  music related memories: 1988 I dont know if this is going to work or not, but this is my attempt to show how music has always been a part of my life, year by year. Im choosing 1988 as a starting point because it was the first full year that I was living as an adult and as a result my own music was probably more present than ever.
I will jump around from year to year as this project progresses (if it progresses at all). For the record, I spent October 1987 to August 1988 at the Defense Information School in Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana (where I was training to be a navy broadcast journalist) and in September 1988 I began a two-year tour at the Navy Broadcasting Service detachment in Diego Garcia, a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean thats actually owned by the United Kingdom. January: Listening to my new cassette copy of the Elvis Costello b-sides collection Out of Our Idiot in my dorm room while the Indianapolis deep-freeze raged on outside. February: Buying a used cassette copy of Concerts for Kampuchea in a nasty little used store in Broad Ripple with my girlfriend, then listening in horror while it squealed away noisily in her cars tape deck. Dont buy used cassettes. March: Going totally apeshit when Public Image Limited broke into the Sex Pistols Holiday in the Sun at their Market Square Arena concert (opening for INXS). April: Realizing how beautiful the orchestral tracks on Erasures Two Ring Circus album sound. May: Being informed by a bemused Lieutenant Gordon Cole that I would be authorized to do a no-rules punk/new-wave program for my final SITE radio show class just so he could get an idea of what exactly this crazy music was that I listened to so much. June: Listening to Morrisseys Viva Hate and Thomas Dolbys Aliens Ate My Buick over and over and over. July: Docked points on my pop/rock radio show by choosing The Purple Lagoon by Frank Zappa as my instrumental outro music. Petty Officer Vince Vidal informed me that the selection is more appropriate for a jazz show. August: Buying the sampler cassette of Frank Zappas You Cant Do That On Stage Anymore box set and listening to it with unabashed glee in the tape deck of Ron Pooles car as we were driving back from the mall.
September: Listening to Elvis Costellos Trust album on my Walkman and chain-smoking Marlboro Lights on the final, dead-of-night leg of my marathon plane ride from Philadelphia to Diego Garcia. October: Listening to the sadly out-of-print Urgh! A Music War soundtrack in my barracks room with roommate Bob Shunk.
November: Receiving the first of many cassettes from my sister of random WFNX broadcasts, back when it was an interesting, innovative radio station with little regard for playlists. I first heard the Pixies (Where Is My Mind), They Might Be Giants (Purple Toupee) and John Wesley Harding (The Devil In Me) through these tapes. December: Obsessing over the cassette my brother mailed me, with Living Colours Vivid on one side and Fishbones Truth and Soul on the other. 
