Michael Lee's Train of Thought

Last night it was a bunch of Christmas British TV episodes at the MN British Television Viewing Society -- I hadn't seen any All Creatures Great and Small in a while, it was a lot of fun.

The weather continues to be cold and wintery here, the worst I think it's been since I moved back to Minnesota a couple of years ago. Though I don't know, that may be just me.

When I realized that the Vikings were losing to Green Bay, I switched over to VH-1 which was doing a Behind the Music on 1984. It hadn't really crystalized how much that was a critical year for me, and how it's the first year that I look at the popular (especially music) culture as something that I recognize as "mine" -- I saw my share of MTV that year; and it's stuff I got when it came out, or listened to when it came out, and not just as as historical records that I discovered later. Perhaps it is the season, but something like Do They Know It's Christmas struck a chord, since I got that single when it came out.

Perhaps it was because I had seen bits of the 1977 hour before that -- and while I recognize all of the songs from that as well, I don't look at them in the same way; if they trigger memories of a time, it isn't 1977 -- but of a variety of different years afterwards, and the songs aren't a part of their original context.

Another disturbing thing is that someone who was born in 1984 is older than I was in 1984; The Police would be to them like The Beatles are to me -- a band that broke up right when you were born.