Soak Up The Sun by Sheryl Crow

“Soak Up The Sun” music video
“Soak Up The Sun” live performance

Some songs just don’t work when they are arranged for marching band. There is a tradition in marching bands to play arrangements of pop songs in the stands and sometimes during halftime shows. Some songs like “Gimmie Some Lovin’” and “Hey Baby” are fantastic and some like “Who Let the Dogs Out" are simply painful.

One year when I was in the Northwestern Marching band, our director handed this arrangement of “Soak Up The Sun.” My instrument section really enjoyed playing the song because we had the melody the entire time but musically that was a horrible thing as my section was the alto saxophones. The purpose of alto saxophones in a marching band is to fill in harmony under the melody and provide counter-melodies, not the melody.

Now the alto section wasn’t exactly the most “mature” group so when we realized we had the melody we played it as loud as possible. So as we played the song, our director gave my section “the hand” (a gesture meant to tell us to play softer) throughout the entire song. After the song was done our director gave us a stern look and verbally reprimanded us for our unmusical playing and all I could think was “lighten up.”

After playing the song once we never played it ever again. Maybe it was because of the mediocrity of the arrangement or maybe it was because our director realized what a bad idea it was to give the alto saxophones the melody.

Sheryl Crow released "Soak Up The Sun" as the first single from her fourth studio album C'mon C'mon. Released in April 2002 "Soak Up The Sun" became one of the biggest hits of the summer becoming Crow's best-selling single since her 1993 breakout hit "All I Wanna Do."

"Soak Up The Sun" feels like everything that is great about summer. Musically Crow captures the feeling of sunshine using energetic synthesized sounds and relaxed guitar licks. The groove is punctuated by popping sounds that drive the songs while the main guitar line is laid back. The tension between these two parts creates a groove that makes the song rock.

Sheryl Crow's sings with a sense of ease and relaxation. She glides through the lyrics so smoothly that some of the stranger lyrics like "my friend the communist holds meetings in his RV" come off as matter of the fact observations. The attitude in her voice matches the lyrics of the song which are basically telling us to chill out.

As a lyricist Crow plays with figurative language while making interesting observations. In the first verse she talks about not having enough gas to go to a communist party. She doesn't have a television but she is ok with this as she concludes "it's not having what you want, it's having wanting what you got."

In the second verse, Crow reveals that she doesn't get paid enough to "win me some of your love." She describes that she it at odds with her love as she is looking up and he is looking down but she is not mad. When she wonders if something is wrong with him, she concludes that maybe she is crazy too.

The chorus is a declaration of optimism, a statement that she is going to enjoy life. She is going to relax and soak up the sun and tell everyone else to lighten up. The verse describes a life that isn't perfect and a relationship that is flawed but she is resolved to enjoy life and relax.

What Crow is telling us is that enjoying life really is more about attitude than the actual situation. There are points in life when even a positive attitude can’t make a difference but more often than not it can.

When we played “Soak Up The Sun,” my section and I could have decided to just be annoyed that we were playing a mediocre arrangement of a song that has no business being arranged for marching band. Instead, we decided to have a little fun with it. Was it helpful to the rest of the band? No, was it a little annoying to our director and everyone else in the band? Oh yeah, but did we have a fantastic time doing it. Yes.

After giving us “the hand,” and giving us “the look,” our director did chuckle to himself a little. I think he understood that sometimes it’s just not worth getting that mad. I got to admit that over the four years I had him as a director he did in fact “lighten up.” Kind of . . .

You Are My Sunshine by Jimmie Davis

“You Are My Sunshine” by Jimmie Davis
“You Are My Sunshine” by Norman Blake
“You Are My Sunshine” by Ray Charles

I have a way of ruining songs for my wife Diana.

I don’t mean to but sometimes it just happens.

I love researching songs finding out the stories “behind the music.” Most of the time adds to my appreciation and understanding of the song. However, every so often I find out something about a song that changes my understanding of the song. Sometimes this adds a whole new perspective to the song and other times, it just kind of ruins in.

