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Pete Rorabaugh on Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove” (1981), The Avett Brothers’ “When I Drink” (2006) and New Order’s “Everything’s Gone Green” (1981)

“Let’s Groove,” Earth, Wind & Fire

We have a close family friend, kind of like a little sister to me, who is a huge Earth, Wind & Fire fan. A year ago, Caroline would play these old funky 70’s/80’s tunes for my three kids when she would babysit.

Caroline has since moved to Greece to teach, but two months ago, while working on homework my oldest son hummed the chorus to the lyric “Let’s Groove.” In a minute, we all were humming in unison with each other. We had to find the song on YouTube, dance to it and hum it for weeks. All of us. Two weeks ago, when we were having lunch at Johnny Rocket’s and Noah found “Let’s Groove Tonight” on the nickel juke box, he went nuts. All anyone else saw were three guys—6, 13, and 38—all jamming to the same song. None of us knew any of the words. Seriously, I was only 8 when it came out in 1981.

“When I Drink,” The Avett Brothers

This spring, my wife, Coni, and I saw the Avett Brothers in Athens; the show reconnected me with one of their earlier songs. 

Avett tunes are sometimes titled one way but then lyrically drive in another direction. They do it with “Murder in the City,” a song that’s really just about family intimacy. You would think “When I Drink” is about all of the stupid things you do when you’re under the influence, but really it’s about persistence and mortality. When the brothers harmonize on one of the final lines “And we only get so many days / now I have one less,” it’s both haunting and motivating, like an existential vaccination. That song also took over the house for a couple of weeks.

“Everything’s Gone Green,” New Order

When I was 14 and just starting to do a lot of running, I would click New Order’s Substance cassette into my bright yellow Walkman before launching off. 

This year, out of nowhere (where do these impulses originate?), I pulled the album down from Emusic and loaded it onto my Walkman (the MP3 version) before my bike commute into work. I don’t know how to capture the sublimity of that moment. My East Atlanta neighborhood streets at 6 a.m. were transformed into my old jogging route. I was able to access even the emotional realities of being an energetic and angsty teenager with one electronic drum beat. “Everything’s Gone Green” worked like a time machine.

Pete Rorabaugh tweets.