My Whitney Houston Story

Sometime in the late 1980s, I drove to Massachusetts to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday with my close friends Roger and Marlyse. The drive from Cleveland was over 12 hours, and sometimes, the weather (snow) was horrible. I decided to have an extra driver, someone to talk to, and to save a little money, I would offer spaces in the car to students. I posted a ride share at one of the universities in Cleveland (there was no internet in those days). The only person who signed up was a student who was from Greece.

I told him to bring his own audio cassettes to we can listen to my music and his music. As we left Cleveland, we were playing one of his cassettes, a live taping of some dance club in Greece, and I had a taste of euro-dance music. My radio/cassette player was recently repaired, and maybe 30 minutes into our journey, the cassette stopped working again. I was angry. I just paid money to have it fixed. Whitney Houston was at that moment of fame in her life with hits everywhere. So, in Alan-style, thinking that we have to listen to commercial radio for the next 12 hours, I said to him, "Looks like it's going to be Whitney Houston all the way to Boston!" He did not quite understand what I meant (that happens often with my humor). I explained.

We tried to cassette again, with a different cassette and it worked again! We were happy. But for fun, when the cassette ended, I used 'scan' on the radio, to go from one station to the other, and before a complete revolution, it came across a station playing a Whitney Houston song. And so, for rest of the journey, everytime we finished a cassette, we did the Whitney Houston test, and no matter where we were, one station in our area was playing a Whitney Houston song. It was bizarre.

Driving back to Cleveland, we were in western New York state and for once, there was no Whitney on the radio. So, we gave up and just let one station play. It was some stupid Elton John song. The song ended and the announcer came on and said "that was Elton John, ending another threesome of songs. Before Elton John was blah blah blah, and we began the threesome with Whitney Houston. There was no escape. Her voice was the pop culture blanket of the day. Back in the day.