When most of us think of “You Are My Sunshine” we imagine little kids singing this song like in this clip from The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. Except for the James Brown inspired rap break down in the end of the song, this is pretty much most of our experience with this song.

“You Are My Sunshine” is a song that mothers sing to children. Children sing this song in elementary school. There probably isn’t a adult in America who can’t sing this song or at least hum the melody. This songs is important to our culture that it is used to teach borg woman about humanity.

So when Diana and heard Johnny Cash singing “You Are My Sunshine” and we both realized how depressing the song actually was, it was kind of bummer. Granted, Johnny Cash could make any song sound depressing, but it wasn't just his voice that made this song so sad.

Jimmie Davis’ recording “You Are My Sunshine” popularized the song in 1940. Davis bought the rights to the song and took credit as the composer, which was common at the times. He later became the governor of Louisiana and through this association, “You Are My Sunshine” became one of the state songs. Since Davis recorded it, numerous artists recorded it including Bing Crosby, Gene Autry and Ray Charles.

The four verses of “You Are My Sunshine” are spoken from the perspective of a man who is dealing with the fact that his love has left him. The first verse is an expression of sorrow and sadness as he wakes up to find that he is alone after dreaming of his love. He is so depressed by this fact that he cries.

In the second verse, he pledges his love but states that if she leaves him she’ll regret it. There is a little bit of anger in these words that builds into the third verse as he deals with her leaving. He describes her actions as “shattering” his dreams focusing on the pain that she has caused him. He calms down in the last verse after he realizes that she might actually leave him permanently and promises that he will forgiver her and take all the blame for the situation.

It is extraordinary how clearly this song works through different emotions starting with sadness, moving through bitterness, anger and finally regret. All of this is framed by the chorus which when broken down reflects his state of mind.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

There is a sweet sentiment when he describes her as his sunshine. When he adds that she is his only sunshine he is stating how he hasn’t cheated on her. "She makes him happy when the skies are gray" is another heartwarming line followed by “you’ll never know dear, how much I love you.” Is this something you say to someone love? I guess on one hand if I said that to my wife it could mean that I love her so much that I can’t describe it to her. On the other hand it sounds a little bitter. I can imagine someone saying that in response to being dumped as they walk away in anger.

Who is he talking to in the last line of the chorus “please don’t take my sunshine away”? If the metaphor carries through the stanza than the sunshine is his love and someone else is trying to take his love away. Is it God or another man? He isn’t asking her to directly to stay but rather a third party. In some ways this is truly the saddest part of the song as he begs life not to take his only happiness away. This isn’t an affirmation of love. This is a man begging for the one thing that makes him happy.

“You Are My Sunshine” sounds really happy. There is a great tradition in country music in setting depressing lyrics being to happy music. It makes the subjects more palatable and easier to deal with. Often as in “You Are My Sunshine” it adds a level of subtext to the song making it even sadder because the depressed voice is trying to put on a happy face.

Whenever Diana hears this song now, she comments on how sad it is and how she used to get a warm-fuzzy feeling from this song. I guess in changing her understanding of the song I didn't ruin it but the song no longer has that sparkle of childhood delight surrounding it.

My bad.

So there it is. “You Are My Sunshine” is a depressing break-up song. Santa Claus isn’t real and his common image was created by the Coca Cola company. Pop singers often lip sing when they perform on television and just because your mom tells you that you are good looking doesn’t necessarily mean its true.

Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles

“Here Comes The Sun” studio recoding

“Here Come The Sun” 1972 live performance

I have lived in the Chicagoland area for the past nine years and I am proud to call it my home.

There is so much to love about Chicago: the art, the food, the history, the neighborhoods and the people. However there are some things, I dislike, no HATE about Chicago: the traffic, the construction, the political corruption, the ridiculous sales tax (11.5% highest in America) and the winter weather.

