I Wanna Go Back
I’m deleting tracks from the iTunes library on my PowerBook.
You see I’ve got the last Titanium, and it’s not worth upgrading to a new machine, because really it’s only a road and bedroom computer, I don’t use it that much. It’s got a 1 GHz G4 processor and a gig of RAM, but it’s only got a 60 gig hard drive, the largest available at the time. And I need space to install Leopard. They just announced the first update/bug fix on Thursday, I always wait for the .1 version to upgrade, why be a guinea pig, so now I’m ready to take the plunge.
You need 9 gigs. And I’m gonna do an archive and install. To render any bugs in the last system superfluous. So I need room.
And going through the tracks, I’m wondering why I need music on my PowerBook anyway. I never travel without my iPod. And I can just log on to LimeWire and take what I need on the road anyway. I’ve done this. Been in T.O. and wanted a JT track I own in multiple formats but didn’t have on my laptop.
So, I started at the A’s. And I’m singing the songs in my head as I decide to delete. Actually, if I can’t sing it, I delete it. And then I come to Billy Satellite’s "Satisfy Me".
Billy Satellite was the beneficiary of a minor push back in ’84. I bought the album, but it never caught fire. It disappeared. It never came out on CD.
And when Napster launched, I downloaded the radio track, the one some people had familiarity with, "Satisfy Me", but I could never find "I Wanna Go Back".
Eventually Eddie Money did a cover. But his version had too much bluster. His rendition was easily findable, but not the original.
I searched for years. Then I gave up. It was futile.
But coming across the band’s name in my iTunes library today I got inspired. Did they have a MySpace page?? Every band’s got a MySpace page!!
Billy Satellite still doesn’t have its own site, not one that comes up instantly in Google. But when I added "MySpace" to the search window, a page came up instantly.
My heart started to beat a bit faster. I clicked through. There it was!
It comes back. I was aware of Billy Satellite because they were on Capitol. And this was when I had regular contact with the employees, when I ran the U.S. office of Sanctuary Music.
I listening to the radio
Heard a song reminded me of long ago
By this time, the radio had been stolen from my 2002 five times. I didn’t bother to replace it. I went to ABC Premiums and bought a $20 battery-operated portable, which I left in the passenger seat, and tuned into the stations with my right hand.
Eventually, the antenna broke. Then I clipped on a wire.
Of course I put the radio under the seat when I parked. But, it rendered the tunes for almost a year, until my beloved automobile was totaled by a drunk driver on St. Patrick’s Day.
But there was this one weekend, when we went skiing, when we borrowed the boom box from work, so we could listen to cassettes on the trip. And on one of those cassettes was "I Wanna Go Back". I used it as a temp track in the movie I was doing music supervision for. It didn’t make the final cut, the producers didn’t want to pay ten grand for something that had never broken through.
The woman who ran shotgun in that car with me… I eventually married her, at her request. Then she left. Fucked me up royally.
For so long I wanted to go back. No longer.
It’s a different century. The memories have faded. But they’ve never gone away. They never go away.
I listened to Eddie Money’s EP with "Trinidad" and "Give Me Some Water" on a trip to Mt. Waterman the day before my birthday, not quite a month after my father died. It was a different car, with a fully-installed stereo system. And later that evening I drove to the Variety Arts Center to see Phish for the very first time. My ex was long gone. But it all comes back, listening to "I Wanna Go Back".
In the eighties you had to go to the movies to communicate with your youthful brethren. There was no MySpace, we had "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" and "Valley Girl". Songs like "I Wanna Go Back" played as our heroes drove, as they left their girlfriend’s house.
That’s what "I Wanna Go Back" is. A soundtrack to life.
I’ve never forgotten "I Wanna Go Back". But I haven’t played the vinyl version in eons. To hear it right now is bittersweet. I’m so much older now, I was younger than this then.
Don’t think this was a wimpy band. Play "Satisfy Me" for the other end of the spectrum.
Still, "I Wanna Go Back" is the song that remains. A great record is never forgotten. Like our histories. We can bury them, we can try to ignore them, but then we hear a record and they come flooding back. What are we supposed to do with all these thoughts? These people we no longer have contact with? Some living, some dead. That’s why chances are taken by the young, they’re not burdened by loss, they don’t have more questions than answers, they haven’t been crippled, their memories are far from full.
I wanna go back
And do it all over
Can’t go back I know
I wanna go back
‘Cause I’m feeling so much older
But I can’t go back I know
Actually, you can go back. Not by going to your old haunts, not by ringing up old buddies, not by going to see your old heroes play live. But by spinning the records. They never change. They remind us of who we once were.
