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CYNDIWhen
I first heard Cyndi Lauper, it was the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun single playing
on the radio. I was 12.
I believe it was in the winter of 1983.
I didn’t like the song the first few times I heard it.
Then, one day, I was at the local arcade, and they were playing the 12”
remix. My eyes lit up at the sound of it. This was really good. Shortly
after I saw the video, and after Time After Time came out, I was really hooked.
I bought the album. I
started listening for her on the radio, and looking for her in magazines, and on
MTV. My
appreciation for her music, and her beauty quickly grew.
What I liked most about her was her unapologetic approach to being
unique. I took pride in being the
wacky person that I was, and usually did not get respect for it.
Also, I had felt like an outcast in school, so I could identify with her
in that. She also conveyed the
message that you don’t have to stop enjoying life just because you grow up. I could picture her as being one of my peers, because she
seemed so approachable. She
didn’t have that untouchable gloss coating like so many of the other pop
artists of the day. I
tend to have an addictive personality, so it came naturally to me to take it to
an extreme. It became a major event
when Cyndi would make a media appearance. I
started listening to the album several times daily.
I started collecting singles and posters.
I sent out for the obligatory biography sheet with 8x10 glossy photo from
two different companies. The
biography mentioned the bands Flyer, Doc West, and Blue Angel.
It took a long time, but I eventually found and purchased the Blue Angel
LP, and cassette. I also picked up
other rarities, such as the picture disc LP for She’s So Unusual, and some
picture sleeve 45’s, which are rare, now.
And of course, I had to get the remix singles.
That’s what got me hooked to start with. I
don’t recall Cyndi being in Denver for the She’s So Unusual tour.
But, I had never been to a concert before that, and it didn’t occur to
me to look into this. It wasn’t until the Money Changes Everything video came out
that I realized I wanted to see her in concert, and by that time, it was
certainly too late for Denver. Further,
I don’t think I would have been given the money to go.
My mother was a single parent, and giving me the money for all the Cyndi
stuff I bought was as much as she could give at that point.
During
the lull before True Colors came out, I began to wonder if Cyndi was going to
make another album at all. I was so
short sighted. Anyway, the True
Colors single came as a complete surprise to me.
I didn’t particularly care for most of the music played on the stations
which would be most likely to play Cyndi’s music, but I made it a point to
suffer through it on a regular basis, just in case Cyndi had a new release, and
it got played. I wanted to hear it
first. When it happened, it was on
a station that was about 80 miles away. I
was so excited I couldn’t contain myself.
I couldn’t find a tape fast enough to record it, so the next day I
called long distance to request it. I
recorded it, and played it back literally 100 times in a row. Then I went to buy the single.
So
far, all of this is pretty typical of a 12-15 year old with a crush on a pop
star. But my life was getting
worse, and the rejection I suffered caused me to go deeper into isolation.
A lot of my problems, I can tie back to my parents divorce when I was 11.
I am not blaming them for the choices I made, but it certainly had a big
impact in my life. My
father was gone most of the time, but I still had some contact with him.
For the short time I lived with him, I came to understand very quickly
why my mother divorced him. He was
overbearing, and got verbally violent over petty stuff.
I lived with my mother most of the time, because she was more lenient.
But, she had taken to dating drunks, and bringing them home.
They were typically verbally violent, and some were physically violent. Nobody should have to be browbeaten as a child.
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