do you do you want... the ace?

i grew up with ELO.

yeah, i know i always say "oh my dad was always playing the beatles/yes/rush/pink floyd"... he was - is - the big rock kid who begot the rock kid, but it often takes a music lover to tolerate living with a music lover. thus, mamasita came with her own set of records.

and while a large part of my generation were introduced to mr. blue sky (or mr. lynne, if you prefer) and co. via volkswagen and jcpenney's marketing teams, to me they once served as a marker that mom had just claimed the day for cleaning up the apartment. she couldn't do it without her jams.

and ELO were amongst them.

i remember in middle school when mom and dad brought home the box set. box sets were the latest phenomenon; imagine the feeling when you glimpsed your friend's first gen 40g ipod... oooo aaaaaah. nothing but jeff lynne and steel guitars for weeks on end.

now mind you - i cannot not love jeff lynne. you love george, you love jeff.

that being said, something odd occurred to me tonight. the classic rock stations - and the atl is rife with them at the moment - have been playing the hell out of "Do Ya" by the Orchestra due to its recurrence in some other silly car commercial. it's a good song, good for it.

but at the peak of the hair metal invasion that was my adolescence - and not the vinnie vincent variety as you will soon witness - my guitar hero, once ousted from one of rock's legendary acts and replaced by aforementioned megalomaniac with initials double-V for a short-lived stint, commenced a solo career that i had anxiously awaited for much of my tiny life. and on that third try was a cover of "Do Ya."

and every time i hear that song, be it original or no, i always in my head sing the line "Do Ya do ya want the Ace?"

i guess that means i am a bigger Kiss fan than an ELO fan?

nah. but i do i do love you, mr. frehley!!!!!