Ah, the musical hunt – finding that long lost song from your childhood. While I can’t say Reunion’s “Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)” made a great philosophical impression upon me, but it was very unique and memorable, for me and many others who heard Joey Levine’s patter through a ‘who’s who’ of the musical industry of the early seventies.

Patter? That’s the term Wikipedia used to describe the song format. When I was a kid and trying to find this song I would say “he kinda talked fast”. Later I would say “rap but not really rap”. Patter, apparently, it the correct term for this type of song – had I know this it might not have taken me nine years to find it. Other ‘patter songs’ you might know are Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week”, INXS’ “Mediate” (which immediately follows “Need You Tonight” and its unlawful in not to be played together in the state of Nevada) and Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

“Life Is a Rock” was released in the beginning of 1974. It was released as a novelty song though I didn’t think it was funny per se. I thought it was cool. This guy sang so fast and not so much sang but talked through a barrage of lyrics. As soon as you heard one word he was on to the fifth word. Whenever we heard it was playing on the radio we run over to listen – mainly to catch more of the lyrics.

The problem was it was a radio song. We never owned it and if we sang the chorus I don’t remember it. And thus began one of my longest searches for a childhood memory.

As I described in my search for “The Birdman of Alcatrash”, much of a music search centers around the iconic Phonolog. But it has its limits. As a kid, teachers would tell you to use a dictionary to spell a word. What always tripped me up was – how are you supposed to find the word if you don’t know how to spell it? Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the dictionary lists songs alphabetically. Thank God for spell check for terrible spellers like me!

How do you find a song that you don’t know what its called? You talk to the experts and that is usually determined by friends or ego. Next you need to have a base level of information.

This left me incapable of finding “Life is a Rock”. In the nearly 10 years it took me to find this song, whenever I would attempt to describe it it to a ‘music expert’ came out as – “He kind of talks fast but its not rap, he goes “na na na na na nah”, then there’s a chorus, that I don’t remember, but I know in one of the fast parts he says “Doris Day and Jack the Ripper.” The clerk at the record store, or the friend of the friend or the latest ‘music expert’ would just stare me. And when I was done explaining the best I could almost see the literal thought bubble appearing over their head, “you got to be shittin’ me.”

Not to take away any accolades from Todd Hersted, or ‘Harley’ as he wanted to be called, but I would have eventually found “Life Is a Rock” without his help. As I shifted from albums to CD, I began to buy a series from Rhino called “Super Hits of the 70s: Have a Nice Day” and on Volume 13, track 12 my quest would have ended. And I would have been alone downstairs in our first house with the headphones on and Desi sleeping before her weekend morning shift. I would have no one to share the victory of my ended quest – and no story to tell.

As I said, it took me almost ten years to find this song, so this happens far from the eleven year old boy in fifth grade that would hear the song from his parent’s AM car radio or the clock radio in the kitchen of our new house in Des Plaines. When my quest ended, I had just turned twenty one years old, a junior at Carthage College and living a dorm – South Hall.

In one sense, I had become a very different person than the fat shy dinosaur-loving, ghost story-reading, cactus-growing fifth grader that I was. And while these typically drastic years for anyone, most would agree for me these years had been more drastic. And while it may be hard to see the child in the young man I was becoming, the child was alive and well – welded to the core of my frame.

First you need to know who I am or who I have become. I am Waba – a nickname started in Wilmot Junior High. And while it wasn’t surprising the nickname followed me from junior high to high school, it also made the leap to college. By my junior, it was more popular than my real name. It became how I identified my ‘self’.

And like most college juniors, I was too comfortable with myself and suffered from ego and bravado. I also admit my affliction of these ailments was likely worst then most twenty-one year-olds.

College was a great experience for me. I also took some classes there. I’d say I learned about the dangers of liquor, drugs and sex – first hand. OK, not so much of the dangers of sex. I loved the dorm life, a bunch of twenty-somethings living together – what was not to love?

