A Top Ten Memoir: 1997 - "A change would do you good..."
It was very cold that January as I was beginning my second quarter at the University of Chicago. An emotional chill swept through our family first as my step father Ray passed away several months after his cancer diagnosis.
It was very sad as my mother found herself a widow for the third time. We had a few crying jags and breakdowns over the phone but on some level, this death brought us all closer together, including my sister Judy who had been pulled away from the family by her emotionally abusive husband.
I had to miss the first day of Winter quarter classes due to the funeral which gave me a lot of anxiety. I hated missing classes. As the term went on, I had a harder time connecting to my fellow students this particular term and the professors seemed a bit more distant than those I had in the Fall. Perhaps it was the cold outside, perhaps it was the sadness I felt surrounding Ray’s death. Either way, I plowed through that term as well as the next. All the while I felt a bit inadequate and not smart enough to succeed through the remainder of courses. This helped propel Lonestar’s song Cheater’s Road into my Top Ten of the year. Specifically, I connected with the song’s call out for attention:
“Tell me you think that I’m pretty, tell me you think that I’m smart.”
I felt quite in need of validation on both fronts. In June, I finished up the one year program and graduated with an MA from U of C at what was a pretty pomp and circumstance type of ceremony. My mom, Frank, Marlee, and my North Central friend Cathy and her husband Kevin attended and provided all the emotional support I needed that day.
I also began to feel the validation of my new career choice. Early in the year, I proposed a summer course at College of Du Page (COD) on the Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Just days after my graduation from U of C, I began my teaching career. Once again my mom and Marlee were there to support me by enrolling in the course, as did other friends I had met through Frank’s Broadway Bound course. I felt I was finally doing something I was deeply passionate about! I had been a fan of Hitchcock’s work since I saw The Birds as a child and even analyzed that film as part of a film study course in high school. It only seemed fitting that the first course I would teach would also be focused on one of my favorite directors.
Later in the summer I applied for an adjunct teaching position at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, Illinois. The Fine Arts Department was looking for someone to teach humanities courses. Since my program of study at U of C was in the humanities and one of the full-time faculty members at Moraine had gone through the same program (albeit with a different collection of courses) I got the job with only a week to prepare for Fall classes. Truthfully what I was being asked to teach had nothing to do with my graduate course work as the focus of the intro to humanities course included everything from Ancient Mesopotamian art to Greek, Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance art, philosophy, literature, and music. I had never had a graduate course in any of these areas and was always only about a week ahead of my students. It was yet another test of my ability to master something new. The U of C degree gave me some confidence, although I quickly found that the students were at such a basic level that I could have taught them anything and they would have had to trust that I knew what I was talking about.
I think I also got the job because Phyllis, the department head, also was going to need someone the following spring to teach film courses as the person teaching them would be taking a sabbatical. At least I had that to look forward to.
My Top Ten of 1997:
1. Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? – Paula Cole
2. Do What You Have to Do – Sarah McLachlan
3. Sweet Surrender – Sarah McLachlan
4. Walkin’ On the Sun – Smash Mouth
5. Elegantly Wasted – INXS
6. Reach Out – Erasure
7. He Left a Lot To Be Desired – Ricochet
8. Cheater’s Road – Lonestar
9. A Change – Sheryl Crow
10. Silver Springs – Fleetwood Mac
Overall, it seemed that I had made the right decision to study film and pursue my teaching career. That year, Sheryl Crow continued to release singles from her 1996 self-titled album. One of those was A Change (or with its later full title: A Change Would Do You Good.)
The high energy of the song along with Crow’s playful lyrics re-affirmed that I had made the right choice professionally. I felt like I was becoming who I wanted: someone who could teach with passion, authority, and joyfulness. It also gave me the chance of being the center of attention which I clearly always needed (the home movies of me dancing in front of my mother’s camera were clearly evidence of this.) While also continuing my part-time work as an adviser at College of Du Page (COD), I was now utilizing and applying all of my newly found talents and knowledge resulting from two Masters programs and several years of working in higher education. By the Fall I was teaching an average of 4 full (about 30 students in each) courses a term AND working several hours as an adviser.
All of this made me realize I could do things I had never thought possible. Going to New York that summer I felt I belonged there more than ever before. I was teaching about the arts and visiting museums, seeing theatrical productions, and becoming more of an art educator than a college recruiter/counselor. As such, I felt better about myself. I was becoming who I dreamed of being inside.
This was also the summer that our friend Tom got married in New York. Tom had left the Midwest a few years earlier to attend The Actor’s Studio’s graduate program. There, he met Nina, a beautiful young woman whose parents had escaped Russia to become well-respected medical professionals. Tom and Nina’s wedding would be the most lavish and expensive I had ever attended. Several of our friends from Chicago attended the event.
Tom’s New York friend Brian was one of his groomsmen. As I previously mentioned, Brian was an attractive and accomplished dancer trying to develop a career on Broadway. He’d be very giving, allowing us to stay in his apartment or the vacant one across the hall from him for part of the summer. It felt as if we were living in the Big Apple.
