So the lead singer and originator of the band Procol Harum is dead. I won’t detail my adolescence too much but I used to dance in my bedroom to music I would play on my little record player. I used to think no one (my parents and brother) knew I was doing this but I’m sure they did. I was the original emo teenager except that I wasn’t really much of an original because most teenagers are a bit emo and I was also very focused on a lot of things.

I loved Procol Harum’s song Whiter Shade of Pale but I don’t think I had that record. The Procol Harum guys were quite a bit older than me but I’m thinking if they were in 16 or Tiger Beat magazine or whatever 1960s mag I was reading, I mighta thought they were very cute, like I did when I googled and found a video of them prancing around as young men.

Fortunately, living in a frozen northern outpost, I didn’t get much chance to meet rock stars. That was a good thing, at least in retrospect.

Vestal virgins? Jeebus. Somebody in Procol Harum must’ve taken Latin in high school. I had Mrs. Velde. She was a Latvian survivor of the holocaust. She had a leg injury and used a cane to get to the third floor of the old Soo High, where I went to school in 9th and 10th grade. Junior and senior year, we all moved to a new high school. The academic wing only had two stories and Mrs. Velde was on the 2nd. I THINK there was an elevator in that school but I’ll bet that Mrs. Velde still walked up the stairs with her cane.

Whiter Shade of Pale is still a great song. Listen to that organ!

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