Freshman year we quickly learned about ‘Dorm Storming’ – the aimless wandering through the hallways in any of Carthage’s four dormitories – Tarble, Denhart, Johnson and South. The real purpose was to meet girls, in our case, and to break the boredom of an afternoon or evening. I didn’t really do alot of ‘Dorm Storming’ – mainly because I wasn’t good with girls, but I did well as a wingman.

My Junior year I roomed with Eric Stephen. A six six/six seven Carthage Basketball player from Detroit. He was a Sophomore and we both loved music. One of my strongest memoroes of Eric was while we were waiting for our friends to go to lunch, Eric started dancing around our room to Culture Club with a handkerchief over his head mocking Boy George – he cracked us up. I still smile at that memory.

Earl and I (Eric’s nickname was Earl. Why? Because last year Rusty Stamer said so – and so it was) had the first room on the hallway off the stairs and we were right across from the third floor’s elevator. While it could get noisy on the weekends when everyone was coming home drunk from the bars, it was a great place for groups to gather before they left the floor.

Earl and I had an old bar I stole from our basement setup in front of the window that faced north. We bunk beds that we bought from Kivi (friend who now lived next store) setup on our west wall. My album collection provided the foundation for the stereo on the east wall of our room. Because of where our room was, it was a great social junction and people always stopped in.

Earl and I weren’t the only one with nicknames either. Carthage had a tradition of naming their floors. While fraternity and sorority floors were just named for their particular Greek organizations (Sigs, Dons, Buffs, Kappa Chi, etc), even the independent floors had nicknames. So while the official Carthage College information said Johnson Hall 1A (first Floor, North wing), they were better known by their nicknames. There was Fourth High, The Attic, Mooners, TKD – which stood for Tappa Keg Daily, IPT – which stood for I Phelta Thi (there’s another whole story about changing the name to Johnson Country Club – but very quickly – as incoming freshmen, we were told the floor had a bad reputation and agreed to change the name. That turned out to be a huge mistake perpetuated by current RA – Resident Assistant, who would constantly complain about my music. Well, not the music “but if you could just turn the bass down.” Most of the kids on that floor left the following year). I spent my Sophomore and Junior year on the ‘A B Itch’ floor.

In the idle hours during the week when we weren’t at class or someone else’s room, Earl or I would stand behind the bar playing solitaire and spinning our records. There was one particular March afternoon where the room was filled with bright light from the sunny day outside. But the cold March temperatures still kept us from opening the windows yet. The hallway was quiet since most people were still in class or studying. We weren’t always partying – though your priorities would change as the weekend got closer. Earl was at class so I was behind the bar playing solitaire. Our door was open and I had an album playing. I probably had the volume higher then it should have been.

I was pretty active in the Student Activity Board (SAB) at Carthage. It was my favorite social connection and a easy way to be involved. By Junior year I had found out the SAB facility advisor, Bill Hoare, had a subscription to Billboard magazine. I never understood why he had a subscription, but at $150 a year it was something I could never afford or justify. So when he was done with the current issue he would give it to me. (Sometimes this consisted of pulling it from his inbox, flipping some pages and handing it to me.) So for my Junior and Senior years, I basically had a free subscription to the music industry’s trade magazine. I read every issue cover to cover and used the ads to decorate my dorm room and my room at home. Needless to say, I was very current with my record collection.

So on a sunny but chilly March afternoon, I found myself with a free afternoon so I treated myself to some tunes, some solitaire and a beer. So from my stance behind our bar, I saw Todd Hersted popped through the stairway door and walked passed my noisy room. I had Big Country’s ‘The Crossing’ on the turntable. Thanks to Bill’s Billboard subscription, I had picked it up after Christmas since it was topping the British Chart. Typical for me, it was too loud for Todd to talk and with something between a salute and a wave, he quickly passed my door and continued down the hallway. And I went back to my beer, solitaire game and Big Country.

As I was trying to figure my next solitaire move, when Todd appeared in my doorway. Todd Hersted was Mike Hackbaugh’s ‘townie friend’. ‘Townies’ were students that didn’t live in the dorm and commuted to school. Us dorm kids looked down on Townies. I’m sure the townie kids looked down on Dorm Kids as a bunch of spoiled brats but Carthage didn’t really have an off-campus living space so most townies were kids that still lived at home.

