In the time before Joan Jett....

In the time before I knew there was Joan Jett, I had a different musical crush. I still remember being in a record store (yes, a record store, where each album took up about five square yards of space, had the singer or band's entire biography on the back, a poster inside, and all of it shrouded in mystery by an artsy cardboard sleeve.)

Anyway, there I was in the record store, morose little thing that I was, poking around, looking for new Leonard Cohen or Laura Nyro or Tim Buckley, when I saw a new singer with just the cutest face and hair (turns out she was Miss Dust Flats Junction or something, at one time) and had to investigate.

Well, as you all know, I cannot be tempted by anything, and so I left that album right there in the record store. But after I had had time to think about what I had done, I went back to the record store and bought "Elite Hotel", and fell completely in love with Emmylou Harris.

I love her singing, I love her song selection, I love her looks...okay, especially that. I have always really liked long straight dark hair, long and straight being the style when I was a shrimp, and so it even to this day makes me feel young again, so that I can nearly summon the gumption to throw off my shawl and wheel my chair a few feet down the hallway of the home before falling asleep again drooling on my cardigan.

But wait! There's more! My girl went gray somewhere along the line. And....she looks fantabulous that way. The nerve of some gals. Plus, she appears to age only in reverse dog years. That is, one year for every seven the rest of us do. I mean, look at me, I look like I just climbed up out of the crypt most days, while Emmylou looks hotttttttttt. Life is completely unfair.

In recent years, I had managed to forget about Emmylou somehow. Too busy listening to Wall of Voodoo, I suppose. But now I have remembered her. Damned nice of me, I think. And now I am smitten all over again. She's even got the tragic love affair with the late Gram Parsons. The woman has it all. I hate her. But I don't. Sighhhhhhhhhhhh....