I enjoy the first snow, the crispness of a winter morning and the magic of an evening snowstorm. That’s all good, but when it snows in April, when the sun never seems to rise and when we have multiple days when its colder in Chicago than in the North Pole, Moscow and Juneau it’s hard to love living in the Chicagoland area.

Yes, I complain a lot about the weather in Chicago. I dislike the drawn-out portions of winter so much I start complaining about it during the summer (I’m not joking, ask my wife). This winter has been especially rough. Multiple heavy snows and extended periods of time when the temperature was below 10 degrees Fahrenheit have a way of physically draining the body and dampening the spirit. So when the groundhog saw it’s shadow and decided we’d have a couple more weeks of winter I was ready to chase down the sucker and well go "Caddyshack" all over his furry keister!

[exhale]

Spring is here, the blanket of snow is gone, the sun is shining and the smiles are returning to the faces. Let’s celebrate how good it feels with The Beatles tribute to the coming of spring, “Here Come The Sun.”

George Harrison composed “Here Come The Sun” after reflecting on a brutal winter in England and his own personal struggles. Harrison in 1969 had his tonsils removed, was arrested for marijuana possession and was beginning to feel bogged down by the business of running Apple records (the Beatles' record label that they had founded in 1968). To escape all of this, Harrison visited his friend Eric Clapton and while walking through Eric’s gardens, composed “Here Comes the Sun.”

Harrison the youngest of the four Beatles (he joined when he was 16 years old) played lead guitar in the quartet. John Lennon and Paul McCartney composed the majority of the songs the Beatles recorded while each Beatles albums featured one or two songs by George Harrison.

In the early Beatles’ albums, Harrison’s songs were solid but not as polished as the other songs. As Harrison grew as an artist his songs came to the forefront. Some of his compositions including “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” became some of the Beatles biggest hits. In the Beatles’ last album Abbey Road it was Harrison’s songs “Something” (the second most covered Beatles song after “Yesterday”) and “Here Comes The Sun” which were that albums biggest hits as singles.

“Here Comes The Sun” feels like a spring morning with the sun gently warming the body as a soft refreshing breeze rejuvenates the spirit. Much of this feeling comes from Harrison’s gentle tenor voice. He voice has a caring quality like a mother softly saying, “I love you.” Behind his words, you can hear a peaceful smile. Harrison’s voice is a calming voice in a crisis, the rainbow after the storm and the sunlight after the darkness.

Sometimes winter seems to last forever and when Harrison describes the cold winter that has felt like years we all know how he feels but Harrison’s optimism and joy at the coming of the sun is something we sometimes forget. The lyrics are simple and direct speaking to our shared feeling of despair reminding us of not only the great feelings that are to come but the beauty of the past.

“Here Comes The Sun” features the guitar, bass guitar, drums, a Moog synthesizer, violas, cellos, double basses, piccolos, flutes and alto flutes. Like other songs the Beatles recorded, “Here Comes The Sun” expands the musical possibilities of popular music utilizing instruments that are normally used to create a unique and refreshing musical landscape. Harrison utilizes the different colors of the string and wind instruments to illustrate the feeling of seeing the sun coming up over the horizon. They play a background role supporting the meaning of the song and don’t bring attention to themselves. This focus on the meaning of the music ties these different sounds in a powerful singular voice.

Harrison utilizes a hemiola pattern switching the songs from a duple feeling like in the verses to a triplet feel “sun, sun, sun here it comes." This change doesn't happen in the way the beats are divided by rather by shifting the accent on the small beats. These triplet sections feel like being lost the sparkle of the sun, a feeling a freedom as the music seems to break away from the beat.

Spring is good times, everything will be all right. Listening to this song and reflecting on the months of ahead, winter does not seem so bad. All the great stuff to look forward to in the coming months outshines the darkness of winter and almost makes me forget how painful the winter was . . . almost.

“sun, sun, sun here it comes”
Glory, Hallelujah

Beau by Jimmy Stewart (poem)

"Beau" live reading from The Tonight Show

"Beau" text

WARNING: If you like animals, have a dog, or have had one in the past this "Beau" will make you cry and even you don’t like animals all that much, be careful because this poem will likely make you tear up.