Todd waited as I jumped around the bar to turn the music down so he could talk.

“Hey,” Todd said, “I’m supposed to meet Mike at 3:00 but he’s not there, is it cool if I hang out here until he back?”

“Yea, yea, that’s cool,” I told him.

Todd was ok. He typically wore a black leather coat over his t-shirt and jeans. He wore his brown hair a little longer and blown back. He looked like an eighties version of Lief Garrett. He thought he was a ladies man, and from his work at the bars that I had seen, he was. His nickname was Harley but no one ever called him that, in fact, I didn’t even know if he had a motorcycle, let alone a Harley.

Some kids had their shit together, Mike Hackbarth was one of those kids. I don’t think grades came easy to him but he worked hard and most of the time it paid off. On the other side, Mike wasn’t shut-in either – he was one of the guys I would see at the bars and hang with. Mike worked hard and played hard.

I don’t know how Todd and Mike met or much about their relationship, but Todd was over alot. Everyone on AB Itch had gotten used to Todd’s presence so I wasn’t surprised when he showed up at my door.

“So what’s going on?” I asked. It was a Guy Rule to ask a useless question after they’ve just explained why they are visiting you.

“Nothing, you?” anther Guy Rule – a stupid question should be followed by something completely useless as well.

“Just chillin’, listening to Big Country.” And though you would be right to think I was a music sob, I really did listen to everything. My problem was that I didn’t really care if other people didn’t care. I just tried to impress people with the latest bands so in six months I could say, ‘yea, they were so six months ago.’

“Yea, they sound really cool.”

“Have you heard of them?” I asked.

“Yea, I think so. They do that ‘Wish’ song?”

“No, their first single is ‘In a Big Country’.” I was starting to smell bullshit but just in case I got up and grab the album cover and handed it to Todd. He took the cover because that’s what people do when you shove things in their face.

“I picked this up during Christmas break. They are from Ireland…” and I pattered on their chart performance and how I had to get this album as soon as it was released in the United States. Todd flipped the cover over a few times and nodded at the appropriate moments.

“Yes, they sound really cool,” he told me.

“Here’s the first single,” and I got up, flipped the album over and dropped the needle on the first track.

“Oh yea, I know this song. They do this song? Wow, this is a great song!”

I beamed in turning on another person on to a new song not realizing yet I was sucking from Todd’s tit of bullshit. This guy was good. Todd air guitared at the right spots and I stood tapping to the drumbeat satisfied at my latest conversion – unaware of the bullshit dripping down the side of my face.

‘In a Big Country’ ended and was followed by ‘Inwards’. “This song’s ok,” I rated.

Todd reached over and turned the volume down so we could talk. I HATE when people turn my music down. My room, my rules. I just saw Todd’s visit getting shorter.

“You got homework? I don’t want to keep you if you’re studying,” he said.

I knew that was bullshit. Todd knew that was bullshit – he saw my beer on the bar and I already told him I was chilling. And after he turned down my music. I think it was time to separate from Todd. I got up and when back behind the bar to my solitaire game.

“No, I’m good, just some reading I’ll do have supper.” I picked up the cards to look at where I was with my game.

“Hey, you got another one?” Todd pointing to my bottle sitting on the bar.

Ah, now I know the real reason Todd stopped in. He wanted a beer. Suddenly I felt the bullshit on the side of my face. And even if I wiped it away, we both knew I spent the last ten minutes not realizing it was there. Son of a bitch, Todd got me. I could have said I didn’t have anymore but that would have been a lie. And that would have meant I couldn’t have another and my current one was almost gone. And I had just bought a case with deposit bottles, I was trapped.

“Sure” and I reached down into the frig and grabbed two Old Milwaukees, prided their caps off and handed one to Todd as he met me at the bar.

“Cheers,” Todd said and raised his bottle. I reluctantly bounced my bottle off of his. He had a big shit-eating grin on his face because he knew he had won. His whole mannerism changed. I think he completely forgot about the fact that Mike could be coming any minute and he had a full bottle of beer. However, I had seen Todd at the bars enough to know he would finish his beer if Mike walked up the stairway right now. This is why Todd had stopped in.