Being in this world also meant being around a lot of interesting and attractive theater people. At Tom’s wedding, there was a guy named Matthias who was also interested in Brian but the feeling wasn’t mutual on Brian’s part. I remember walking around the grounds where the wedding was held in Long Island and listening to Matthias talk about Brian. All the while I felt bad for Matthias since Brian was so seemingly uninterested in him. The country band, Ricochet, released the song He Left a Lot to be Desired, which expressed some of the emotions I felt surrounding this:
“Your touch, your kiss, your tenderness
Your blue eyes burning with fire
Your heart and soul when he let them go
He left a lot to be desired
What was he thinkin' was he out of his mind
How could he walk away how could he be so blind
No I'll never understand why he gave you up
He was one lucky man when he had your love”
I loved the song and would think about that day (and perhaps Matthias) whenever I listened to it. The music, lyrics, and emotional vocal performance brought all of those feelings right out of me.
I often found it frustrating that someone like Brian, Matthias, or even Tom seemed to so easily live in a world that I viewed as so beautiful. They got a lot of attention for their looks and creative endeavors. They represented the creative artist that on some level I really wanted to be. Did I want to possess them or possess what they represented? I didn’t know for sure but I felt the emotions deeply inside me, as expressed in a Sarah McLachlan song from her 1997 album Surfacing called, Do What You Have to Do:
“And I have the sense to recognize that
I don't know how to let you go
Every moment marked
With apparitions of your soul
I'm ever swiftly moving
Trying to escape this desire
The yearning to be near you
I do what I have to do”
I felt a deep yearning to be part of this world. McLachlan’s album was filled with other tender ballads and moody, emotionally laden mid-tempo alternative tunes. The album quickly became the one I listened to most that summer. Songs like Sweet Surrender seemed to be speaking to me about the need I had to have the kinds of releases that New York and my new career had allowed:
“It doesn't mean much
It doesn't mean anything at all
The life I've left behind me
Is a cold room
I've crossed the last line
From where I can't return
Where every step I took in faith
Betrayed me
And led me from my home
Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give”
I wanted to surrender myself to that which was around me which could satisfy what I so wanted. I now knew I really needed to be attached to this creative world if given the chance to do so. Erasure’s Reach Out, from their album Cowboy, also illustrated this emotion:
“Don't walk away
I need you more than words can say
I feel for you, this everlasting flame
My everlasting flame
I will wash away your tears
Through the pain and through the sorrow
Better days are still to come
If you would only turn around and
Reach out and touch me”
Who and what I was searching for perhaps remained a bit of a masculine myth. Paula Cole’s Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? may have hinted at some of this:
“Where is my John Wayne
Where is my prairie song
Where is my happy ending
Where have all the cowboys gone
I am wearing my new dress tonight
But you don't, but you don't even notice me”
Maybe I still needed to be noticed. Maybe I wanted the perfect happy ending now that I had seemingly found the right calling in my professional life. I wanted something strong and deeply heartfelt. Was the perfect life and perfect love a myth?
Sometimes I would “reject” people that didn’t give me enough attention. I did have Frank though and he was completely devoted to me. But Fleetwood Mac recorded an old deep track Silver Springs for a live album in ’97 which expressed some of what I was still feeling on a larger level. Stevie Nicks’s vocal delivery of the related lines was chilling and quite moving:
“So, I'll begin not to love you
Turn around, see me runnin'
I'll say I loved you years ago
Tell myself you never loved me, no
And don't say that she's pretty
And did you say that she loved you
Baby, I don't wanna know
Oh, no
And can you tell me was it worth it
Baby, I don't wanna know”
Perhaps it was better to let certain feelings for people, jobs, and attachments to fade. Then again songs like these kept them alive. Whenever I listened to them I could go to those places and feel their powerful impact on me. All the while, I went about my life and simply let those feelings remain within me. Other songs like Smash Mouth’s Walking on the Sun and INXS’s Elegantly Wasted haven’t lasted as long in my consciousness because I didn’t really have the same emotional connection to them.
The Smash Mouth song had a wonderful retro sounding production that was unlike anything else on the radio at the time. It was fun and upbeat but now seems a bit like a novelty. I still think it’s a great record though.
INXS’s Elegantly Wasted was the last major song released by the band when lead singer Michael Hutchence died of an apparent suicide.
It made this particular, very upbeat, and somewhat retro sounding song all the more special for its time. Marlee and I even paid special tribute to the band at that year’s Top Ten party since they had graced both of our lists many times over the years.
But, in the end, I wasn’t wasting my own life in 1997, rather I was enjoying this Change, this new period of Walking on the Sun and experiencing new and awakening emotions and parts of myself I was only beginning to appreciate.
Links to my Top Ten of 1997:
Other favorites from ‘97:
Your Woman - White Town, Female of the Species - Space, Full of Grace - Sarah McLachlan, Thursday at the Blue Note - White Town, Witness - Sarah McLachlan, Something About the Way You Look Tonight - Elton John, Adia - Sarah McLachlan, Jack-Ass - Beck, Tubthumping - Chumbawamba, Good Lookin’ Man - LeAnn Rimes
What are your favorites from ‘97? Any stories to go along with those songs?
Here's my list
* Silver Springs - Fleetwood Mac
* Get Out the Map - Indigo Girls
* A Change Would Do You Good - Sheryl Crow
* Everlong - Foo Fighters
* Foolish Games - Jewel
* 3AM - Matchbox Twenty
* Sunny Came Home - Shawn Colvin
* Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
* Building A Mystery - Sarah McLachlan
* Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? - Paula Cole
Fun Fact: In 1978, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson released "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys". Clearly, all those Mamas took Waylon's and Willie's advice much too seriously. 🤔😉
I'd never heard that Ricochet song -- fab.
Sheryls' video is great fun.
Fleetwood Mac never cease to amaze me!