The Time Capsule: Bugaboos Past and Present

Hey hey! Long time, no blog, I know. It's been a couple of months, but I finally have a few minutes to myself here and am currently enjoying a pleasant afternoon at local West Town bar/restaurant Baza. Baza is a local secret. It's an awesome place to work as there are many sockets at every table, free wireless, and NO other patrons. Anyway, last time I was here, the waitstaff decided to plug in their Ipods to the sound system and within minutes I heard these golden lyrical gems:

You Make Me Wanna Throw My Pager Out The Window
Tell MCI To Cut The Phone Calls
Break My Lease So I Can Move
'cause You A Bug A Boo A Bug A Boo
I Wanna Put Your Number On The Call Block
Have AOL Make My E Mails Stop
'cause You A Bug A Boo
You Buggin What You Buggin Who You Buggin Me
And Don't You See It Ain't Cool

That's right – Bugaboo by Destiny's Child. This song is (1) awesome; (2) ridiculously dated. It's this last aspect of the song that really caught my attention when hearing this song probably for the first time in six years. Obviously no one owns a pager anymore except the fictional drug dealers from Season 1 of The Wire, MCI, after emerging from a painful Bankruptcy, is now a part of Verizon, I don't know anyone who has put anyone on a "call block" since I can't think of anyone apart from my parents and businesses that have a landline, and I think only grandmothers and phishing Russian porn spammers are out there with an AOL email account. Oh and my friend Jesse Baltes. Treated.

This got me thinking about other songs that have hyper-dated references that immediately identify them as part of their own time. I dub these "time capsule" songs as the minute you hear them, you are aware that they come from a time "long ago." So without further ado, my favorite time capsule songs, and I am going way back on this in backwards chronological order. I plan on posting this over a number of days, so stay tuned…

First off, the 90s PAGER craze.

Besides Beyonce's aforementioned pager, the '90s was a good time for pagers in song. Two of the best pager songs: A Tribe Called Quest's 1991 song "SkyPager" and Immature's 1995 minor hit "Pager."

Basically, in the future, pop historians will learn about pagers and associate them with drug dealers and sex fiends. Which maybe isn't an entirely inaccurate description of how they were perceived in the 90s anyway.

Next, the 80s – land of large radios and nuclear panic.

As anyone from Radio Rahim to Lt. Spock will tell you, the 80s were all about carrying around "ghettoblaster" stereos and exposing the world to your musical tastes. LL Cool J documented this phenomenon in "I Can't Live Without My Radio." This song has great period details, from the fact that LL is carrying around a JVC to his apparel of "light blue Pumas," and "a whole lotta gold" – classic 1985

Well, that's all for now. I'll come back with the 70s and 60s.