“You’re taking Marketing, right?” he asked.

“Yea, we just turned in our position paper last week. Johnson said we’ve got to select our product or service for a presentation by the end of the month. You have Johnson?”

“Nah, I couldn’t fit marketing in this semester. I’ve got to take English II again to fill a dimension,” Todd said.  Todd seemed to have trouble fitting a lot of courses in.

“Yea, I’ve got my dimensions filled for the most part. Death and Dying for religion next year and Science with Astronomy this semester.”

“Your taking Astronomy?” Todd asked.

I couldn’t tell the way Todd asked if the ‘what a dork’ was implied or if he possibly was impressed. And while I was trying to decide we both noticed that The Crossing had ended.

“‘The Storm’ is one of my favorite songs off this,” I said as I walked around the bar.

“Yea it was good,” Todd returned. We both knew neither of us had been listening and he wasn’t really listening to the album at all. He took a long swig from his beer.

“‘Harvest Home’ was released as a single but it didn’t really do well,” I said as I flipped the album over and started the other side. “I do like how they use the bagpipes, especially in this song. They’re from Ireland.”

“Yea, you mentioned that.”

We listened as Big Country did indeed play their guitars and bagpipes off each other. Todd was actually listening and turned back to me and his beer as I got behind the bar again.

“Why don’t they make songs that sound really cool anymore?” Todd asked.

“You mean like Van Halen?” I pictured Todd as a headbanger though he didn’t really wear bands shirts.

“No, songs that that had a cool sound.”

“Like a cool guitar riff or something?” I asked. If I didn’t know any better, I was going to have my first music conversation with Todd Hersted.

“It doesn’t have to be a guitar, it could just singing.”

“Vocals, or keyboard”

“Yea”

“Like Queen? ‘Under Pressure’ was cool.”

Yes, stuff like that”

“You mean a hook, a gimmick”

“Yea, something cool so you want to hear the song again.” I think Todd was saying he didn’t want to hear Big Country again.

“‘Jump’ has a cool hook with the keyboard. Van Halen has never done keyboards before,” I offered.

“Yea but don’t a lot of bands have keyboards in their songs now?”

“True, especially new wave.”

“‘Jump’ is good and all but I’m talking like in the old days.”

“Like with Zepplin and Hendrix?”

“No, more like Leo Sayer and Blue Suede”

“Leo Sayer,” I repeated. “I remember him, from the seventies.”

“Yea”

“Who’s Blue Suede?” I asked.

“Ooga chuka, ooga chuka, ” Todd started singing.

“Oh, yea duh, I couldn’t remember who actually did that song.”

“Now that was a great song,” Todd pronounced, “better than this stuff.”

Wait a minute, I think he just dissed my Big Country. “Well, there’s more to music then ‘ooga chuka, ooga chuka‘, I don’t think they every had any other songs.”

“Do these guys?” Todd asked nodding to the turntable? Touche Todd, touche…

“Well its only their first album.”

“The seventies had some great fucking tunes. Hey, do you have another one? ” Todd wiggled his empty bottle at me.

Funny how the swearing rises with your buzz. But I also understood what he was saying. There was some great music in the seventies.

“Did you ever hear ‘In the Year 2525?” I asked.

“Yea, that was cool. ‘In the 2525,'” Todd start singing to his bottle “If woman can survive, they may find, in the year 2525.”

“Yea, I remember a friend of mine in grade school turned me on that. Randy Paluka, or something like that. He had the classic seventies basement. Bean bag chairs, the long beads in the doorway. He had the 45. What a great song.”

“I remembering hearing in my dad’s car. He really liked it but he liked that song.”

“My parents mostly listed to country music – or WGN”

“Yea, my dad was a rocker. I remember,” and Todd started singing “Hold your head up, yeah, hold your head, yeah, hold you head, ahhh.“

“Yea, that was great song.”

“Do you know who did that?” Todd asked.

