I recently had my 40th class reunion, and it is as mind boggling as all facets of growing older are.  

However, I will have to write about that reunion some other time, as it is still very fresh in my mind and there are way too many stories to entertain or bore you with.

But I will tell you about something our reunion brought to light.

Someone hooked up a fancy bluetooth speaker and started blasting 80s tunes, which made many of us think that maybe we weren’t actually 58 years old but closer to say, 18 or 30?  

In any case, we felt younger.

And that brought about some reminiscing. We started talking about music and how things had changed in this day and age of streaming music and all.  

I brought up how we used to go to a department store west of town called Kincaids, where they had all types of things – including a video rental section and an electronics section complete with albums and 45s for sale. 

Back then, when you liked a new song on the radio, you went out to Kincaids or the new store in town known as the big “W” and bought the 45. When you were a little older, it was cooler to buy the entire album.  Once, Kincaids and the big “W” had a price war on the 45s and they went for pennies on the dollar. 

I bought a ton of records during that war.

When we were older and had vehicles, we would travel west to the “big city” of Mt. Vernon, where there was a cool record store staffed by teenagers with rock star haircuts. At that time, many of us thought we were too complex and deep for mainstream, top 40 hits, and fancied ourselves as avant garde or alternative record lovers.

I remember ordering a cassette made by a band from the UK many hadn’t heard of, and even the guy at the record store thought I was something else.  That band later became popular and I thought of myself as pretty forward thinking with impeccable taste in music.

Now, we didn’t just listen to the bigger radio stations out of Evansville, Indiana (the real big city), we also rushed home or to someone else’s home on Friday nights to watch Friday Night Videos. 

Some of us who lived in town and whose parents paid the extra money, actually had the MTV music channel. Seeing a “world premiere” video back then was important business.  And, if you stayed up late enough, you could see some up and coming videos, too.

Sure, we still loved a lot of the 80s stuff that was considered “Top 40” and all of us still listened to Casey Kasem and America’s Top 40 on the radio.  For a time, Casey also had a TV show.  You could stay up on which songs were hits and which had fallen out of the top 10 by listening and watching the ageless Mr. Kasem.

Just like movies, music videos back in the day used the latest and best technology to enhance things. We would marvel at some of the special effects, cool guitars, wild clothes and hairdos. I can remember watching, for the first time, ZZ Top and “Sharp Dressed Man” and then making special arrangements to catch the first showing of The Police and “Every Breath You Take.”

Of course, when we talked about all of this in 2025, we had a good laugh.  And so, I reiterated all of this to my 14-year-old on the way to school because I thought she’d get a kick out of it.

Even though she was polite, I doubt she appreciated the story, and when I asked her if she knew what a cassette, video, or “Top 40 music” was, she looked puzzled.   

ZZ Top members are in their 60s and 70s now, and some have passed away.  Sting is a spritely 73 years young.

Heck, my daughter doesn’t even remember CDs, which were cutting edge in 1984.

Here I go again down Nostalgia Boulevard in my outdated old person mobile.

Want a ride?