No. 978 – Love Alive

Performer: Heart

Songwriters: Roger Fisher, Ann Wilson, Nancy Wilson

Original Release: Little Queen

Year: 1977

Definitive Version: None

Sometimes, the setting makes all the difference for music, any kind of music. When I was at the Flint Journal, it still had a paste-up department. What that means for the uninformed was that when you would set copy for a page, they type would come out of a printer, the back would be run through hot wax, and the stories would be assembled per a layout sheet by a composer.

When we would get done with copy-editing stories, we’d send them to paste-up and then head either downstairs or over to mostly supervise the process but also kibbitz with the paste-up folks, who rolled in about 6. Chuck was one of the key people who would keep track of the printouts and the computer and make sure everything was running smoothly. He was gregarious and a music lover, and we got to be friendly shortly after I started at the paper.

He was also something of a pool shark, and one night we went out to one of his favorite establishments to quaff a few and play a little pool. For whatever reason (I can’t remember now), the mojo wasn’t right, so we went to another place. I guess Chuck had been there before, but it defined End of the Road Hole in the Wall. It was dark, and my recollection is that there was nothing else around. It was unsettling, but I trusted Chuck’s judgment. We went in and it was close to empty, just some regulars staked out to their spots at the bar. But it had a second room with a pool table and no one in it. OK, now for some music.

The juke was loaded with two kinds of music: country and western—not my favorite genre, to be certain. Well, when in Rome …

We stuck with the classics: Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash. That night, in that place, it was the right call. Metallica, Chuck’s favorite band at the moment, wouldn’t have worked. We played for a long time and no one bothered us. I don’t remember who won more games, but it was a good time, although not to be repeated for whatever reason. (And I never did find out the name of the aforementioned dive.)

So what the heck does this have to do with Heart? This song came on the radio at work one morning at about this time, and Chuck was talking about how cool the song was and how he liked to sing along with it, although he admitted embarrassment when singing the line “ever since I was a baby girl,” so whenever I hear this song, I think of Chuck and how on some nights, any type of music might be the right music.