“No,” I couldn’t even fake a guess.

“Argent,” Todd answered, “those guys could rock”

“Like Golden Earring, and radar lov uv‘,” I sang back. I guess the beer was loosening me up too. Todd grabbed his drumsticks and picked up my air guitar and finished, “durge durge da durge.”

“Hey, do you have any old seventies stuff with all those albums under there?” Todd asked pointing to my record crates. “This ‘Little Country’ just isn’t cutting it.” That was the second time he dissed them.

“I’ve got a bunch of 45’s at home but I don’t bring them up. My brother and I used to go in together and buy the #1 song each week, back when I was in Junior High.”

Todd gave me a weird look, “You could some lame songs that way, like ‘Muskrat Love’.”

“Actually, we did buy that.” Todd laughed “We also got England Dan and John Ford Coley.”

“I’d Really Love To See You Tonight”

“Yep, ‘Devil Women’?”

“Cliff Richard”

“Very good, ‘Slow Dancing, Swaying to the Music’?”

Todd looked down at the bar trying to read the linoleum, “Johnny Rivers!”

“Damn, you know your seventies.”

“Black Betty?” Todd asked.

“Ram Jam”

“Fox On The Run?” he challenged.

“Sweet, and their other singles?” I asked back.

“‘Ballroom Blitz’ and ‘Love is Like Oxygen’,” and took a step back to point at me in his ‘gotcha stance’.

“And…?”

“Well, those were their big hits,” he said.

“There’s one more,” I urged.

“A big song?” he questioned.

“I would say it was a top ten hit”

“By ‘Sweet’? no way”

“You’ll kick yourself when I tell you.”

“And I’ll know it?” Todd asked.

“Definitely”

Todd struggled a little longer. Even the linoleum wasn’t helping him. Finally gave up. “Alright, tell me.”

“Little Wily”

“No shit?”

“Their first single. ‘Little willy willy won’t go home, you can’t catch willy cause willy won’t go, little willy willy won’t – go home’,” I sang and Todd joined in.

“Can I have one more? Todd asked.

I was in a good mood and we were having a good time, so I reached back in the frig for another beer for each of us.

“Last one, ” I told him.

“Yea, yea, that’s it”

I settled back behind the bar. “There’s some old seventies songs I can never find.”

“Try me.”

“Well, I’ve got two left. I found the right song but I haven’t found the actual 45 yet.”

“What song?”

“‘Those Were the Days’ really old, maybe even sixties.”

“Yea, I know that one but not who sang it.”

“I’m still looking for ‘The Birdman of Alcatraz’, know it?”

“How does it go?”

“I don’t remember. Its been so long ago but ‘birdman of Alcatraz’ is the chorus”

In his best Jack Nicholas Shining imitation, Todd said, “How the FUCK! am I going to help you, if you don’t know how the Fuck it goes?”

I laughed. “The other one is kinda like the Birdman, I don’ t know how it goes. It has this chorus, but I don’t know how it goes but the guys talks really fast, just a whole bunch of words and stuff. The only ones I remember is ‘Doris Day and Jack the Ripper‘.”

Todd looked at me and said , “I think I know that one.”

“Really? what’s it called?”

“Did it go like this – ‘B.B. Bumble and the Stingers, Mott the Hoople, Ray Charles Singers, Lonnie Mack and twangin’ Eddy, here’s my ring we’re goin’ steady.”

Holy shit.

And Todd kept going, “Take it easy, take me higher, liar liar, house on fire Locomotion, Poco, Passion, Deeper Purple, Satisfaction, Baby baby gotta gotta gimme gimme gettin’ hotter, Sammy’s cookin’, Lesley Gore and Ritchie Valens, end of story'”

“Oh my God!” I yelled “Who is it?”

Todd ignored me and kept going, “‘Mahavishnu, fujiyama, kama-sutra, rama-lama, Richard Perry, Spector, Barry, Archies, Righteous, Nilsson, Harry Shimmy shimmy ko-ko bop and Fats is back and Finger Poppin”

“Stop, stop, ” I begged, “what song is it?” I was almost in tears.

