Rocky Road

Sophie B. Hawkins, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover"

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One of my audiophile friends emailed me: "I like how you use semesters, to tell us when things happened."

My response was: "Well, if we happened to be in school then, we tended to think in terms of quarters or semesters."

Here along the Central California coast, the Spring 1992 quarter/semester was marked by sunny & warm weather. One fine Saturday, I was home in San Francisco. I grabbed my Walkman, and headed for Ultimate Sound, then located in the dungeon basement of the Sherman Clay building on Kearny Street. As I approached that block, KOIT played and identified the then-new, and grammatically incorrect, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover," by some gal named Sophie B. Hawkins.

To get to Ultimate Sound, you had to walk past some pianos, hang a left, and go down the stairs. There, you'd pass a Monster Cable poster, and end up in the sheet music section. Beyond that, a sliding glass door backed by black curtains was the entrance to Ultimate Sound. Now, down in that basement, there was no radio reception. So you were bummed, that you could no use a Walkman's radio or a tuner. However, the spools of AudioQuest, Kimber, and Monster Cable speaker cables in front of the sliding glass door caught your attention.

Since the bright sunny outdoor weather and "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" were forever branded into my mind, I don't recall which audio products I checked out.

Back at UC Santa Cruz, my college apartment was on top of a hill. It looked down on another building, whose top/3rd floor occupants were 4 girls, who were friends of ours. Now, these 4 girls (both individually and in multiples, but usually in pairs) liked to go nude sunbathing out on their hidden-from-sight deck. The ONLY view of their deck was........from our own deck. Blessed with an abundance of warm & dry days that school year, the girls would beckon us to join them......or occasionally hop over to our unit.

One fine morning in May '92, I was over at the 4 girls' apartment. The tall dark-haired girl, dressed only in a sports bra and sarong, had placed a small CD boombox on the kitchen table, and fired it towards the sink, where she was putting something in the oven, mixing/tossing a salad, and cutting fruit. She was playing her new CD, Sophie B. Hawkins' Tongues And Tails. And she loved and was belting out the leadoff track, "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover."

The red-head housemate, wearing just tank top and panties, spied the CD jewel case. She asked, "Is that really her real name?"

But of course, we audiophiles knew that Sophie B. Hawkins really was her real name, with the B standing for "Ballantine." Moreover, the audiophiles leaped out of the sweet spot, when they identified "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover's" drum sample from Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks."

No, these 4 neighbor girls, or any other girl, did not sing "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" to me. Nor did anyone wish she were my lover. Nevertheless, these golden times, activities, and music are why many of my audiophile friends (including the guy at the top of the page) argue that 1992 was the best.

-Lummy The Loch Monster



Edits: 05/04/17

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