My wife and I have decided to get a dog. She grew up with Abby, a Shetland sheepdog and one of the things she always wanted to as an adult was get a puppy of her own. This is something I never considered before meeting my wife.

I remember bugging my parents about getting a dog but not really making too much of an issue out of it. I wanted a dog to fit in with my friends who had dogs, not because I actually liked animals. My parents weren’t really into pets and it wasn’t something they wanted as part of their lifestyle. They grew up with dogs in Taiwan but they were more animals than pets. So beyond the fish that inhabited our house every so often, pets weren’t part of my life growing up.

I’m not comfortable around dogs. So when Diana, my wife suggested that we babysit a dog named Wrigley for a week and a half, I was a little apprehensive. It’s not like I don't inherent dislike dogs, I just don’t know what to do with them. The first afternoon I spent with the dog was a little awkward and uncomfortable but after a week and a half, I found myself fighting back tears not wanting to let go of Wrigley.

The first time I saw Jimmy Stewart read his poem, “Beau” was as part of a boxed videocassette tape collection of clips from The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. My parents bought this collecting having many found memories of this show which defined which featured some of the most important cultural figures in popular culture.

Whenever we would watch Jimmy Stewart speak about his Beau, I would get sad, more because Jimmy Stewart himself was becoming choked up, but now when I watch this clip, I’m tearing up for a different reason. I understand why Stewart is so sad.

When I got back from work on Monday, the day after I gave the Wrigley back, I walked in the front door and to my dismay there was no dog sitting attentively waiting to greet me. I had to catch myself before I called for Wrigley. I felt silly that I had forgotten that the dog was no longer staying with us. I miss our house guest and that was only after a week and a half, I can’t imagine what kind of wreak I’d be after losing a dog like Stewart lost Beau.

Jimmy Stewart’s poem, “Beau” starts out describing his dog as flawed. Not a well-trained dog, Beau would not sit or stay and seemed to do things out of spite. Beau lit the house on fire but Stewart brushes this off as not being all that important. The loss of material things always seems less significant in retrospect.

I got to say Wrigley was similar. He would come when I called only if there wasn't something more interesting around. If I called him when he was taking a nap he would open up one eye to check on me, realize that I didn't have anything and then stretch out even more in an attempt to take up as much floor space as possible.

As crazy as Beau’s evening walks were, Stewart describes how Beau would stop every so often to make sure that Stewart and his wife were there. Every time my wife would leave the condo Wrigley would start whining, I would call him over to let him know that I was there and he would curl up around my desk chair as I sat. Then he would start licking the legs of my chair, which was just a little weird but anyways he just wanted to know that he wasn’t alone.

At night Beau sometimes lied in bed with Stewart and other times he would just sit there and watch his owners and softly sigh and Stewart feels that knows why.

He would wake up at night
And he would have this fear
Of the dark, of life, of lots of things,
And he’d be glad to have me near.

Sometimes, Wrigley would wake up from a nap find me in another room, and settle down to take a nap near me. On some level like Beau, he just felt better knowing I was near. In describing what Beau’s fears, Stewart is describing his own fears, telling us how Beau comforted him in the same way that Wrigley comforted me.

I asked my mom what she thought about me and Diana getting a dog. To my surprise, she immediately said it was a great idea. My mom believe all people benefit from having a dog in their life if they accept the responsibility of having a pet and view the dog as a part of the family. My wife and I are a family. We may be a small family and on the short side but we are a family. Getting a dog means that our family is getting a little bigger and that's exciting.

I know that there will be some times that our dog will be a pain. I’m sure she will have accidents, get sick and need to be walked when I just don’t feel like it. There will come a time when our dog will have to leave us, like Beau left Stewart and I know that is going to be hard. However, I have no doubt that it will all be worth it.

