Performer: Joe Satriani
Songwriter: Joe Satriani
Original Release: Flying in a Blue Dream
Year: 1989
Definitive Version: None
When I joined the Flint Journal, my first job was to copyedit stories on the news section, which meant metro (local) and wire (national and international). The hours were 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. That meant that to have enough time to get ready for work and drive in from Grand Blanc, the alarm went off at 5:30.
Needless to say, this was quite an adjustment from my previous stint at the Daily Herald, which had a standard 3 to 11 p.m. copy-desk shift and a whenever-I-felt-like-it wakeup time. But you do what you have to do, right? And that meant I essentially woke up in the middle of the night every morning during the wintertime.
As I mentioned, I bought Flying in a Blue Dream right after I moved to Flint, but I didn’t yet have a new boombox that I could play tapes on. I got one later, and it became the centerpiece of my stereo system for the next five years, but those first days all I had was a standard tape recorder. But it was portable, so I’d have it on my dresser and would play it quietly enough to not bother neighbors but still loud enough to hear while I was getting dressed.
So when I hear this song, I have a clear vision of getting dressed with only the lamp by my bed switched on, spookily illuminating the room just enough to see what I was doing while throwing shadows against the wood panel walls. A slightly musty but not unpleasant pine scent of fall fading to winter filled the air. Outside, it was pitch black, silent and cold.
Time to pay the piper.
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