The story behind my favorite song (8/19/06)

First things first. Why is it that every time I go to brush my teeth before I go to bed, I have to pee. And because I brush vigorously, if I attempt to urinate AND brush my teeth at the same time, which SOUNDS do-able, I then water just north, south, east and west of the huge gaping porcelain mouth directly in front of me.
Then I thought to myself, "what if I SIT DOWN to pee, ONLY when I'm brushing my teeth? I surely wouldn't miss THEN."
Nah, I won't trade in my virility for the satisfaction of being efficient in the bathroom. It's just not worth it.

On to my story.
I'll confess something very big to everyone. I want more than anything to be a jazz pianist. I want it more than being an actor matter of fact. I want it more than owning an ice cream parlor. I want it more than sex. All that I just said is true. And I've divulged this deep secret to give you a sense of what meaning music has to me. It's paramount.
I get no greater satisfaction than playing music collectively with other musicians. Music is inside me, it's in my veins, it bounces around incessantly in my head, it's in my feet, my hands, my mouth and my eyes and I don't think it will every leave me. That said, I never fully realized the severity of my condition until after I graduated college. Had I known this from early childhood I would have started my musical studies earlier, forced myself to practice more and not have quit music when I graduated high school.
I quit because I was burnt out and had known only music for the previous 8 years. I decided to set music free in order to see if I would come back to it, if it was REALLY a part of me. And funny enough, of all places, I begin to play DRUMS (of all things) when I move to LA to be an ACTOR at the RESTAURANT that I work at. Life is strange but God is good.
So I plan on and have made small steps to make up for lost time by wood-shedding on my two lost instruments while having fun with drums and focusing like a laser on my acting. Can I make progress on four crafts? I really don't know. But I'd better try while I don't have a girlfriend or a wife or kids or a successful career.

That was therapeutic. Thank you for indulging me.

So NOW, when I say that I have ONE favourite song, it means a lot to me. And thankfully, I feel it has a great story.
When I was seven years old I bought an 8-track because I discovered that our 1977 golden colour Cadillac had an 8-track player SECRETLY hidden in the face of the radio dial. It was an unbelievable find and those of you who know the secret compartment I speak of can understand how truly neat it is. The 8-track I bought was a cream colour. I got it at the Salvation Army or some second hand store. And among the titles I believe the only bands I had heard of were Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Wonder and I remember thinking that Fleetwood Mac was sissy music(such piercing insight at the tender age of seven.) So I bought the Stevie and promptly shoved it into the face of the stereo in our Caddy. A track came on and I liked it a bit but not too much, Then another and another, finally I came to track 7 and I'd found a kindred soul.
It's pivotal to know that I grew up solely on; jazz, classical, oldies and Latin jazz. And I'm sure those Latin rhythms are responsible for my never-ceasing toe-tapping. So when I heard this Latin piece with it's spoken word/Spanish/gibberish intro, hooky chorus and classic repetitive Latin piano chords daring me NOT to dance, to wiggle, to MOVE, it just grabbed me and got inside of that seven year old me.
I took that tape with me in the car everywhere we went and I played track 7 over and over and over until I broke the deck in the car. Luckily we had a turn table in the house that had a deck built in so I played it there as well; over and over and over again. Until I broke the tape. And that, my friends, was the end of that. My mom threw out the tape and the song faded in my mind for years until all I could remember was that when I was a kid my first album was a Stevie Wonder album and my favourite song had a Latin beat.

Until...

One day, I'm at USC. I'm a freshman. I'm 18, maybe 19 and I'm working as a campus taxi driver. I'm telling the aforementioned story and I mention that I've always wanted to find that song again and rediscover a lost piece of my childhood. Well my friend Marko suggests that I ask Toussaint, another one of the "Campus Cruisers" because Toussaint is crazy about Stevie.
Toussaint is a big dude. He's big, he's Black and he is all about music. He grew up in a very musically nurturing family and his upbringing was Stevie centric as you can imagine it would be being raised Black in the early 80's. Toussaint is KNOWLEDGEABLE._I meet Toussaint and all I mention to him is that I've been looking for a Latin Stevie Wonder song and before I can begin my tale of 8-tracks and caddies, he says to me, "well, it MUST be "Don't you worry 'bout a thing" off of "Innervisions."
Just like that my life was changed. I wrote it down and could not wait to get home to look it up. And let me tell you what looking up music meant in 1999. My freshman year in college, Napster HAD to be to music what the Gutenberg press was to books, the Ford assembly line was to automobiles and the UNITED STATES was to freedom. It was FREE, FREE, FREE for everyone and NO ONE was getting caught, there was NO fear of the FBI getting you, it was like the Summer of Love and everybody was gettin some. It was spread alllll around. I spent more hours freshman year downloading music than sleeping or eating, EASY(and I gained fucking 30 lbs, so, you know, that's some major time invested with a spoon and some Hågen Das.)
I firmly believe that a major high point in my education was my exposure to nearly unlimited amounts of musicians, genres, albums, covers and artists entire oeuvres. I fell in love with Zeppelin, Stevie, Prince, Queen and barbershop to name a few. I had thousands of songs and to prove another point, I've been buying much more music ever since. My album consumption has at least quadrupled since pre Napster. So the record labels are wrong.
So, after learning of the name of song and album, I raced home, downloaded "Don't you worry 'bout a thing" and played it. At first I wasn't sure, could THIS be it. I had kinda built it up all these years to be like seeing the face of God. Like nothing could ever meet my glorified nostalgia. But soon I began to really hear it and old memories came flooding back. They came back to me like the first time since babyhood I caught a whiff of Phisoderm face wash, the gentle "soap" my mom would bathe me in when I was an infant. I almost began to cry. It still does it to me.
So if your olfactory senses are most strongly tied to memory, your aural senses must come a close second because I was right back in that Caddy feeling very funky and very satisfied. _I've loved that song ever since and it has been close to me again for nearly seven years. Every time I hear it's like an old friend. I deliberately don't listen to it too often because it would break my heart if I ever overexposed myself to it and grew tired. That's would be a travesty.
And you know what's weird, I've nearly NEVER heard anyone else mention it. They never bring it up when speaking of his greatest hits or important pieces etc. So when I hear it not from my own iPod or cd, like on the radio (rarity of rarities) or ANYWHERE else(I can't even recall such an instance) I flip out and have to tell my story. And perhaps the reason I'm compelled to write this is because my dear friend Jessica and I were grabbing some of my favourite ice cream (Mashti's) on Wed and "Don't you worry..." came on randomly on her iPod. You can imagine my surprise and delight. I went bananas. I knew there was a reason I loved that girl. She thinks enough of that song to a) download it and b) upload it on to her iPod. It went great with the ice cream and company.
So that's my story behind my favourite song. And that you now know this, well, that's very special to me. Next time you see me, let me know you now know this and we will be that much closer