One of the things that everyone can agree on regarding music is that certain songs will trigger certain memories. We listen because the sands of time are dusted off and music brings us back to a place and time when life was different. Slower, probably better.
While my columns are always personal, I usually try to keep my reminisces to a minimum. Who really wants to hear some old story about me? Few people.
However, I do have stories. I like to say I have more stories than the Empire State Building.
Before I start, I just want to remind my readers that these stories are how I remember them. Pretty good chance my memory has been affected by various substances I have enjoyed over the years, but thats another story entirely.
To understand my love for music you have to understand that in my house growing up there was a lot of music going on. From my mother listening to Saturdays With Sinatra and Henry Mancini to my older brother mangling some guitar chords in the playroom, to my sister listening to The Beatle’s White Album from beginning to end. W e always had music playing somewhere.
My brother worked in the record store inside of this long forgotten chain, Times Square Stores and he would spend every penny he had buying records, bringing them home and playing them on some cheap stereo he had in our playroom. He would let me come down and listen and while I was too young to understand a lot of the themes of these records there was no disguising the guitar genius of Jimi Hendrix or the true soul of Otis Redding. By the time he left for college, his record collection was immense. My sister was more into Emerson Lake and Palmer and Poco, which just broadened my listening horizons.
My first story is about my old apartment on Church Street in Knoxville, Tennessee while a student at The University of Tennessee. That apartment building, for some reason, was a hub of activity in the neighborhood. If there was a blow out party on Tuesday night, it would be there. It attracted all sorts of on the edge characters for sure. I just was there to witness it all. One specific memory I have is when, almost every night, at around 2 am the guy who lived below me would blast Frank Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage”. Without fail. Don’t get me wrong, I love the song but at 2 am at around 160 decibels? After a few days of this I finally saw the guy who lived there. His name was TK and he was from Malaysia. (His name had about 30 letters in in it so he shortened it to TK). I asked, “Whats with the Zappa at 2 am?”. He explained that his girlfriend lived in Singapore and he would call her every night and play that song. It seems that “Joe’s Garage” was their song. He wouldn’t talk to her, just play the song. How sweet but does it have to be so loud? He explained that before he calls her he gets high and whenever he gets high he plays music at extreme volumes. Which over the semester, he got very high, a lot. Thankfully, he had good taste in music and an endless supply of illegal substances. The building loved him.
While I have a lot of great memories, altered or not, from my days at UT the one thing that stands out was seeing Bruce Springsteen in front of maybe 1,500 people at the Civic Auditorium in Knoxville. My brother had worked at some radio station in Knoxville and a friend of his had gotten some tickets to the show and didn’t care for Springsteen so my brother scooped in and took them. Born to Run had been released I think a few months earlier and while it was a huge hit in the Northeast, the South seemed ambivalent. The show, if I recall correctly, lasted over three hours and was so different from every show I had seen prior that I went out and bought his first two albums and played them constantly for years to come. I can’t tell you specifics but I do remember the final encore was “Incident on 57th Street” segueing into “Rosalita”. Unreal.
I think many people would say their favorite musical recollections were from some great concert they have seen and I would have to agree. Concerts bring back so many great memories.
I could not tell you the date but one of the best concert memories (foggy for sure) I have is seeing Traffic at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Free opened for them and they almost blew Traffic away. I mean, come on Paul Rodgers live? Yet, I still remember “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”. The intro seemed like it was 20 minutes long. They could have just played that and I would have been happy. Best $6.50 I ever spent.
Three weeks later, I went to see Humble Pie at Madison Square Garden. Honestly, I do not remember this show at all. I bought Performance: Rockin’ The Fillmore to jog my memory. Didn’t help but I love Humble Pie just the same.
Unlike every 70+ former hippie who says he was at Woodstock, I can actually say I was at one of the shows that Led Zeppelin used for there Song Remains The same Live album at Madison Square Garden. We had 15th row floor seats and it was every bit as good as the movie shows. The funny thing about the concert was that when we got the tickets, one of my friends was so thrilled because he loved the Bonhams drum solo on “Moby Dick” and couldn’t wait. At the concert this friend started getting sleepy it seems right around the end of “Stairway to Heaven” and passes out, completely missing the 15 minute drum solo that Bonham put on. We tried waking him but he wasn’t budging. Checked his pulse and watched an incredible performance by one of the greatest rock rock drummers of all time.
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t rip something in my column and I actually have two memories that just ticked me off.
One was seeing Gregg Allman at Westbury Music fair. Ugh, he sucked. I didn’t want to go see him but I was peer pressured into it. It’s their fault, not mine. I did not find one redeeming thing about the show. Nothing. The residual effect of that was that I have never seen the Allman Brothers at The Beacon Theater and at least 389 people have told me I was stupid. The Brothers at The Beacon is one of lifes great pleasures they say. Eh, maybe I will go see Gov’t Mule. I think Warren Haynes was in the Allman Brothers for a while.
The other disappointment was ZZ Top at the Beacon. The show was an exact replica of some of their MTV videos without the women. The three of them just played each of their hits , note for note. Did the ZZ Top Bop at exactly the right time and they showed zero interest in doing anything other then there standard 3 minute and 32 second song. I saw the reviews and I must have been at a different show. Note for note is not worth paying for, I could watch that on YouTube.
Some people have written to me over the years and wondered why I actually like some of the New Wave/Alternative/Punk stuff. It’s hard to say why but I have an inkling as to when I accepted this unappreciated genre of Rock and Roll.
It probably started back in the late 70’s- early 80’s and you may or may not know it by now but I am a huge radio fan. I love the medium and have always listened to either AM talk Radio, FM Classic rock-Progressive rock and now I have Sirius XM where I can pretty much find anything I am in the mood for. However back in the day while most of my friends were listening to WPLJ-FM(Which had some of the best DJ’s on radio) or WNEW-FM (which had a deeper and wider playlist, plus great DJ’s) I was listening to WLIR-FM on Long Island. To understand WLIR-FM and what it meant to New Wave/Alternative music you should watch the documentary about the station, Dare to Be Different.
Anyway, I used to listen to WLIR-FM before it turned to Alternative music and they introduced me to Little Feat. “Dixie Chicken” was one their favorite Little Feat songs and it soon became mine. I loved the fact that this radio station would play stuff that even WNEW-FM at 3 in the morning wouldn’t play. They opened a whole new world to me. Lot’s of Southern Rock before it was even a thing. Then they switched formats and now I was listening to Bronsky Beat, The Ramones, Television, and finally U2. This is the station that broke U2 in the US and Bono has repeatedly thanked Dennis McNamara (Program Director back then) at shows in New York and elsewhere. The way the DJ’s and McNamara curated the set lists was amazing. They had issues with sponsors from the beginning and always seemed to be fighting with someone in the background but they would have no problem putting on Can’s “Halleluwah” at 2:30 in the afternoon. They definitely Dared to be Different and that has stuck with me for 40 years.
Like everyone that reads this column, I know there are hundreds if not thousands of great memories that revolve around music. The simple pleasure of listening to a great song can not be boiled down in a few hundred word essay with a couple of funny antidotes, it’s much deeper than that. Like everyone I know, we all have a soundtrack of our lives and what I try to do is bring back some memories and possibly add some new ones.
Gotta disagree with you on The Allman Bros. Saw Duane and Berry with the bros at Stony Brook University, best $5 I ever spent!!