{"id":32,"date":"2002-05-23T23:16:38","date_gmt":"2002-05-24T04:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=32"},"modified":"2026-01-24T07:05:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T13:05:27","slug":"entry-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/?p=32","title":{"rendered":"Beetles, Joyrides, and Fried Chicken"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anyone who has read my first post<\/a> here is aware that I associate certain music very strongly with events or periods in my life. From time to time, I\u2019m going to drop in a nugget here and there. Tonight\u2019s selection concerns a set of pop music that I\u2019ve come to call \u201cCom-Pak music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n


When I was in high school, I needed a job to keep gas in my car (more on the car later). From some time in my sophomore year until I left for college, I worked as a deli cook and cashier at the convenience store next to my school. The store is called \u201cCom-Pak”, and I spent most of my weekends there for about two and a half years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially when I was back in the kitchen cooking (fried chicken, burritos, corn dogs\u2026 deep fried stuff), I kept the radio on to occupy my mind. For various reasons, I had not really listened to the radio much in the years leading up to then. The result is that my mind has latched onto a set of pop songs that were in heavy rotation in the very early 90\u2019s. This was before the angst storm out of Seattle<\/a> took over the music industry, so most of it was pretty light. To this day, I can\u2019t hear Joyride<\/cite><\/a> by Roxette<\/a> without imagining myself whistling along while dredging chicken pieces in breading flour. Silly? Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, I started on this thread because I was listening to my Alias<\/cite> CD<\/a>. Alias<\/a> actually goes beyond the standard Com-Pak music. Around this same time in my life, I learned that my dad and my cousin had been working on rebuilding a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle for me. They told me before they were done so that I could help them work on it. To make a long story short, the \u201874 had some serious body problems that they didn\u2019t see before they bought it, so we gave up. Instead, they found a 1976 VW Beetle<\/a> in really good shape. It was my pride and joy. We repainted it a deep metallic red, and I bought a set of used mag wheels for it. All the time I was helping work on both cars, I was getting to know my new tape copy of Alias\u2019 subtitled debut album really well. The strongest memory I get when I hear Alias songs like What To Do<\/cite><\/a> is me sitting on our front porch polishing those wheels in preparation for the car. When I got a cassette stereo for the car, I wore out that tape. I gave the car back to my Dad when he bought me a used 1992 Nissan Sentra<\/a>, but I\u2019ll never forget the Beetle. According to him, some guy in the area still drives it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mom has a picture that I need to get scanned in. (edited 5 December 2015: Well, I finally did. Here’s a link<\/a>.)<\/em> It\u2019s a picture I took from the window behind the cash register in Com-Pak. It\u2019s a picture of my little red Beetle parked right under the Com-Pak sign at work. My first car and my first job\u2026 all in one picture. I wonder what song I\u2019ll hear in my head when I see it. (“Come on join the joyride\u2026”)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who has read my first post here is aware that I associate certain music very strongly with events or periods in my life. From time to time, I\u2019m going to drop in a nugget here and there. Tonight\u2019s selection concerns a set of pop music that I\u2019ve come to call \u201cCom-Pak music.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,5],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-memories","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1830,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/1830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slidingconstant.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}