Remembering “Electric Blue” by Icehouse: A time of transition

I had set my mind to do it. It was the summer of 1988 and I was working at Gergeley’s Greenhouse two miles south and two miles west of Coaldale on the Jail Road. I had just come home from my first year of university a week or two earlier, and I had seen this video of a song I then heard on the radio. It was really good. So I resolved to pop into Lethbridge and buy it after work.

When I got to the Woolco Mall, which was on the eastern edge of the city, I realized I wasn’t sure if there was any place I could buy it. Then I popped into Coles Books, looked at some stuff, and had second thoughts.

I never did buy that tape by Icehouse that had “Electric Blue”, that song I liked so much.

Recently something came across my social media that “Electric Blue” debuted on this day in 1988 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. This day being Feb. 13.

The funny thing is, when I think of that song, I am taken back to a time of transitions for me.

First year
First year of university was a life-altering experience. Not only did I begin my post-secondary education, but I met new people and experienced so many new and different things. Then, in an instant it was over.

Just as Chris Vining and I had arrived in Edmonton in his orange Pinto, we were now leaving Edmonton in that same orange Pinto. My Mom and sister had come a couple days earlier and picked up the bulk of our stuff and took it home. We stuck around a couple more days so we could get every last drop out of our time in Edmonton.

Now, we were on the road home. It was funny because we kept talking about people in the present tense. For instance Chris suggested I ask this one girl out. All I kept thinking was the year was over. We may very well never see these people again. History showed that in some cases, we never did see them again.

Friday night lights
As we got close to home, we started talking about the future. We both realized it was Friday night. During our last year and a half of high school that meant one thing – basketball at the Lethbridge YMCA.

It was teen night and, for a dollar, we could have full access to everything the “Y” had to offer. We usually just settled in to play basketball.

We both joked that we were actually still teens, not that it mattered because the regular rate was something like $3.

So, after Chris dropped me off at the farm and he dropped his stuff at his Mom’s in town, I hopped in my parents’ Oldsmobile Omega and picked him up.

Immediately something was different at the “Y”. None of the guys, even the staff, we’d see around were there. Some of the staff were students too and, looking back, weren’t that much older than us really. They probably moved on to other jobs. The guys playing ball were hit and miss anyway, showing up on and off. They too probably found something else to occupy their time.

In their place were some kids, but not many, and even fewer to play pick-up with. We ended up playing two-on-two with a couple guys still in junior high. One had a ball with “Bullock” written on it. His name was Curtis. I asked if he was related to Benjy Bullock, who had been a phenom at LCI when we were in Grade 12. Curtis was his younger brother.

Beyond that, it wasn’t that much fun. Where just a year earlier we would close the place down, on this Friday night we didn’t turn out the lights. We left an hour after we came.

We never went back to the “Y” again and won’t – it was torn down a few years ago.

Friends for life?
We also tried to pick up where we left off with some of our high school friends. There were these two brothers we used to cruise down Mayor Magrath with, and we re-connected with them. There were a couple other guys I knew that we connected with as well.

However, the summer was altered forever when Chris went up north to work and, much to his dismay, live with his dad.

Initially, I still hung out with those brothers, and a couple other guys, but it just wasn’t the same. Everyone really was going their own way. Besides that, they were all staying in Southern Alberta and going to school in Lethbridge, either to the college or the university. I was headed back to Edmonton.

About halfway through the summer, I stopped calling those guys, and they never called me. I became much more of a home body, just going to work at the greenhouse until the season ended, then hanging around the farm.

I was just biding my time until it was time to go back to university when life would really start again.

I recall one day clearly at the greenhouse. It was actually part of their farmstead, so they had a bunch of graineries and buildings out back too. We were actually cleaning and organizing a bunch of wooden graineries. I was walking between buildings and I thought to myself, “I can’t wait to get back to Edmonton – and I am never coming back here.”

And I never went back to the farm to live again.

The song
There was always music playing in the greenhouse while we worked, and I heard “Electric Blue” a bunch on an old radio.

“Electric Blue” was actually co-written by Iva Davies of Icehouse and John Oates of Hall and Oates fame. It was released on Aug. 31, 1987, and was the second single from their “Man of Colours” album. The first was “Crazy’, which I had also heard and liked. That was also probably part of the reason I wanted to buy the tape initially.

Anyway, “Electric Blue” went all he way to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It also was number one in Australia, and reached number 10 in Canada.

Parting thoughts
I distinctly recall, at one time or another, walking around the greenhouse that summer of 1988 singing “Electric Blue”.

Even now as I write this, I am taken back to that summer which truly was a transition. Everything I left behind, metaphorically, was gone. Now, everything was waiting for me in a new place.