Nostalgia & Humor

• Publication year: 2024
• Citation: Vol. 93 No. 4 Pg. 30
• Pages: 30

Nostalgia & Humor93 J. Kan. Bar Assn 4, 30 (2024)Kansas Bar JournalAugust 2024

July 2024

Music Is the Slice of Life

By Matt Keenan, Executive Director, Kansas Legal Services

Everyone has a song.

I don't mean a college song — like the one you played at the Wheel with a quarter in 1981. (Pat Benatar, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”). I don't mean that one song you still sing at stop lights. (Huey Lewis and the News, “The Power of Love”). I don't even mean that rock anthem your fraternity brother blasted on his Bang & Olufsen speakers. (Van Halen, “Jump”).

I mean a coming-of-age song. A song that is burned in your memory, and every time you hear it you remember the time, the place, the optimism, the hope, the joy of life. The song that said you were leaving your hometown the day after high school graduation and never coming back.

Yeah, that song.

For me, that song is “Everything I Own” by David Gates and Bread.

It was the spring of 1974. I was in the high school debate room on the second floor of the school when I first heard it. I don't associate it with a...