Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now Daddio
by Maggie Dove I called the radio station once an hour for days. Every time the DJ picked up the phone and my 11-year-old girl voice said, “Can you play “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship?” he responded, “It’s coming up.” An hour later. Nothing. A day later. Nothing. The only recording I had of the song was the one I’d made by holding my tape recorder up to the television speaker when the movie “Mannequin” was on. It was a low quality bootleg, at best, and even worse, my sister had barged into the living room while I was recording it to yell at me for taking the last Little Debbie Zebra Cake. I would listen to my bootleg recording, fully immersed in Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, only to have the Kool-Aid Man of reality bust through the wall in the form of my sister’s voice. “…and we can build this thing together, standing strong forever, nothing’s gonna stop…did you take the last fucking Zebra Cake, you asshole? I KNOW IT WAS YOU.” It was, frankly, a Starship boner-killer; a mellow-harshener. I liked my Starship like I liked my Burger King Original Chicken Sandwich: Plain, with no additions. No mayonnaise or lettuce to dampen the flavor or the crisp. I needed a pristine recording of this song. Cassettes were $10, which might as well have been a million, but if I could record it on tape directly from the radio? That was 99% as good as the real thing. I called the DJ again and he sounded annoyed as soon as he heard my voice. He said, “It’s coming up, okay?” An hour later. Nothing. I called the DJ again and put on a fake voice, a cross between a surfer dude and a wacky retiree guy - not dissimilar to the DJ’s own voice. I used old-timey lingo that I had learned from “Back to The Future”. “Hey there, daddio! Can you play that new Starship song? It’s outta sight! Yeah!” He laughed and said, “Right on, buddy!” The song started playing five minutes after we got off the phone. Every time I called him after that and used my fake voice, he played my request immediately. The DJ made an in-store appearance at the drug store up the street from my house later that summer. I stood in front of the folding table as he autographed his 8 x 10 black and white head-shots. He didn’t look at me. When it was my turn, he asked who he should make it out to. “Daddio.” He looked up. |
Maggie Dove is a Southern writer who is petty, immature, and has many tribal tattoos from the 90s for which she refuses to be apologetic. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, JMWW, Cosmonauts Avenue, Drunk Monkeys, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Southern Fugitives, Crab Fat Magazine, and elsewhere. Her blog is at romcomdojo.com. |