To our puppy: I can't promise that we'll do everything right in raising you but I can promise that Diana and I will do the best we can to care for you and that we will always love you. You are in our dreams right now as we look forward to meeting you. You will be in our thoughts as we share our lives together and you will be in our heart long after you leave us.

We can't wait to welcome you into our family.

Love Story by Taylor Swift

"Love Story” music video
“Love Story” live performance
“Love Story” live performance with Def Leppard (AWESOME!!)

Taylor Swift is one of most significant artists in popular music.

She is not a Disney artists like Miley Cyrus. She is not an American Ideal like Kelly Clarkson. She is not a pop queen like Britney Spears. Taylor Swift is something completely different.

What is unique about Taylor Swift is not so much the fact that she writes her own songs (which is an accomplishment) but that she sings more genuinely about teenage experiences than any modern artists. Like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Swift has captured the complexity, pain and optimism of what it means to be a young adult. She is singing on a level deeper than Cyrus, is far more reflective than the Clarkson and lacks the over-sexualization of teenage lust that Britney Spears displayed when she was Swift’s age

Taylor Swift’s second album Fearless that debuted at the top the Billboard album charts. This great album that features songs straight from the teenager heart talking about first day of high school in “Fifteen” to how much Swift loves her mom with “The Best Day.” Her first single from this album is Swift at her best telling a “Love Story.”

In “Love Story,” Swift spins a tale of teenage romance based on Romeo & Juliet. The allusion to the Shakespeare tragedy is fitting as most high school students read Romeo & Juliet their freshmen year. This song follows the story of the play but instead of the tragic ending there is a happy conclusion.

Swift’s creativity as a writer shines through in her use of form. She uses the standard sections of the verse: “we were both young when I first saw you,” pre-chorus: “that you were Romeo, you were throwing pebble,” chorus: “Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone,” and bridge: “I got tired of waiting.” Swift interestingly uses of the sections have an narrative as well as a musical purpose.

The verses of the song are the story-telling potions of the song sung in the past tense. The pre-chorus sections describe the tension between the dad and Romeo. The choruses are sung in the present tense where Swift asks Romeo to take her away and save her, while the bridge extends the feeling from the pre-chorus, as Swift describes her pain.

In the bridge, Swift describes how she got tired of waiting and how her hope was fading. She asks her Romeo as the chorus softly builds to save her and if their love is real. There is an inkling of a happy conclusion as Swift previously uses the chorus to affirm their love. Right after the line “pulled out a ring and said,” the song modulates (changes key) up a whole step taking the song into a whole new level as we hear from Romeo's words for the first time.

Every other verse ends with “It’s a love story, baby just say yes,” asking Romeo to embrace the fact their love but when Swift replies yes to the question of marriage, there is a slight hesitation as relishes being asked before she accepts the proposal.

Within "Love Story," Swift describes profound feelings of being misunderstood, lonely and wanting to be taken away. These feelings aren't limited to teenagers and it is in these emotions that we find ourselves.

“Love Story” revels in the magic of falling in love, expresses the pain of doubt and the celebrates the promise of true love. Listening to Taylor Swift is like reading the diary of a teenager like many I have met who are honest, thoughtful and hopeful.

I look forward to following Taylor Swift’s career. Her music is beautiful and like this love story, it’s real.

Only In America by Brooks & Dunn

Only In America by Brooks & Dunn

I love being a teacher. Every day I work with students through their struggles and sometimes get to witness their triumphs. Contrary to their belief, I’m trying to make their lives better and more fulfilling in the long run by teaching them not only academic skills but life lessons. It’s a lot to do in the seven and a half hours the students are with us but we do the best we can.

