No matter what anyone says, I will never get tired of listening to Tori Amos' Boys for Pele.

Is it the harpsichord (which I played as a kid - sorry Vangelis) or lyrics, like "wrapped in your papoose/ your little fig newton," that bring me back to being in Guatemala on a chicken bus wearing my backpack on my front (long story)?

Here I am hitchhiking, backpack in the normal position, circa 1996. This was right before the driver stopped in the middle of nowhere and my friend Stephanie leans over and says, "this is where he kills us." (He didn't kill us.)

Now I'm on a tangent and I'm going with it. Here are some kids enjoying the taffy we made and that I got 3rd degree burns making. Warning: boiling sugar is hot. (It's a picture of a picture, hence the shadows.)

That was literally 34 years ago almost to the day. Wow. I don't feel old at all. Also, "burned areas making taffy" is not remotely the most ridiculous thing I've ever had in a medical report.

Fortunately, I don't know where Guatemala pictures are, so I can't continue along this thread. So back to Tori. I loved Boys for Pele so much, I even got the special edition vinyl when I didn't have a record player and was getting ready to leave for . . . Guatemala. Hmm.

I kept this record, even though I continued not to have a record player. So when when gf and I got one, I was very excited. And the album was very warped. Look at this thing of beauty. You can't tell it's warped because I put it in the oven in a futile attempt to unwarp it.

But I played it anyway, and despite not being able to listen to the beginning of each side (sorry Beauty Queen), I still loved it. Until my gf got me the remastered 180p vinyl, which I don't know what that means but it sounds amazing.

If the original weren't warped, this picture of Bean would not be nearly as cute.

Tori Amos' music fundamentally changed me. The first album I listened to was Under the Pink. I sang Yes, Anastasia at the top of my lungs, alone, late at night, in the glass-windowed Va Tech bus stops, bc, although my singing was and is awful, the acoustics were amazing.

. . . and I just found the (simplified) sheet music to Winter, which I was trying to play while at home this, uh, winter. Yes, Mom and Dad, this means I'll once again be playing the same thing over and over, and over and over, the next time I'm home.

Tori's music was also the subject for my first ever academic conference, which I just looked at, and, all things considered, it's not terrible, even if, back then, 2 spaces after a period was the norm.

Maybe my love for Boys for Pele coincides with that fact that it was the album she was touring with the first time I ever saw her in concert, in Roanoke, VA, Oct. 11, '96. She ended the show (pre-encore) with Me and a Gun. Only time I heard her play it live and holy !*@$!

How don't singers lose their voices? http://www.yessaid.com/tour-1996.html 
I'd go on to see her in '98 in Charlotte, NC; Blacksburg, VA; '02 in Providence, RI; and '03 in Albany, NY. Sigh, not nearly enough. Anyway, that *is* enough of my random Tori interlude for the morning, so The End.