Rockin' With Dokken

OK, the pic has nothing to do with Dokken, but it just seems to fit for the moment. I've come home from yet another night of working for a pittance and I have left all of my "indier than thou" musical tastes somewhere in the parking lot. I walked into my apartment, changed into lounge pants and an old ripped up Peter Himmelman t-shirt that I just bet my wife wants like anything to burn, and fired up the laptop to feed this late night surfing addiction of mine.

Plugging in my new headphones, I logged onto Rhapsody and wondered what I was in the mood to hear. Two Tom Waits tunes and a couple of Steve Martin bits down, I saw some product placement for some Dokken album I had never heard of. I immediately thought of "Mr. Scary" from 1987's Back For The Attack and away I went into the wayback machine.

An hour later, I am still listening to it and I can still see my old buds from high school, Brandon and Chris, headbanging with muscle shirts (no muscles required) in the back row of photography class to the amusement of the preppier students of the class. I hope those guys are doing well now. Listening to heavy metal with my friends back then was about as good as it got.

It was that same year that my best friend and I saw Judas Priest at Starwood. How naive we were at the time. Rob Halford in leather chaps and biker hat? Who knew that there was a message behind those duds and studs? Kicking back on the grass, and with the grass, if you know what I mean, we rocked out to "Living After Midnight," while knowing full well that our curfew was not one minute later than midnight itself. At concert's end, Chris and I were back to his '64 1/2 Mustang and on our way back to our respective homes with our bedrooms, wallpapered with cut out pages from the rock stars of Hit Parader magazine.

But enough blogging for one night. This live Dio record that I am listening to now requires my full attention. And my sleeping family appreciates that I bought some cheap headphones tonight.

Long Live Rock 'N' Roll!