I spent most of the day yesterday experiencing the bureaucracy of death.

While “Bureaucracy of Death” would definitely be an excellent band or album name for something in one of the more extreme metal genres, I’m not actually talking about music.  I’m talking about the actual bureaucracy of death, all the paperwork involved when someone dies.  Wednesday morning that someone was my father, who finally found peace after almost six months of struggles following a head injury, and that meant a day spent calling and texting and emailing, signing things at the hospital and more at the funeral home.  We talked about organ donations and cremations, and the fees involved to get the death certificate certified by the county medical examiner’s office (that’ll be $70, sir) and obtain official copies of the death certificate (that’ll be $20 each, please).  I’m glad we brought the checkbook with us.  The next few weeks will involve wills and attorneys and Social Security and banks and insurance companies and closing out various online accounts, all while trying to lead some semblance of a normal life and, you know, when there’s time, maybe grieve a little.

I wouldn’t say I grew up in a musical household per se, but music was definitely part of it.  Yes, there was an electric organ when I was a kid that I thought was cool because you could push buttons and make it sound like different instruments (though I don’t remember it ever being played), and I tried violin and clarinet for one year each.  I had a little Casio keyboard at one point, and even an acoustic guitar, but I never got into any of the instruments and instead focused my attention on listening, slowly, and then with increasing rapidity, building up a collection of vinyl, cassettes, and CDs.  My first stereo was a hand-me-down from my parents, one of those 1970s style all-in-one jobs with a turntable, tuner, cassette, and 8-track all rolled into one.  I saved up my money and bought a pair of Realistic bookshelf speakers from Radio Shack and thought I had it pretty good.  Mom and dad played music in the house sometimes as well, dad mostly his Neil Diamond records, followed in later years by Barbara Streisand, Sinatra, and the other classic crooners, while my recollection is that mom generally broke out the vinyl during the holidays, stacking the Christmas albums up on the spindle of the turntable so they’d drop one after another… all the A sides first, then flip the stack over and do it again for the Bs.

So what music do you play the day after your father dies?  Do you go with punk or metal, cranked up to 11, “pounding out aggression” as Metallica would say?  Or perhaps something melancholy, like your mood?  Or maybe one of dad’s favorites, like The Jazz Singer Soundtrack?  I don’t know, because I’ve never experienced any of this before.  But somehow I want something poppy, and since Blondie’s Eat to the Beat is on my “To Listen To” shelf, it seemed as good a choice as any on a damp, cold, overcast morning, while I sit at my computer and hear the occasional “ding” of yet another work email landing in the inbox of my work laptop in the other room.  Work email is life’s irresistible force, and no immovable object can stop its steady flow.  Ding… ding… ding…

It’s hard to even put into words how stunning Debbie Harry looks on the cover of Eat to the Beat.  I know, I know… the music is what’s important.  But Debbie just oozes so much glamour that you simply can’t help but both notice and remark on it.

I’ve never had a copy of this album before, but immediately recognized the opening track “Dreaming,” a very disco-esque number, one of those tunes that marks the transition from first generation new wave to what became the more familiar and hairspray-laden second generation in the early to mid 1980s.  And while “Union City Blue” definitely brings a strong ABBA vibe to the party, Eat to the Beat is not simply a disco-pop record.  “Shayla” gives us Harry’s brand of ballad while blending in some flourishes of blues guitar, and the title track is a straight-ahead rocker, one that borders a bit on first generation punk rock and throws in some blues harmonica for good measure.  Meanwhile “Die Young Stay Pretty” foreshadows the Caribbean sound that Blondie took to the top of the charts a year later with their hit single “The Tide is High”.

I’m free,
But life is so cheap.
— “Shayla”

Eat to the Beat is just what I needed this morning – poppy, but not ridiculously so, and with enough feeling to make it warm without dragging me down.

RIP dad.  You had pretty great run while you were here.