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Bathing in The Purple Rain

    I’m over at my highly-musically literate friend Nancy Davis Kho’s place today waxing philosophical about The insignia formerly known as Prince. Before you click over, leave a comment to win a free download of her new ebook “The Family Mix: Essays on Family Life.” If you love great writing, music, and laughing—you’ll adore Nancy as much as I do.

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    For my youth, my friends, and especially on the occasion of dancing—nobody provided a better soundtrack than Prince. Even the wallflowers jumped up and down to Let’s Go Crazy at the Van Hise Middle School dance, and everyone–everyone– implicitly understood that partying like it’s 1999 set the fiesta epic-ness barometer.

    In high school, my friend Megan sent us into fits of choking-on-your-own-spit laughter with her combination riding a pony/Pee Wee Herman’s “Tequila” dance to Kiss. Starfish and coffee maple syrup and jam greeted Erin, Maria, and I weekend mornings in our college apartment, as rays of sunshine illuminated our dirty ashtrays and dappled our raspberry berets (even if they were tweed newsboy caps worn backwards). The Sign of the Times messed with our minds, and we loved it.

    Even though we had some notion of Prince’s Little Red Corvette, my generation’s liner notes lead back to one place…Purple Rain. No two words evoke such a combustion of pre-teen angst, hormones, and nostalgia in me as those. After all, who among us doesn’t know the answer to the primal call and response:

    “Wendi?… Is the water warm enough?… Shall we begin?”

    (click over to Midlife Mixtape to read the rest!)

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    Don’t forget to leave a comment to win Nancy’s book! I’ll announce the winner next week.

    0 thoughts on “Bathing in The Purple Rain”

    2. Kir

      I would love to read, own, devour Nancy’s book! She is my guilty pleasure of reading because she knows EVERYTHING about music and I love just reading her tell me about bands from today and yesteryear.

      I loved your piece over at her place. 🙂

    3. The Well-Versed Mom

      I actually found an old mix tape in a box in my closet the other day and popped it in to the tape player in our car while driving my teenage daughters to school the other day.

      TEEN1: “You have a tape player in the car?!!”

      TEEN2: “You have a TAPE?!!!”

      Minds. Blown.