MJ’s death made me think about my childhood and how music played a big part in it. and the reason? the walkman and MTV. and i’d like to thank my parents for getting me my very first walkman.

my dad and mom got me a walkman during their visit to japan in the early 80s. i believe i was 6, i never really asked for one but my brother did. so my folks thought they had to get me one as well so that i won’t get jealous. a common philosophy shared by a lot of parents, i think. i got a lot of stuff that i thought i didn’t want through that kind of thinking – my first tv in my room, my first expensive watch, my first bass weejuns. i’m not complaining.

ANYWAY, i loved that walkman. i bought tape cassettes like crazy. i would even record songs that i liked from the radio since a lot of stuff weren’t available so easily in manila stores back then. unlike today where you can just download from the itunes store or limewire, we had to wait for songs to be played on the radio. wow, huh?

i listened to my walkman everywhere and all the time. madonna, cyndi lauper, michael jackson, wham!, the bangles, the go-gos, whitney houston, bananarama, duran duran, menudo – oh my. that was the soundtrack of my life. my mom actually made me take voice lessons because she heard me sing “like a virgin” one time with my walkman on. and not only did she think the song was outrageous, she also thought i had an awful voice. hehehe.

which leads me to another childhood favorite, prince. as obscure and weird as prince can get, i loved him. i loved raspberry beret. i never really thought much about the lyrics, who did at 7 or 8? i only found out a couple of years ago that it was about sex. amazing that my favorite songs as a child – like a virgin and raspberry beret were all about somebody’s first sexual experience. wow.

anyway, my favorite thing about rasberry beret was the video.

and i still know those dance steps. hahahaha!