Even though I love my job, I don’t love everything about my job. Often 7:15am is a little bit too early to start work, recess duty isn’t exactly a thrill and as entertaining as the students are, and sometimes the logic of a elementary students can simply be baffling.

example:
Me: Why do you take the crust off of you peanut-butter and jelly sandwich?
5th grader: because it taste like poo.
Me: Well, how you do you know what---
5th grader: [interrupting] and I would know because I’ve tasted poo.
Me: wait, what?!?
5th grader: don’t worry, it was my brother’s poo [reassuringly]

The kid was totally serious. SIGH

These things can be annoying but what really gets to me on an emotional level is when kids through not fault of their own are put difficult situations that me as a teacher can do nothing about. It can be something as small parent promising a student that he will come to a school play and not show up all the way the unthinkable tragedy of child abuse.

Last week, I got a dump truck full of this stuff and while it was all small things and all my kids are ok, it all added up. Last Thursday, my day started hearing about one student’s problems and as I went to gym with the kids I was not in a great mood. I felt I was already emotionally drained by P.E. and it was only 9:30 in the morning.

Thursday was the first day of the dance unit. I watched as the kids learned some basic line dances and worked on them during the period. I sat their unengaged and not really all that into what the students were doing.

As the day went on, things kept piling on, it was just one thing after another and by the time I hit my lunch break at noon, I felt like I didn’t have much left for the rest of the day. During my lunch period, I often visit the fourth grade class I worked with in the beginning of the year (I have since moved to a mixed grade level class). I decided to go say hi to them during my break and I found them at P.E. learning line dances.

I don’t know if it was the students, or the enthusiastic P.E. teachers but I decided to join in and learn to line dance.

Here’s the thing, I have an irrational dislike of line-dancing. Whenever the electric slide gets pumping I will almost always take that as a cue to get a drink of have a seat during a party. Without evidence I often make the line-dancing jokes about it being a way of dancing for people who have no hope of dancing otherwise.

So it took some doing to get out there and line dance.

Here I am, in a elementary school gym surround by fourth graders learning the “American Stomp.” Of course, I’m over-thinking the steps and how they fit within beats as opposed to just feeling it. So after I got my brain to shut up, I got in the groove of it and I became aware of the group of fourth grade girls around me earnestly trying to figure out how to do this dance.

It was possible one of the cutest things I’ve ever since seeing these girls, eyebrows furrowed, not really only on the beat but trying as hard they could. I got the girls attention and started talking about the moves “right stomp, left stomp, right stomp, left stomp, right 2-3-4, left 2-3 turn.”

As we worked through the dance, their furrowed brows relaxed and the I could see from the look on their faces that their brains were relaxing and slowly smiles developed on their faces and at least for a small part of the song we were all dancing in unison.

In four and a half minutes, I went from being disengaged, emotionally drained and feeling like a wreck to feeling energized, overjoyed and truly happy. And all it took was a little line dancing.

The song that we danced to was Brooks & Dunn’s “Only In America.” The song was released in 2004 and speaks about all the great possibilities of America. There are lines about “dreaming in red, white and blue” which really don’t make a whole lot of sense but nonetheless captures a sense of patriotism.

The song itself seems to be designed for line dancing, the accent of the beats are clear and phrase lengths consistently match 16-beat dance pattern. Without dancing to this song I would have thought this song predictable and not very creative but that would be missing the essential connection between the song and the dance.

Dancing brings us closer to music and line dancing does it in a way that makes the experiences a shared one. On a dance floor when everyone is doing something different there isn’t a sense of unity and togetherness. However in line-dancing there is feeling of community sharing the moment with a room full or in my case a gym full of people.

I don’t know how many people can say that they spent part of their day at work line-dancing but I think we’d all be a lot happier if we did.

If you have line-danced you probably know the great feeling line dancing can bring and if you haven’t line-danced before, try it. Let yourself go, even if it seems a little dorky. You’ll be surprised how a sharing a simple dance and a great song can turn your day around.

It's a beautiful feeling.

Power of Love by Huey Lewis & The News

“Power of Love” music video

After my mom told me that my uncle had died of Parkinson's disease last July, I became flooded with feelings and thoughts. It's almost debilitating and only through time and self-reflection did I reach a sense of clarity. After nine months I think about my uncle every so often but in general I feel that I have "gotten over" his death.

