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The Chronicles of Nani On Video

I am overcoming my inability to type with my ability to talk (and talk and talk and talk) I'll be posting a video every week on my YouTube channel. I'll be posting those videos here too along with an occasional regular blog in the mix. (As long as my hands are up to doing the extra typing.)

You'll be able to watch the videos here, but I encourage you to stop by my channel at YouTube once I'm up and running to follow me and get my numbers started!


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Contact Nani at
chroniclesofnani@gmail.com

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Weekend Playlist February 17

Happy Sunday! My weeks are so busy right now that I feel like I’m working full time again, only instead of getting a paychecks, I’m writing checks. -sigh- There are two things I miss the most. I don't get to scrapbook anywhere near as much as I'd like and I don't get to blog as much as I want to either, especially during the week.

But a scrapbook page may take to a week to do a simple one, and I may only post one or two blogs a week, but at least I do get a little bit the fun part of my life. Because of the MS and several other things that I have going on in my world , I talk to nurses and psychologists from the insurance company and a couple of other providers pretty much every week or so. One of the questions that they always ask, I think it's pretty much a boilerplate question to check for depression because it's also one of the questions that they ask at Cleveland Clinic when I go in to see my MS doctors too, is "do you find that you have little interest in the things you enjoy doing?" Last week when I spoke to my case manager from the insurance company I answered honestly, "oh it's not that I don't have interest I just don't have time for the things that I really want to do."

So as it is on Sunday, here are the last five songs from my music library on shuffle: (As usual, please don't judge!)

No Such Thing As A Broken Heart, Old Dominion
We Found Love, Rhianna
Blurred Lines, Robin Thicke
This Is Your Day, 112
Video Killed The Radio Star, The Buggles


I love irony. Video Killed The Radio Star was recorded in 1979, but is remembered eternally as the first video shown on MTV at 12:01 a.m. on August 1, 1981. Do you remember when music videos were new? Do you remember when MTV actually played music videos?

Things move, things change. The Walkman, which actually came into existence before MTV, gained popularity. Remember putting a cassette in a little contraption with earphones? You could walk around, ignoring everything around you, listening to your music getting hit by a car crossing the street because you were ignoring the don't walk sign. Then it grew into a CD player that you could carry around with you. I had one of the CD players that I hooked up to the cassette player in my car so I could listen to CDs in my car. When those first came out the biggest problem was every time I hit a bump in the car the CD skipped. Eventually they made CD players that were a little more stable but by then MP3 players were coming out and cars had CD players instead of cassette players in them anyway.

In the history of the car it didn't have a radio at all and then there were AM radios, and FM radios, and then eight track players… for there is always been something to kill the last kind of star, hasn't there?



My great-grandmother and I were always very close and from the time that I turned 16 and got my license we would get together every Tuesday for coffee and sit and just talk for a few hours. I absolutely loved those nights because we just loved sharing stories. When I was on the high school radio station in 12th grade, she was just close enough to get the station in and listened to us every morning. She was tickled when every now and then my partner would dedicate a song to “Opal, one of our favorite listeners.” I did the news and had to be very careful to make sure it was accurate because I think I was her most regular source for national and local information. There were a lot of times during the 7:30am slot, I think she may have been our only listener too.

She shared stories with a smile about how the world had changed in her lifetime. When she was born they didn't even have electricity or indoor plumbing. and now her great grand daughter can drive a car to come visit her and even bring ice cream. She was in our cable area and sometimes watched my sports programming, I think mostly the end to see my name on TV. My boss, the Executive Producer, and me, the Producer on the fist page of the credits. She was alive when women won the right to vote, the 19th Amendment ratified the year she turned 14. She was a line inspector at Ford Motor Company and boasted a photo of the truck I drove for productions work for everyone to see. She saw the first Mustang come off the assembly line and wanted one of the "Pony Cars" since you first saw them. Her last car ended up being a Mustang (a cute, four-cylinder muscle car) with my mother my grandmother telling my father and grandfather “don't you dare even think about talking her out of it. No man is selling the WRONG car this time.” One of the things she bragged about with that was in the last 70 years, at the time, the women in our family had gotten stronger because we don't give up and we don't let ourselves get old.

She always smiled and reveled in the changes in the world and how most of them made life better. She is without question how I learned to appreciate changes in the world and changes in our personal lives in general. She probably has a lot to do with my interest in domestic history over learning details about wars. And don’t get old - My great-grandmother loved the old gospel and country music she grew up with. She was also a fan of REO Speedwagon.

She is definitely the source of my eclectic musical taste and I will always love her for that. My mother’s tastes were the same kind of defying the demographic. I'm the one who introduced HER to Dmitri Shostakovich and SHE played Toad The Wet Sprocket for me. My great-great-grandmother had an Elvis scrapbook because she loved his music from the first time she heard it and the family remembered quote was “That boy is definitely going to change things!” That love of current music seemed to skip a generation with my grandmother but she learned how to use a computer in her 70s, so we'll give her a pass on the music.






As I said before I love irony and then love domestic history. Video Killed The Radio Star is an important part of our culture’s musical history. Yeah now when you think about how many videos you don't see on MTV and how we put earbuds in our phones and listen to either our personal playlist or whatever RADIO station is on our music service and that kind of makes you think maybe TECHNOLOGY killed the video star.


Now of course it's very hard to find someplace that will allow you to embed a video to share it anymore. It's a silly song and not an impressive video but it's a piece of history. So if you would like to experience a little bit of history here's a link to the video:



2 comments:

Edna B said...

I just love that photo of you and your great grandmother. My goodness, she was very young looking! You were so lucky to have her in your life.

It's not how often you blog or scrapbook that's important. The fact that you still do these things is what is important. And you do them as long as you can. You are such an inspiration, Nani girl.

It is snowing here. The weatherman keeps saying "Oh good, because we are destitute for the snow." Excuse me? I don't think we are hurting for snow. We've had quite a bit of rain these past few months and our reservoirs are full. We really don't need the snow!

He's not listening to me. What else is new? Ah well, I'm off to wash some dishes. You have a wonderful day my friend, hugs, Edna B.

Sheri said...

That song and the MTV launch are staples of pretty much any 80s trivia. And you know me and my love of the 80s. I bet it was awesome listening to stories of “history” from someone who actually lived it.