No. 245 – I Just Want to Celebrate

Performer: Rare Earth

Songwriters: Dino Fekaris, Nick Zesses

Original Release: One World

Year: 1971

Definitive Version: None.

When Laurie and I went back to Laurie’s home of Kansas City for the first time in 2006, we came back on New Year’s Eve. For that reason, we decided rather than going out as we had the previous two New Year’s Eves that we’d just spend the evening at home with a nice dinner and then watch the ball drop in New York on TV.

Our plane landed at Midway without incident (always worth noting), and by the time we got home on the L, it was about 8. Although we weren’t going out, we still decided to celebrate the holiday as though we were. We showered and got dressed up—me in my suit and Laurie in a dress.

I grilled steaks outside, and my memory is that Laurie boiled a couple of lobster tails for a surf-and-turf combo, but Laurie remembers it differently—that we had shrimp as an appetizer beforehand. Either way, it was a high-lined dinner.

As is usual when I grill steaks, I saute mushrooms with some garlic in butter. As has been usual since 2003, the grill was several flights of stairs down from my apartment kitchen. This requires precise timing and running up and down the stairs to tend to the mushrooms and the steaks.

Laurie’s apartment building had a back staircase that was covered, which was nice, and a door that led into the small courtyard where we kept the grill that locked. At one point on New Year’s Eve, I ran downstairs to flip the steaks, and I almost instinctively pulled shut the door to Laurie’s back staircase … and promptly locked myself out of the building.

I tried calling up to Laurie, but the windows, of course, were shut. Laurie had made me a key to her apartment, but, of course, I wasn’t expecting to use it, so I didn’t have it on me. Fortunately, I had my cellphone with me to keep track of the time. I called Laurie’s landline, but Laurie—in the midst of a hot date—wasn’t accepting calls. I left a message saying I was locked out, but she wasn’t in the living room and didn’t hear it.

So I had only one option. I had to walk around to the front—in my shirt, tie and suitpants but wearing a smock to protect my fancy duds and a grill mitt while holding the tongs to punch the button outside the front door. Noticing that I had been gone an inordinately long time, Laurie answered the buzzer, thank goodness, and let me in before I died of frostbite … and humiliation.

Dinner went off without further incident, and at midnight, we were in Laurie’s living room, ushering in 2007 in front of her small screen. I don’t mind watching the ball drop in Times Square, but I’m no fan of the big-event TV shows that each network puts on. The music is generally not my bag, baby. The lone exception was Nirvana on MTV Live and Loud in 1993, as noted awhile back.

So Laurie’s flipped through the channels, and we were barraged by one interchangeably lame pop act after another. Finally, I announced, “Enough of this.” I took the clicker and shut off the TV. She looked at me a bit puzzled, but I went and got my computer and plugged it into her stereo. “If we’re going to listen to music, let’s make it GOOD music.”

I whipped together a short playlist of what I thought were acceptable dance tunes and pressed play. The first song was this one, which I discovered through the movie Three Kings, and in an instant, we began Laurie and Will’s New Year’s dance party. We danced intensely and merrily in the living room while some very Rare Earth serenaded us.

I can’t remember all of the six songs that followed, but we joyfully danced through the whole playlist. Laurie loved it. “This was a perfect idea,” she said about my decision to take control of the music and my song selection.

It might have been a low-key New Year’s Eve celebration, but the spontaneousness of how we celebrated the arrival of 2007 made it perhaps our favorite … behind only the first one, of course. But that’s a story for another time.