Steve Lukather - Luke

A random Tuesday in June 1998, I was an employee at Cedar Point Amusement Park. As with most of my days off, I took the opportunity to get away from the people and the park. I'd received a call from the NRM store saying Steve Lukather's Luke CD which I'd ordered had arrived. So NRM was my first stop upon my arrival at the Sandusky Mall that day.

The previous February, just a day or two after Valentine's Day I'd been dumped by a girl I'd been rather serious with, someone I'd met working at Cedar Point the previous summer. Being at seperate colleges in seperate states had given my heart a chance to heal for the most part... or so I thought.

But come summer 1998, there we both were back at the same park, working for the same department-- salt and lemon juice on a re-opened wound.

And then I popped Luke into my CD player. As I listened to the songs, it was like a band-aid being placed over that re-opened wound. Even though our (mine and Lukather's) experiences weren't the same, they were similar enough that I could relate to the lyrics, the anger, the bitterness on the album on a deeper and more personal level than I had ever been able to before.

I suddenly didn't feel so alone in my experiences. Just knowing that someone else out there, in this case one of my favorite guitarists, had been through the ringer as well and had come out okay-- well it gave me hope.

I didn't just hear the music on Luke I felt it, I understood it, I empathized with it. The rawness, the energy... It resonated with me very deeply.

And while time passed other loves came and went, whenever I listen to Luke, even though I haven't felt the way I did then in a long time, it still resonates with me. I still feel incredibly connected to that album because it was the band-aid for a broken-heart that has long since healed. My heart would have healed with or without that album but it certainly made the healing process considerably more bearable and helped me move on with my life a little faster than I might otherwise have been able to had that album and I not found one another.