Todd started the chorus and his eyes got larger like he was trying to beam the answer to me, “‘Life is a rock but the radio rolled me, Gotta turn it up louder, so my DJ told me, whoa whoa whoa whoa, Life is a rock but the radio rolled me, At the end of my rainbow lies a golden oldie.’“

“Oh My God!” I said, “‘Life is a Rock’?”

“‘Life is a Rock But the Radio Rolled Me’ by Reunion, Todd said.

“That is incredible. You know all those lyrics?”

And Todd started again and this time I just let him go, “‘FM, AM, hits are clickin’ while the clock is tock-a-tickin’, Friends and Romans, salutations, Brenda and the Tabulations, Carly Simon, I behold her, Rolling Stones and centerfoldin’, Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers, can’t stop now, I got the shivers, Mungo Jerry, Peter Peter Paul and Paul and Mary Mary, Dr. John the nightly tripper, Doris Day and Jack the Ripper,’“

I pointed to Todd and smiled.

“‘Gotta go Sir, gotta swelter, Leon Russell, Gimme Shelter, Miracles in smokey places, slide guitars and Fender basses, Mushroom omelet, Bonnie Bramlett, Wilson Pickett, stop and kick it. Life is a rock but the radio rolled me, Gotta turn it up louder, so my DJ told me, whoa whoa whoa whoa, Life is a rock but the radio rolled me, At the end of my rainbow lies a golden oldie. Arthur Janov’s primal screamin’, Hawkins, Jay and Dale and Ronnie, Kukla, Fran and Norma Okla, Denver, John and Osmond, Donny, JJ Cale and ZZ Top and LL Bean and De De Dinah, David Bowie, Steely Dan and sing me prouder, CC Rider, Edgar Winter, Joanie Sommers, Osmond Brothers, Johnny Thunders, Eric Clapton, pedal wah-wah, Stephen Foster, do-dah do-dah, Good Vibrations, Help Me Rhonda, Surfer Girl and Little Honda, Tighter, tighter, honey, honey, sugar, sugar, yummy, yummy, CBS and Warner Brothers, RCA and all the others. Life is a rock but the radio rolled me, Gotta turn it up louder, so my DJ told me, whoa whoa whoa whoa, Life is a rock but the radio rolled me, At the end of my rainbow lies a golden oldie.”

Holy shit. This guy just did this entire song I’ve been looking for over nine years. Later it would hit me the sheer talent involved in memorizing the whole thing let alone doing the whole patter.

“How did you do that?” I asked. It was a stupid question but all I could think to ask.

Todd explained, “When I was a kid I thought it was a cool song and worked on it until I had the whole thing memorized.”

Suddenly Mike was at my door. “Hey Todd, you ready?”

“Yea sure, ” he called back. Mike had already disappeared back to his room. “I’ve got the 45, I’ll bring it for you.” He downed his beer as fast as the bottle would allow and put it on the bar.

“That was awesome, thanks” was all I could manage.

“Thanks for the beer, later” and pointed at me as he made his exit.

Todd did bring me the 45 a few days later but even though I played it a dozen times it didn’t compare to the memory of his performance that buzzy March afternoon.

Later in life, I would find some people, myself included, would find a trick or two they would perfect and deliver to an audience. I figured Todd had a number of tricks that would use to impress the girls. And when you had a new audience it was amazing but repeated performances only dulled the shine.

I never saw Todd do Reunion’s “Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled)” again. But thereafter, whenever I heard that song I would picture Todd singing to his bottle in my college dorm room and when the chorus came a fat nine year boy would join him with a big old round smile on his face.

In retrospect, its hard to think that the Carpenters were ever cool. And even growing up in the early Seventies I would never say they were ‘cool’. But everyone knew the Carpenters in the Seventies.

In Devonshire, my elementary school until Fourth Grade, we did not have a music room. Instead, our music teacher would roll his electric piano into our classroom and we had our music class. I don’t remember his name but I remember him being a slightly bulbous man with glasses.

