** FLASH to loyal readers: I'm on the road again now so it's been difficult to keep up with the blogs, but here we are again! I'll fire off another few & hope it'll keep you in good stead . . . **
So, after a few weeks, we Squares got back home from the Beach Boys tour with added pride that we did well on a national tour -- even if it was a secondary market leg. Yah! Thanks again to that young agent who booked us on it. . . turned out when we signed with an agent the following year, however, it was with a middle aged agent out of Chicago who booked Koko Taylor, among other artists. . . respected acts, but blues. Tom Goodkind had his reasons for going with the agent he did, so we just went with it.
I wasn't always happy with decisions made for the band without my involvement/consent, but I guess real life isn't like school, and a democracy isn't necessarily what you get when you grow up and live "real life." But hey, I guess it could have been worse. . . I could have ended up workin' for "the man."
The 1980's were an interesting time in the world. . . the time when "Yuppies" became prominent as a socio-cultural force to be reckoned with. Young Urban Professionals, or Young Upwardly Mobile Professionals, the Yuppies were people who we might have walked along the streets with, elbow to elbow, riding the same subways, day-dreaming some of the same dreams while straphanging to their day jobs. Yuppies seemed to run certain aspects of NYC, much to our rue. As much as we'd like to be invited to their parties to drink and eat for free and mingle for other reasons, our philosophies and ideologies were pretty much opposed -- as were our politics (us = lefties & them = rightwingers).
Economically, Yuppies were the upper middle class or upper class white collar workers in their 20s and 30s. By age 40, it's all over, of course. . . but as we Squares were in our late 20s and early 30s, we sensed an interesting rivalry. To my way of thinking at the time, those who were Yuppies (or yupsters, as I'd quip) strove to have it all, not caring about how it affected others, or if they sold their souls for it. Politically, right wing Reagan Republicans ruled the Yuppie party, and we weren't having any of it (unless we could be liggers at the party).
From Wikipedia (Yuppie on Wikipedia): "Yuppies are mocked for their conspicuous personal consumption and hunger for social status among their peers. Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank, author of Luxury Fever, has remarked, "When people were denouncing yuppies, they had considerably lower incomes than yuppies, so the things yuppies spent their money on seemed frivolous and unnecessary from their vantage point."[4] Pro-skateboarder and businessman Tony Hawk has said that yuppies give "us visions of bright V-neck sweaters with collars underneath, and all that was vile in the eighties", and he has also remarked that a "bitchin’ tattoo cannot hide your inner desire to be Donald Trump."[7]"
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