For whatever reason, whenever I hear a Richard Marx song, I think mainly of two things- one, the killer CD boom box my brother bought back in the day, and the other, mowing yards on sweltering summer afternoons in 1988.

I think of the killer CD boom box because it had exceptional bass, complete with a Bass Boost, and I remember how good that CD player made music sound. Prior to getting that box, my brother was left having to listen to whatever music came through my compact stereo/tape deck/phonograph player I had received as a birthday gift a year or two before. A lot of Christian albums were played on that phonograph- from Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant (favorites) to DeGarmo and Key and David Meece and Petra, and since I owned the stereo, I generally controlled the sonic ambiance of our shared space.

My brother and I shared a room from the time he was born until I was in college, and as the younger brother, he got to listen to and play with and wear a lot of stuff that I went through first. But when he was in high school, early on he started working, and I remember one of the first major purchases he made was that boom box. And with that purchase, he became the owner of the preferred music player in the room- and he also ventured off to develop his taste in music. No more having to listen to my stuff. He was the first in our family to join the Columbia House music club where you could get 7 albums for the price of one, and then you just had to buy a few more after that. I remember Richard Marx’s first disc was one of his first acquisitions, along with a Taylor Dayne disc, and some others.

That boom box signalled that my sibling was stepping out of his brother’s shadow, and out on his own, defining his own tastes, selecting his own path in life. Or, at least, buying that box was a moment in time that I recognized that he was stepping up and starting to forge his own way in life. He has always had a strong will and a definite sense of his own identity. I think I just realized he would make and take his own path in life during that summer.

For some odd reason, whenever I hear Richard Marx songs, and specifically “Endless Summer Nights” and “Angelia”, I also think of mowing yards.  At the time I Marx’s first disc was out, I was a college student, a friendly-but-introverted Baptist kid just finished with my freshman year, 19 years-old, and I know part of my association with Marx’s music and mowing has to do with the fact I was straddling adolescence and adulthood then.

I think I have always matured slowly, and for whatever reason, that summer I mowed a number of yards in the neighborhood regularly.  With a Sony Walkman clipped to my shorts, I would roll our family mower to a nearby backyard and with a late afternoon sun beating down, or late July clouds moving in from the west scrubbing the sky into an angry blue, I would listen to the FM radio and mow grass.  And I would think about life, God, living at home, wondering what I would do that weekend, and inevitably, girls.

I’ve never thought of myself as a very sexy person.  I’ve too often struggled with my own awkwardness around people in general, but moreso with a quiet terror in being around women, especially if I was around someone I might like. And at that age, it seemed like ever girl in my age group was an emerging beauty, a sensual sonnet I struggled to know.  I’ve had a steady stream of endorsement from my mother about my appearance since I was young, but unfortunately, that opinion is discounted in the exchanges of life, and I’ve always wrestled with questions about my attractiveness and suitability as a potential partner. And I’ve flopped in my ability to win the ones I’ve wanted.  It is hard to woo someone when you simply worship them, I have found.

For whatever reason, hearing Richard Marx sing about those endless summer nights, and later, Angelia, I could slide into his music and those lyrics, and I was filled with a hunger and a longing for love that I guess you feel at that time in your life, when you are young, all the doors are still before you, and you feel strong and  virile.  His music embodied a confidence about romance and love that I rarely felt in actual situations, but that I hoped would one day fill my life. I was in good shape in the summer of 1988, and because of that, I think I felt as strong, attractive, and as full of romantic hopes as I have at any point in my life. I think those songs carried a lot of the passion and the longing that I felt at that time.

But I am remembering images and feelings tied to songs by an artist that imprinted that moment in my life.

I hear Angelia today and in some ways still feel like that younger man, full of hope and hunger, recalling some of the fire of my youth, and the longings I had then, and still have in milder degrees today, to know her, to find her.  Oddly, the song makes me think of a more recent Angelia in my life and it fills me with some bittersweet recent memories, as it also conjures strong feelings from my younger years.

We live, we love, we grow, and time moves forward.  I appreciate how music can keep us tied to cherished images, cherished incidents, and to cherished friends.

Still, today, when I hear the opening drums, and the initial guitar licks of “Endless Summer Nights”, I am suddenly young again, tan in my tank top and long color-splashed swimsuit shorts, looking out over the city, past Albuquerque, to the west, seeing rain clouds forming as I stand in a cool breeze. I set the mower choke to the on positions, give the chord a few good pulls until the mower engine is humming loudly, and I turn up the Walkman.  And mow.

I love those songs.

Link: Angelia
Link: Endless Summer Nights