Just before my ju-jitsu lesson ...

As soon as I was old enough to love music, I fell in love with John Farnham. The funny thing is, he was an Australian singer who'd already been around for quite a while, but in the late 1980s he hit the big time again with his "Whispering Jack" album, and I was totally hooked.

I knew all the details about his second "comeback" album, the follow-up to "Whispering Jack", and I was counting the days until it was released. When the first single, "Age of Reason" (from the album of the same name) was just about to come out, I heard my favorite radio DJ say that they had a sneak preview of it coming up. I quickly put a blank cassette in my recorder and was ready to hit record when it began.

I loved the song immediately, but I probably would have loved it no matter what he'd sung. The anticipation was enough. But I was pretty annoyed because that evening, I had to go to a ju-jitsu lesson - my mother had insisted my sister and I take self-defence classes. I could only listen to the "Age of Reason" single - stopping and rewinding after each lesson - three times before she knocked on my bedroom door and said we had to leave.

That night, punching, kicking and rolling around, I was trying to sing "Age of Reason" in my head. Of course I hadn't had a chance to remember all the words yet, but I tried my best. And you can guess what I did as soon as I got home again that evening - hit rewind again and listened to it at least 20 times before my mother told me to go to sleep.