This Phil Collins hit really takes me back to the ’80s

With Genesis playing their last-ever concert last night (Saturday night), I'm thinking that this is a good time to look back at Phil Collins' music...and its impact on my life, and my early radio career.

NOTE: I originally wrote this blog last summer for my radio friends in New Jersey.

Enjoy, Night Shifters.

There's nothing like a song to take you back.

When you hear it, you're instantly transported back in time.

You know where you were, and what you were doing when you (first) heard it.

Phil Collins' "Don't Lose My Number" (#4/1985) is one of those songs that...really takes me back.

I had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with an "Honors" degree in Communications, as Phil's hit started cruising up the pop charts.

I scored my first post-college radio job, as a news anchor, and street reporter for a Central Jersey radio station (that no longer exists).

Yeah, I started out as a news guy.

As I hear "Don't Lose My Number," I'm cruising Route 22, Eastbound, the widows down on my first car, a 1985 Mitsubishi Mirage.  Phil Collins is blasting out of my radio speakers.

I'm on my way to Elizabeth, NJ to cover the Union County Freeholders.  Will they sell that big government-run healthcare facility to a private company? (yes)

Phil Collins plays on...

At my first Woodbridge Town Council meeting, one of the newspaper reporters is bringing me "up to speed." He says: "See the young guy on the end? That's Jim McGreevey. He's ambitious. He'll probably be governor someday."

As, Phil plays on...

I'm in Somerville, covering the Somerset County Freeholders.  I'm talking with Christine Todd Whitman.  It took time for me to be comfortable referring to her as "Christie." I do remember that first radio interview. I don't remember what we talked about, but Christie was wearing a blue and white plaid skirt, sporting pig-tails. Not the look we remember from her years in the statehouse.

"Don't Lose My Number" really takes me back.

By 1987, I would move from news radio to music radio...

...and I'd plug my headphones in at stations all over New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania...before coming "home"...

...to play "New Jersey's Greatest Hits" on the weekends, on New Jersey 101.5.

Including Phil Collins.

"Don't Lose My Number" really takes me back, to the "Big Decade."

Good times.

What song is is an instant "time machine" for you?