Cross songs mark spot in time

Should I be embarrassed that the news about Christopher Cross coming to the City of Roses Music Festival made me giddy?

After finding out last month, I rushed to www.christopher cross.com, which has a neat little Flash introduction with "Sailing" playing in the background. His discography brought it all back for me: crying to "Think of Laura" (like death is so real when you're 13), believing that "Ride Like the Wind" was rock 'n' roll, singing "Arthur's Theme" in the car with Mom. He was a musician my parents and I could agree on, unlike the funk and hip-hop artists I found later. Their music led to a particularly weird conflict that resulted in my mother rhythmically banging her palm on the dashboard, demonstrating the "sexual beat" in Johnny Gill's "Rub You the Right Way."

So I found it mildly depressing that anyone under 30 had no idea who I was talking about when I mentioned Christopher Cross.

"You mean those two little kids with the 'Jump' song?" one woman asked me incredulously. "Couldn't they get anyone better than that?"

She was referring to the rap duo that spewed out these unforgettable lyrics in 1991:

Jump jump

The Mac Dad will make you jump jump

The Daddy Mac will make you jump jump

Kris Kross will make you jump jump

Uh, no. I don't think those two will be coming to City of Roses, although, according to www.sonymusic.com/artists/ KrisKross, they are still working.

Then came a request from one of our freelance writers -- a college kid -- offering to cover the City of Roses.

I e-mailed him back: "If you want to cover Christopher Cross and you can name three of his songs that were in the top 10, you can cover him freelance Saturday. But ... you'd have to 'Write like the Wind' to get the story in. (That's a hint.)"

His discouraging reply: "The only song of his I know is that 'Sailing' song, and that's just because I've been hearing the advertisements on the radio. Does he even have any other songs? So I don't think I could handle that story. Thanks anyway. Sorry."

In short, not even the promise of quick cash and the chance to grow in his craft was enough to make this guy so much as call up the Christopher Cross official Web site and copy a couple of songs down.

That made me feel shaking-my-fist, back-in-my-day old.

But never mind all that. My fellow thirtysomething friends and I gladly bought our tickets and settled in for one of the most trying outdoor concerts on record that wasn't actually canceled. And when Cross took the stage, it was a thrill for me. I didn't care that the video era killed his career.

The problem Saturday was the intermittent nature of the rainfall. It would come down just hard enough for Cross to consider quitting, then stop. At least a third of his audience, maybe half, were steadily walking out in the middle of songs, unwilling to get damp and cold for a performer they paid $10 -- $12 at the gate -- to see.

Me? I would have sat through a hurricane to hear him play "Sailing" live. I had my water-resistant jacket with hood, my friends to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with and a rain-diluted beer.

"Wow, he's not getting upset at all!" one friend observed.

I can't imagine he would. He's possibly the most mellow singer of all time. Instead of getting upset, he packed in four hits at the end, plus one encore, so people got to hear what they came for. Word on the street is that he headed up to Port Cape afterward and did a couple more numbers with the band playing there.

So thanks, Christopher Cross, for singing through all the terrible weather. And thanks, City of Roses organizers, for making me remember.

Heidi Hall is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.