April 16, 1983 (yes, yes, 2017, but you’ll see) — Seeing as I’ve been talking of times from the past, I thought I’d start a little theme, post some things about music through time, the music “time-line”, if you will. Sure, I could go with an Easter story (or Passover if you do that one), but the thing is Easter, for me, was mostly about the bunny, the egg coloring, those sorts of things. I know, it has wide reaching religious significance, but a holiday surrounding a magical bunny is just too good! At least it is for me anyways. My point, I can tie Easter to time travel, musical time travel, and that’s even without the magical bunny.
You see, I was pondering the fundamental questions of Easter: what is the magical bunny’s actual name, … and more seriously, what is the reason that Easter moves around? I mean why? Christmas doesn’t, so why Easter? And for that matter, it seems like Easter and Passover track? Or do they? So I looked it up.
I found a crazy-long article describing why, but really it comes down to Passover is calendared based on a lunar calendar, and the Christians kept that tradition, sort of. Apparently, Easter is the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the Spring Equinox; that’s lunar. As for it tracking, it seems to, unless there’s a Jewish leap year, when they add an extra month, something like repeating a month twice every now and then because the months are too short. And I’m not even going to try to figure that out. Then there’s the strange fact that there was a calendar before the normal Gregorian calendar we use today. How that worked was over time mathematics got good enough to calculate the whole February 29th thing, and we did, but we were off a bit at first. The first calendar, the Julian calendar, had a different number of days — the difference in decimal points mind you, so after almost a thousand years, it got ahead of itself. When they adopted our modern calendar, based on our modern and accurate mathematics, what they did, at least what the Western world did, was to take away a whole bunch of days from September in the year 1752. The people of 1752, at least in the Western world, went to sleep on the evening of September 2nd and woke up on the morning of September 14th. I always wondered what it would be like to have a birthday on February 29th. That was even better. If you were alive in 1752, and your birthday was between September 3rd and September 13th, you got to stay the same age for another year. Seriously, birthdays are a mathematical step function. Look that up if you don’t believe me. By the way, that calendar difference, Julian versus Gregorian, is why the Orthodox churches of the East have later Easter, later Christmas too, essentially because they never skipped those September 1752 days and are getting more and more ahead of themselves as the centuries go by. Oh and in case you’re wondering, nowhere in my research could I find any mention of the Easter Bunny’s name. Seriously, a magical bunny without a name; that’s almost as crazy as the first known time travel – going from September 2 to September 14, 1752! So there you have it. Time travel is possible! And I wonder, if time is something we can simply adjust, how about a visit to the ’80? Hair metal anyone?
The ‘80s: a time when the pop charts’ numbers 1 through 5 would easily include a rock song, … or even five rock songs. A time when videos told the story of the life of the rocker, of the girls who sat on their cars, of fun, and sun and freedom from worry. Hey? Did girl rockers have boys sitting on their cars? Okay back to my point… A time when the Sunset Strip was the center of the Universe, when guitar gods ruled the world, when boys wanted to be frontmen, when girls wanted … well you know, and pretty much rock turned the world into its own.
This one isn’t about me. I didn’t really live the rock ‘n’ roll life then, so I can’t give you stories. I worked a lot, too much. I went to school, a lot, too much. But I had a killer car stereo, always. And I loved rock. I loved the countdowns too. I loved hearing rock on the countdowns.
I know. I know. It comes to an end, the story of ‘80s rock. It does for lots of reasons. Indeed, it probably had to. And we’ll get to that. But until then, set your clocks to a new time. I’ve got the mathematics to do that, or just pretend I do., or better yet, I have magical bunny.
It’s … April 16, 1983. And here’s a little story …
P.S. Don’t you just love it that I can have a story about debauchery and tie it to the Easter Bunny, indeed have the featured image be the Easter Bunny? Welcome to My world! And Happy Easter (or Passover) y’all!