I just located Safety Dance. I’m sure we have it somewhere on a CD but I snagged the song and am now cranking it–as much as the computer’s speakers can crank.
Every time I hear this song I think back to 1983 or so when I was at 4-H camp one weekend learning how to be a volunteer counselor. I was hanging out with some boys from I don’t even remember where and a red-headed boy from Powhatan. The boy from Powhatan was smitten with me–seriously, he tried so hard to date me. He offered me his high school ring once and I told him he should hold on to it. Yep, always the one with an easy letdown, that’s me. I kept his macramé offering, oddly enough. ANYWAY, the four of us were sitting around in the dining hall talking about music.
I remember one of the other boys had on a Led Zep t-shirt. He was cute and a bad ass. I don’t know if he and his friend were actual bad asses or not but kids my age, in my town, didn’t wear Led Zeppelin t-shirts, at least not any that I knew. We started talking about Safety Dance and my red-headed friend hadn’t heard it. The three of us, who had, went on and on about how much we liked that song. It didn’t seem strange that Led Zeppelin and Men Without Hats could both be considered cool.
In a related memory, every time I hear a Rush song I think about a girl I met at a UVA Young Writers Workshop. I ended up having her father once for a class at MWC. He was an English professor who rode his bike to class–his comb-over flapping in the wind.