He taught us musical notes and he had this wonderful device that that held 5 pieces of chalk and he could quickly draw 5 lines across the blackboard. With this he taught us ‘F-A-C-E’ and ‘Every Good Boy Does Fine’ to identify the notes on the spaces and lines.

What I remember most about music class was him teaching us Simon and Garfunkel’s “Feelin’ Groovy” and The Carpenters’ “Sing”. I didn’t know these were ‘regular songs’ so when I heard them on the radio I was surprised. “Feelin’ Groovy” holds such great imagery like “Hello lamp post, what cha knowing? I’ve come to watch your flowers growing.”

I thought ‘Sing’ was another song like “Do-Re-Mi” – I thought it was a song someone had made up to teach children about music. I thought all grade schools taught their children these songs and in the mid seventies, they probably did. ‘Sing’ didn’t have the purely educational elements of “Do-Re-Mi” but it sounded like a ‘little kids’ song – like “The Candy Man” from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

It turns out “Sing” was a children’s song written originally by Joe Raposo from Sesame Street. The Carpenters heard the song for the first time while guests on a  Robert Young with the Young television in 1973. They released it on their Now & Then album and it became their seventh gold single.

Toward the end 1973 the Carpenters released their first Greatest Hits which included “Sing”, “We’ve Only Just Begun”, “Top of the World”, “Ticket to Ride”, “Superstar”, “Rainy Days and Mondays”, “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and others. Had this collection been released when I was an adult, I would have hated it. Richard Carpenter, the controlling arm of the brother/sister team, did some rearrangements of their hits and added new transitions and bridge between the songs. My view on this is that you do not mess with the original mix – espectially when it released on a greatest hits collection.

I learned about this album from Hope who was borrowed it from the neighbors down the street. This was my first album of ‘our music’ and understanding there could a bunch of songs on something bigger then a 45 record. While I had listened to my parents albums occasionally on our Hi-Fi they weren’t really current albums (OK – maybe they were but they were country – so they really didn’t count).

On a brightly lit morning, I found our record player sitting in our front porch – amongst my cactuses. Little by little my cactuses were taking over the front porch. To understand where my collection came from, you have to go back to when Dad left us.

Actually, I didn’t know Dad had left us, that I found that out years later. What I do remember was a time when we ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But when Dad returned, typical of many parents, he smoothed things over with a bribe, a small gift. I was bribed with a Venus Fly Trap bulb.

Apparently he was gone for a week or so to my grandparents in Florida – his parents. When he returned he passed out gifts to each of us, and for me, everything was pretty much forgotten. Kids tend to like shiny things and the Venus Fly Trap bulb I received was dazzling.

As my parents had taught me when you wanted to learn about something, you looked it up in the encyclopedias – that’s why they had bought them in 1968 for just over $300 (I’m sure with low monthly payments). We had the World Book set from 1968. Pulling down the U-V Volume, I flipped to Venus Fly Trap and after I finished the short article it said “also see Carnivorous  Plants”. I went back to the desk that held our encyclopedias and pulled out Volume C. Another short article later is said “also see Bladderworts, Cobra Lilies, Pitcher Plants, Sundews and Venus Fly Traps.” I was soon surrounded by five books of varying thicknesses. After a number of trips to the library, my new interest had officially turned into an obsession.

And because my parents encouraged our ‘scientific studies’ the following Christmas I was awarded an Insectivorous Garden which included a Venus Fly Trap and a Northern Pitcher Plant. Unfortunately these were not included in the box and they had to be sent away for. They took forever to arrive – no matter how long I waited in the bay window (this was probably because they could not be shipped in the winter but the kid in the bay window didn’t hear that part of it).

I don’t know where the offer came from or if they had too many unhappy kids or just good marketing, the Insectivorous Garden company sent another offer for 5 cactuses. I don’t know if it was my constant begging, whining or if Mom just felt bad that my carnivorous plants taking so long to arrive, she got me the cactuses, which arrived before the carnivorous plants! Not having a container to plant them in, Mom gave me a round short glass bowl to plant new spiny friends in.

