Sitting in the Tower parking lot, I started up the car and popped out a Ladytron cd with the intent of replacing it with Gnarls Barkley. In the two seconds that elapsed as I put the Witching Hour disc inside its case, however, I had a change of heart, thanks to Jack F.M. and the opening strains of Blue Oyster Cult's 1981 hit, "Burnin' for You."
If I were in a band, I would cover this song. It would be one of only two songs that my band would ever reinterpret (the other being ABBA's "Give Me, Give Me, Give Me A Man After Midnight" mixed with bits of "Hung Up"). "Burnin' for You" is by no means my favorite song ("Don't Fear the Reaper," however, is in my Top 5), but it feels like it would lend itself to a good cover. Every time I hear this song, I think about how my imaginary band could redesign, how we could keep the hooks and rough it up to make it a bit more threatening. I did this again, today, sitting through the three lights that it takes to get past the intersection between Tower and the Northridge Mall.
Out of the corner of my oversized sunglasses, I noticed a guy at the corner. He stood next to a bus stop in front of a gas station clad in yellow. Canary shirt. Banana shorts. Lemon hat. Against the yellow shirt, he pressed a bubble-gum pink plastic guitar. He headbanged across the corner, his blonde hair flying back as the baseball cap slid off his head. He moved completely out-of-sync with the BOC song on the radio, which made me lose my focus. Was I supposed to be concentrating on the song in the car and the light ahead of me or the guy on the corner? I kept wondering why he was there. He didn't look like any of the usual West Valley characters, the people my friends and I grew up seeing engaged in odd street corner antics. Judging from the coordinated outfit, the presence of the guitar and the fact that people were going up to talk to him in a neighborhood where nobody chit-chats with strangers, my guess was that the stunt was premeditated. Did someone dare him? Was he just sitting around with his friends smoking a bowl and listening to AC/DC when someone said, "Dude, wouldn't it be totally cool if you stood out on a street corner dressed in yellow and carrying a pink guitar and then you busted out some Angus Young moves?" Did he answer, "Yeah, dude, that would be sweet?" I kind of hope so.