Paradise by the Dashboard Light

The album Bat Out of Hell got a lot of rotation during my childhood. Evidently one of my parents lost it in the divorce and the other one loved it so much they went out and bought another copy - they both had it and played the crap out of it even though it wasn't exactly child friendly. Look at the album cover - scary! Parents didn't worry about that stuff in the 70's and 80's and they didn't need to. My sister and I just thought it was a weird song with a couple fighting and some obscure baseball stuff thrown in.

Once we got older and figured out that this was an entire song of innuendo, we laughed pretty hard at Sally's interpretation. When Mr. Loaf said "Let me sleep on it" Sally thought the woman had his pillow and wouldn't give it back. He just wanted to sleep and she kept bothering him! Not quite...

As I mentioned earlier, this song got some serious play in our family. When asked by our grade school principal, Sr. Corinne (who was the tallest, scariest nun ever), what her favorite song was, five-year old Sally responded innocently "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." Needless to say, my Mom was mortified. I don't remember Sr. Corrinne's reaction, but she probably didn't know what it meant anyway, what with that chastity vow and all.

And now this song of my childhood is a karaoke favorite...who knew all of those other parents of the 70's and 80's were corrupting their kids too?

Blinded By The Light

So this is the first song I remember hearing and thinking "I HAVE to hear this song again and I just can't wait. I need to own it." I was no more than 5 or 6 years old.

The keyboard, powerful vocals and the crazy obscure lyrics hooked me from the start. "Go Kart Mozart was checking out the weather chart" is so hilarious and clever when you're a kindergartener. I basically loved everything about it so the first chance I got, or rather, the first chance my Mom had to take me to a record store, I bought the 45 and in true Amy fashion, played the bejeesus out of it and tried to learn all of the words, but they were so ridiculous that what I heard, was not what was being said.

Did you know that this song was written and orginally recorded by Bruce Springsteen? As of 2008, the Manfred Mann's Earth Band recording of "Blinded by the Light" is still Springsteen's only Number 1 single as a songwriter on the Billboard Hot 100. Who knew?

P.S. I'm not even touching the deuce vs. douche debate...