You're from Indiana? Do you know John?
After living in California for the last eight months and all I can say is, you people really love John Mellencamp.
Nowadays, if I need a Mellencamp fix all I have to do is scan through the local radio stations and more often than not “Pink Houses” or “Jack and Diane” will grace the speakers of my car stereo. I have a similar theory about the television show “Law and Order” which states that can turn on the television on at any point during the day and an episode of at least one of the show’s spinoffs will be playing.
This is significant because I am from southern Indiana and I thought we loved our native son more than anyone else.
I get reconfirmation of how wrong I was every time I tell someone where I grew up.
“Oh, really?” they ask, they eyes beginning to widen. “Do you know John Mellencamp?”
Of course, everyone in southern Indiana personally “knows” John Mellencamp the way everyone seems to magically be childhood friends with the favorite son of any town. Everyone from my neck of the woods has had at least story about a personal run-in with the chain-smoking Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.
So in short, yes, we all know John Mellencamp.
But you people...you people love this guy. And I can’t blame you. I had something similar happen to me before I moved here.
As I was gearing up for the cross-country drive I felt that I had to mentally prepare myself for the culture and geography of the place I was about to move to. Being a music lover, that meant that I had to find absolutely every kind of music to spring from the Bay area from Sly Stone to Too Short to E-40 and then listen to it obsessively. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that I even added some Steve Miller Band in the mix too just based on the line in “Rockin’ Me Baby” where he talks about the girls in Northern California having above average body temperatures.
I drank it all in expecting to hear the Doobie Brother’s song “Ukiah” to magically start playing as I pulled off Highway 101 just after a rousing rendition of Willie Nelson’s “Mendocino County Line.”
So you see, we’re not that different you Californians and I. Looking back I guess we were just looking across the country at each other saying “Huh, that looks interesting. Now if you’ll excuse me, I see that another episode of ‘Law and Order: SVU is coming on.”