So, the following Saturday, Brent came over and took me back to his house in Livermore in the Vega. It was a twenty-minute drive, give or take, so we had time to talk about music and listen to Duran Duran and David Bowie. He played two songs from Bowie, and we talked about both tunes, China Girl and Let’s Dance.

That’s when he popped out of Bowie after Let’s Dance ended. Ah, remembering the magic of cassette tapes. Some of us didn’t care if the track was in the middle. These people would eject the tape like a barbarian. Smack dab in the middle of the song! Who does that? The friends I had in high school weren’t like that. We had taste and style, so obviously, we would wait right up to the end of the song. Or, at the very least, fast-forward or rewind it to the song’s end or the beginning of the next one. No self-respecting GenXer would be caught dead with a tape in the middle of a song. Brent wasn’t that person, waiting until Bowie finished the guitar solo.

Then, per Brent’s appreciation and approach to introducing people to the music he enjoyed, the build-up was almost as good as the first time I heard the song, starting with, “Have you ever listened to anything by Duran Duran?”

I shook my head no. We were almost at Brent’s house; the only thing on our agenda was picking up the negatives, prints, and contact sheets from his home laboratory. Bill, Brent’s Dad, loved to take pictures and develop them in his home. All of the equipment was right there, giving Brent and his brother Scott ample opportunities to use all of it, within reason, of course. The chemicals were toxic, so the brothers were taught proper handling and disposal of the fixer, developer, and the wash, the final step in processing film. Even though my Dad was a professional photographer and filmmaker, he couldn’t afford all the equipment. He could’ve easily walked into Bill’s darkroom and processed the pictures he shot with Bill’s permission.

I blinked a few times, shaking my head no. Everyone at school knew the band. Me? I lived a bit of a sheltered life. Not that I wasn’t allowed to listen to rock and roll music, nor was I forced to listen to only praise and worship Christian music. We could listen to what we wanted to. Beverly, my biological mother, insisted on listening to a station out of San Francisco, KOIT 96.5 FM. That’s where I gained my knowledge of Gordon Lightfoot, Barry Manilow, Debbie Boone, The Captain and Tennille, a few Steve Miller songs, and Neil Diamond. Not exactly the ‘safest’ songs for impressionable young people. Plus, are you paying attention to the lyrics? Like really paying attention? The music doesn’t have a heavy beat or metallic-sounding guitar; therefore, it was okay.  

Dad listened to the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and musicals like West Side Story, Man of La Manche, Fiddler on the Roof, and soundtracks from Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Beverly went through this whole music is Satanic, right around the same time that Motley Crue made a name for themselves. Nothing with a pulsating beat was considered okay. Even Christian rock and roll was questionable. Me? I listened to the radio and liked some pop music, like Wham! Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, and the other 80s artists in regular rotation on the new Music Television station. If you had cable, you could watch music videos. If not, you either heard about it from your friends or waited until it was on regular television. Or, if you were like my family, you didn’t have the premium channels, so you waited until you heard about it from your friends.

So, yes, I knew of Duran Duran, but I had never listened to any of their music. But that changed in the Vega.

“Check this out,” Brent said. David Bowie exited the car’s cassette player, sliding in Duran Duran’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger into the tape deck. The first song I heard? Union of the Snake, the keyboard playing of Nick Rhodes. I watched Brent playing an imaginary keyboard on the dash of the Vega, leaving a lasting impression on my teenage youthfulness. Listening to it, Brent cranked it up almost to distortion levels. Not that it was hard to do that in the Vega, what with the four 6X9 speakers. When the song ended, he asked, “So? What do you think?”

My mind was blown. I hadn’t heard anything like that and was starting to understand something about myself; I really, really liked dance music! Could I dance? Nope. Not even if my life depended on it! But I enjoyed the sound, and the sound of the keyboard playing was incredible! “I love it!” I think the excitement in my tone made Brent’s grin a bit wider.

“Then listen to this,” he ejected Seven and the Ragged Tiger and slid in a different tape. I didn’t see the case it came out of; I only heard the click and the spinning of the capstans moving the magnetized tape across the head of the player. A remixed version of Union of the Snake played. “This is a remix of that last song,” he explained. “All on vinyl, rerecorded on cassette just so I can hear it in the Vega.” Brent said Vega, emphasizing the ‘G,’ although I wasn’t sure why. It was a Vega. We listened to the song. When it was over, he looked at me. “You need me to record this for you.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

Taking me to his room, Brent quickly scanned through his music, looking for a blank cassette tape and the mixes he wanted to send me home with. His room reminded me of a record store covered with posters of various bands, including David Bowie, Duran Duran, and a few others I don’t recall. Of course, an opened parachute was draped over a corner of Brent’s four-poster bed. I’m not sure why he had it.

“Oh yeah. The parachute. It’s cool, isn’t it?” Brent pulled it open so I could look through it. It was opaque, which created a unique light pattern when you let light filter through it. “I’m thinking I’ll hang it over the bed and leave one side of the chute hang down, letting the light stream in here,” Brent said, pointing to the window. “I’m not sure about it yet, so we’ll see.” Our conversation continued while he searched for a blank cassette tape and the mixes he wanted to leave me with. “The great thing about this,” he pointed to a dual cassette deck, one side recorded the music, the other played it, “is that it can record songs at double the speed, meaning it takes less time. We’ll be ready in,” he looked at his Casio watch, “about fifteen minutes. Is that cool? Or do you need to get home?”

“No. I’m good.” I sat on the bed, Brent looking through various memorabilia from multiple shows, including David Bowie’s last show, The Glass Spider tour. He showed me a shot in the program that happened during the show. “It had to be a plant,” Brent would tell me, “because there is no way they could reproduce that print that quickly.” A few minutes later, we were back in the Vega, me with the contact sheets, photographs, most of which were black and white, and the cassette tape with the remixes of several Duran Duran songs, Depeche Mode and I can’t remember what else. “Listen to this in good health,” Brent winked, pushing his sunglasses back up on his nose, before driving off.