246. LIFERS - Russ Spice and the East Side Kids of 1983

Picture the scene: It’s 1983 on the East side of town in Zion, Illinois! You’re hanging out at your buddy Russ Spice’s house. Playing Judas Priest songs on your Harmony guitars and watching “The Song Remains The Same” on MTV. Instead of James Dean in “Rebel Without A Cause”, our movie idol is Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli (is it still playing at the Dunes?). Maybe later we’ll ride our bikes down to the lake and swim in the heated shadow of the nuclear power plant and pray that we don’t grow up to be toxic avenging freaks. And then, hopefully, we can scrape enough pot seeds together so we can smoke ‘em through a beer can and get a cheap buzz going — after which, we’ll convince ourselves we have the munchies and try to get Curt to spend his News-Sun paper route money on lunch at Pizza House. It was a glorious time…