Seven years ago I finished reading Rick Springfield’s autobiography “Late, Late at Night” and was so excited about revisiting all the songs from my teen years – and learning about the context for many of them – that I put together a site about the book: latelateatnightjourney.wordpress.com. Here is the intro:
It’s literally late, late at night. All the kids are sleeping and I put this blog together today because I felt compelled to do so after reading Rick Springfield’s “Late, Late at Night” memoir and finding myself searching through the Internet to find the songs in the book – both those that I sang along to countless times when I was younger and those that I wasn’t familiar with. I was surprised that I still remembered so many of the lyrics to songs from his earlier albums, back when my bedroom walls were covered with Rick Springfield posters and I’d listen to the albums over and over again (long before CDs). This blog is dedicated to my 13-year-old self who would have totally done something like this had blogs, YouTube and the Internet existed at the time. And also to Rick Springfield for many years of great music! (And thanks to all the wonderful Rick Springfield fans who have brought all these resources to said blogs and YouTube videos so I could find them!) It’s based on Rick Springfield’s memoir “Late, Late at Night” and provides links to the songs in the book, presented by chapter.
Although I called it a blog in the intro, it’s not really – it was just a little guide of where to find the songs in the different chapters, in case anyone else would be interested. After I finished it, I figured I was done revisiting my RS fan days and would move on.
However, that wasn’t the case. I found myself overflowing with excitement about all the new information I’d found (and continued to discover), yet nobody in my everyday life was really interested.
A few days later, I decided to stop talking about it after sensing that people’s patience was wearing thin and decided to just write about it instead in hopes that there were others out there in Cyberspace who could relate. The first post on the “My Rick Springfield crush” blog was posted on Aug. 8, 2014 and I started pulling out my old journals and planners to see what I documented. I found the first diary I ever had, from 1982, which also detailed the early stages of my infatuation with RS and then in spiral notebooks found notes about different concerts I attended, when I met him for the first time, etc. It never occurred to me that I’d still be writing this seven years later!
A few months after starting the blog, I listened to the “Late, Late at Night” audiobook on CD and was inspired to write the first song I’d written in about 10 years. I pulled my guitar from high school out of the case, practiced the few basic chords I used to know and wrote “My Rick Springfield Crush Revival.” A few months later I recorded it on a tape recorder (in the bathroom because the acoustics sounded better) and made a video of it.
(Yes, I cringe a little when listening to it….)
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I finished listening to the audiobook a second time (since I had subscribed to Audible so I could listen to his novel sequel “World on Fire,” I figured that I might as well get the autobiography, too, since seven years ago I had borrowed it from the library). I don’t know what it is with this audiobook, but it inspired to me write yet another song on this topic.
When I played the new song for my husband, he commented that it sounded a little obsessive. That wasn’t really what I was going for, but I guess after writing a fan blog for seven years perhaps I’ve lost some perspective. The song is meant to be a tribute to those who provide inspiration to others (specifically RS in my case, in case you can’t tell by all the evidence in the video) and the video includes images from the blog.
In honor of the seven-year anniversary of the “Late, Late at Night Musical Journey,” here’s “Star of the Show.” (Hopefully the recording sounds a little better this time around, as I wrote and recorded it in our makeshift studio using Logic Pro – no bad guitar playing in this one. Though my future self will probably still cringe when I listen to it, I hope some people will relate to the sentiment and enjoy the song!)
My Rick Springfield crush 