Radio 62, side A, track 8: “Uptown East” by Special EFX

Oh, Special EFX, the original name for this track was “elevator music”.  And that’s almost what it would have stayed.  I was going to write a brief post about how I don’t know why the hell I even recorded this track since it was so clearly filler music.   But right before I decided to hammer out that post, I thought to myself, “Why don’t I just Shazam it?”  Just for the hell of it, you understand, Special EFX.  I honestly did not believe that Shazam would find anything for this.

Three seconds.  Three seconds was all it took for Shazam to let me know that this was “Uptown East” by Special EFX.  My mind had already been pretty blown away when Shazam was able to name that song by Time Gallery a few years ago.  That was before I had my own smart phone and my own Shazam.  But here I am, sitting in my house writing about “Uptown East” because I have a handheld computer that can tell me anything I want to know within a few seconds.

My wife’s cousin, who is also my honorary little sister, who is also pretty much bonded to her phone, declared at one of the family gatherings that there was no reason anyone should not know anything anymore.  She’s right.  I kind of laughed her off at the time, but it stuck with me, and now, when I’m thinking “What was that thing?”, I understand that if I’m too lazy to spend three seconds looking it up, my ignorance is my own damn fault.

I’m scared to death of technology, Special EFX, but I obviously cannot live without it, either.  Even though I resisted getting a smart phone for years and years and bore the ridicule and scorn heaped upon me for my little flip phone with grim stoicism, that little smart phone has changed my whole life.  I can listen to tunes when I’m grocery shopping and suddenly grocery shopping isn’t that bad.  I had to go get my license renewed and had to wait an hour and I could have waited more because I was reading a great book on my Kindle app.  And if I don’t know what some random song is that I recorded off the radio back in 1990?  Done and done, Special EFX.

This song is gloriously mediocre, Special EFX, and I don’t know why I took the time to hold on to a 40-second sample of it all these years.  But I’m glad I did, because it reminds me once again that my radio station really did play every damn thing and also reminds me that I’m living in an age of wonders.