

After some negotiating with Mom, we found a way to make it all work so Jeff and Lisa could get a ride, and I’d get the ticket. The Capitol Center also had a chaperone/parent’s room where parents could relax while their kids attended the concert. It was a brilliant idea on their part. Mom had used it before when Meg, Amy, and I went to see Bon Jovi and Cinderella there in 1987…twice.

I didn’t know what to expect from seeing Floyd live. I’d seen the video for “Learning to Fly” and knew there would be some next-level shit regarding the light show. For reasons I don’t recall, the seats weren’t grouped together. I suspect the demand for Pink Floyd tickets was high, and people got what they got, seated together or not. Jeff and Lisa sat a few rows higher and several seats down that row. I quickly made a concert buddy of the older gal sitting beside me. She, too, was stuck in a seat separated from the people she came with, so we agreed to enjoy the show together. I don’t think I ever asked her name. She was cute, though.

Unless you’ve been to a 1987 or a 1994 Pink Floyd concert, there’s no describing the experience. I won’t even try. Rent yourself a copy of “Delicate Sound of Thunder” (1988) or “Pulse” (1994) to get a general idea of the experience. The lights, the lasers, the music; it’s a happy overload of the senses I’d do again in a heartbeat if Floyd were still together and touring.

Here’s the amusing part that always gets a laugh: I was still a straight-edge kid in 1987. I didn’t do drugs or smoke. But when one attends a Pink Floyd concert in an enclosed arena where the majority of concertgoers smoke pot? A contact high is inevitable. It wasn’t something I considered. I was there for the music and the light show. When the concert concluded, I was high as fuck and unaware of it, except that I was utterly happy and in love with everyone around me.

Mom noticed when she picked us up, leaving her amused as well.

And for some reason, I slept really well that night.

XI

While at the Floyd concert, I picked up a T-shirt and a tour program.

Of course, I still have them both, even if the shirt no longer fits. I wore the T-shirt to school the next day. I was far from alone. Every other student seemed to wear a Pink Floyd tour shirt. Some of my druggie/metalhead peers gave me the oddest look. Wide eyes, dropped jaw, total disbelief.

One of them approached me and said, “I didn’t know you liked Pink Floyd.”

I nodded my head and replied. “It’s amazing what you can learn about someone just by talking to them instead of slamming them into a locker, isn’t it?”

He looked at me oddly again and walked away. At least I didn’t get thrown into the lockers that time. Progress.

XII

Tina hadn’t entirely supported my trip to see Pink Floyd, even though she knew I was totally into them. She wanted to go too, only there were two problems with that. There was no getting another ticket, and her mother, Darlene, kept her on a very tight leash. Darlene had valid reasons for that. Tina was a wild child..and then some. I could never figure out what she was doing with me since I thought she was far out of my league when we first met through Amy. Tina had her reasons, though, and they became apparent in the month that followed the Floyd concert when she would dump me completely out of the blue.

I wasn’t ready for it. I didn’t see it coming. I was emotionally attached to Tina in a way I wasn’t with Amy and didn’t handle it well. Tina’s breakup sent me into a very dark spiral.

Sadly, it took the murder of one of my classmates to pull me out of it.