I wouldn’t call myself a music buff at all. I know what I know, and I like what I like, and that’s that. I couldn’t tell you Green Day from that band that sang the song about the old people disappearing without their car–apparently I can’t tell you they are either. Some baseball reference. I dunno. I can tell you all about James Bond, if you are interested, but I can only tell you about music as it relates to me. And since this is my blog…

There are songs and whole albums which have made great impressions and impacts on my life. Some albums carried me through heartbreak. Some songs became my theme songs in my personal soundtrack. I play certain music to help me get into certain characters. Listen, I have been cranky as a bear all morning (ask Amy), and I started playing Chic and now I’m just back to normal. Happy. Bouncy. Shaking my booty.

You know that Dance Like No One is Watching thing? My motto is Dance Like No One is Laughing. I don’t care if you watch, or if you like what you see. I’m not dancing for you. I’m dancing for me!

Since I’ve told you some of my New York story, I’ll tell you the album I relate to it.

Before heading up to the Big Apple for the first time, a friend passed along a bootleg copy of an album that would become Duran Duran’s Wedding Album. At the time, it was under the working title Four on the Floor. It ranks in my top 3 of their albums, and you all know they are in my top 3 favorite bands of all time. You’ve all heard Ordinary World and Come Undone, but that album also offered Love Voodoo, which is such a dirty groove…lol. Another one of my favorites.

I can listen to that album on repeat with no issue. It is a lovely, lovely and also a dirty, dirty funk album, with some grit to it. It’s like a Ducati. It’s sleek, and it’s dangerous, you want to get on it and fly, and when you get off, you’re going to be a little grimy, but you don’t care. It is worth every bug in your teeth. It is the absolute antithesis of Pop Trash, which is probably one of the worst albums I’ve ever heard.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time in NYC, sitting on a fire escape, listening to the pre-cursor to this album. Ordinary World comes on, and I am transported. I had some Chanel liquid liner, and a bottle of Revlon’s Raven Red nail varnish. I would sit on the fire escape painting my nails and trying to accomplish the perfect cat eye, and I would watch the street go by below me. The weather was awful. It was hot, and humid, and the sky was always kind of gray. And I was in love with a city for the first time in my life.

The Wedding Album is married to NYC in my mind, and when I was up there in January, all I could hear was Breath after Breath. And I was happy.