Before my uncle's death I knew Michael J. Fox had Parkinson's and I had seen him do interviews in support of stem-cell and Parkinson's research. Even my uncle had Parkinson's I didn't really think much of this. Recently Fox has been making the rounds around talk shows promoting his new book Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist about his life with Parkinson's disease. His words and his life now mean something very different to me now that my uncle has passed away.

At first it was my uncle losing his balance, and then it was missing easy shots on the tennis court. Though it was probably, a gradual development to my young eyes it seemed like all of the sudden he was stuck in his recliner unable to walk. His clear articulate voice became garbled and his ability to even reach out his hand became almost impossible. Maybe it was the fact I myself was getting bigger, but it seemed that my once tall and athletic uncle was shrinking.

His brain gradually lost control of functions until he needed to be fed through a feeding tube, needed help to breathe and then finally, well things just. . . stopped.

I was born in 1982. Things seemed simple during that decade. We had a grandfather-like figure as the president and images of economic success seemed to permeate our culture. For a kid growing up it truly did seem like morning in America. My uncle hosted family get-together, we would go out on his boat and well, everything just seemed right. I was too young to see the other side of the coin, the economic hardship and problems at home and abroad. America had a sheen to it that like memories of a childhood that only seems to get brighter in the distance.

For myself, one of the most endearing films stars of the 1980s is Michael J. Fox. The image of him riding his skateboard to school as Marty Mcfly in the beginning of Back To The Future with “Power Of Love” playing in the background is one of my favorite scenes in film.

Back To The Future directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg featured Fox as a teenager who unwittingly travels back in time, meets his parents as teenagers, has to fight off romantic advances from his mom (hilarious), coaches his dad onto how to get with his mom, all while trying to get back to the future. This mixture of science fiction and teenage adventure was an enormous success and spawned two successful sequels.

After the success of their third album Sports, Huey Lewis & The News composed and recorded "The Power Of Love" for Back To The Future. This song was featured in the opening skateboard ride to school and was also the songs the Marty's band auditions with to get into a battle of the bands. Even though studio execs were disappointed that this song did not have the title of the film in the lyrics, they loved the song and it became a number one hit and was nominated for an Academy Award

Huey Lewis with his 80s mullet and clean image was about as threatening as a puppy dog In the 1980s when Springsteen was dealing with social issues, Madonna was pushing sexual boundaries and Michael Jackson was extending the musical possibilities of pop music Huey Lewis & The News were simply creating fun, relatable and catchy pop music.

"Power Of Love" is a celebration of all the things that love makes us feel and do. Lewis contemplates the good that love does, making men sing, correcting mistakes and also the bad making men weep and keeping people home at night. He concludes in the chorus that love may save your live and that love makes the world go round.

When I see Michael J. Fox talk, it makes me sad at first knowing how much he has changed from that character rocking out to “Power Of Love.” I’m reminded about my uncle and how the disease slowly debilitated him and the last time I saw him before his passed away.

The last time I saw my uncle before he died, I remember feeling very awkward. I didn’t know what to say or what I should do. He could barely mumble and he was immobile. It’s a horrible feeling worrying about your own emotions in these situations but I did. I wasn’t extremely close to my uncle and it wasn’t until after he died that I understood all that he did for my family and felt a deep sense of gratitude. I wrote my aunt, his wife a letter after died telling her how much all that he did for my family meant to me, but I never told him.

For the past couple months I didn’t know what to do with this feeling and it wasn’t until a recent Michael J. Fox interview that it all kind of came together. He talked about how the Parkinson’s made him appreciate his life more and make every moment count. I may not have made every moment with my uncle count. I can’t do anything about that but what I can do is make his passing mean something in my life. In the way, that Parkinson’s made Fox relish every moment with his family, my uncle’s passing can serve as a reminder of what is truly important in my life. Also, there will always be “Power Of Love” to remind me not only how great it was to be a kid in the 80s but to have my uncle in my life.