Down with "Up With People!"

I actually have this album, and I play it every once in a while just to remind me of how bad it is.

You know, you really can judge a record my its cover when the cover shows clean-cut men with guitars and endorsements by John Wayne, Pat Boone and Walt Disney. When you consider that it was sponsored by a razor company (Shick) you wonder why a person of taste would even give it a second glance.

I blame it on remants of programming from Abraham Lincoln High School in Council Bluffs Iowa.

Abraham Lincoln (or "AL", as the natives call it - pronounced Aye-El) was, in my day at least, the "nice" high school, meaning that it had mostly a college-prep curriculum. (Strictly state college, mind you. None of those haigh-falutin' coastal colleges for their student; Learn 'em just enough to get into Ames was the teaching philosophy. If you were artsy, you could go to Iowa City)

Anyway, we were kind of not very good at anything, and our sports teams SUCKED. The only thing we were sort of/kind of good at was music. We had an OK band, and an extensive choral music program (headed up by a manic masochist who would have been a natural as a megachurch minister if there had been megachurches at that time) The centerpiece of the choral music program, and hence the school, was the New Design Swing Choir. It actually won awards! Awards in Northwest Missouri, but awards none the less. We were starving for attention.

I was a peripheral member of the New Design. Not quite a New Design Groupie, but certainly less than a star. The less said about that, the better.

But if you were a true New Designer, the next step, the acheivement of your lifetime, would be to become a member of "Up With People!". Several of the alum had been members, so it gave us something to look forward to, a course in life that was different than the average alum experience (unwise first marriage immediately after graduation, military service, multiple divorces, all capped off by middle-aged alcoholism and senior dementia).

The school, wanting what was best for us in a sort of lassez-faire kind of way, nutured this dream by booking "Up With People!" at the school. Frequently. Everytime they came through town, we had a damn "Up With People!" matiness. Oh well, it was better than sitting through Geometry. That was one thing the faculty and the students saw eye-to-eye on.

I was never ambitious enough to think I could actually BE in "Up With People!", and by senior year, I was starting to realize that perhaps Council Bluffs and I were headed for a amiable separation anyway, but I went along to get along. I feigned the enthusiasm. I acted like the concerts were the greatest things EVER (although I usually snuck out and got stoned in the back of somebody's van. That always made the finale - which I never missed - much more exciting.) and I wished fervent "good lucks" to my friends who went for the auditon. (Although it should be said that, like being a member of The New Design, a lot of the determination of whether you got in was how much money you had for pert color-coordinated outfits. I don't think talent was really that important.)

You pretty much know the rest of the story. I got out of CB, and shook off my New Design tendencies. I haven't worn a three-piece polyester suit with colorful hand-made shirt in 23 years. But every great once-in-a-while, usually only after a few scotches, That Old Feeling kicks in, and I find myself warming up the old Motorola for a listen to the "Up With People!" (and people wonder why I don't drink hard liquor)

Then I throw up and pass out, and that feeling goes away. It always does.