I remember laying in the bay window with them as they soaked up the sun and heat of that early spring days of 1973. Later that evening we had gone to a Lenten service at our church. Arriving at home I rushed to the bay window to check on my succulent friends. While the terrarium was there all but one of the cactuses were gone!

“Mom, Dad! my cactuses are gone!” I yelled.

With a burst of laughter Mom said, “It looks like Jamie has them.”

Our new miniature poodle Jamie had also been curious about my spiny friends. In the process of investigating the terrarium, she clearly got too close because the result was four cactus rollers in his ears. He looked like a cave woman setting her hair. He was apparently sulking in the kitchen when we came home. I don’t think the family’s laughter help his mood any. It felt like a scene from The Brady Bunch. And once Mom and Hope had freed the cactus from his ears, I quickly replanted them in their terrarium.

After we had moved to our new house I learned that Pesche’s Garden Center was only a bike ride away. Before we moved I would have to beg Mom to take me to Klemn’s, which was near the other house, to look for carnivorous plants and cacti. Now I could go to Pesche’s whenever I could scrap together 50¢ or a buck, pedal out down Lee Street (who knew Lee had his very own street!), past the very first McDonalds on to River Road and into their parking lot. By the time we went to Florida to visit my grandparents I had almost ten cactuses.

From a cactus perspective, our vacation in Florida was a huge success. Apart from going to  Disney World, catching lizards and swimming in the ocean, we had to visit my grandparents friends. Of course visiting old people was never fun – being traipsed about on show for older people to poke and shake and fawn over. And after the initial introductions, there was never anything to do at old people’s houses.

But after our first visit, I soon realized after my mom or dad, or grandma or grandpa mentioned I had a cactus garden, out to the garden we’d go and snip-snip or chop-chop and I had a new cactus for my garden. I got opuntias, cereus and a C. peruvianus. While everyone was very nice, I think I was only of one of us kids that were excited when grandma and grandpa said we were going to visit a friend of theirs.

One visit I remember standing with my parents and grandparents (my brothers and sisters had gone off to explore the new house) waiting for one of them to mention my cactus collection. When they did, the old man gave the Pavlovian response – “well, let me give you some!” and off he went to his shed. Dad and I followed him as he opened the door and returned with pruning shears and gloves. Off to the Opuntias we went.  After a little wrestling he produced a new pad for my collection.

“You OK?” my dad asked and we both saw a number of spines sticking out of his gloved hand.

“Oh sure, I’m used to it,” he said and pulled off his other glove and began pulling out the spines. After a couple of seconds I realized he was pulling the spines out with a hand that had no fingers.

I nearly dropped my Opuntia. Dad leaned into me with warning. Luckily I was old enough not to yell, “Holy Crap! you have no fingers!” Of course now I couldn’t look away from Mr. No Fingers. And of course, I had to tell Dave, who told Dawn and the others. And for the rest of our visit we looked for glimpses of his mangled hand. I think I remember eventually telling us he lost his fingers in a rail-yard accident.

Regardless I have received another addition to my cactus collection. When we had returned home from our Florida Trip and my garden swelled to close to twenty plants. I convinced Mom they needed to be kept on the front porch since that had a southern exposure and that’s what cacti needed. And was cooler in the winter, a requirement for cacti.

So it was among my cactuses on a late Saturday morning I found the portable record player setup and the Carpenter’s ‘Singles’ album available to play. As I mentioned before, Hope had borrowed the album from our neighbors a couple of doors down, the Boscos (interesting family – who knew you could use a snow shovel to clean your house!).

In the early 70’s there were many a science fairs that tested the theory you were supposed to talk to your plants or play music for them. I remember my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Krenick, tell the class about his experiment with plants. One plant everyone talked to and the other they would ignore. By the end of the year the ‘talked to’ plant was doing very well but the ‘ignored’ plant wasn’t doing well at all. While they expected the ‘talk to’ plant to do well, they hadn’t anticipated the ‘ignored’ to do so much worse. After voicing his observations to the class one student confessed, while he was leaving at the end of the school year, that every day he would greet the ‘talked to’ plant nicely and wish it a good morning. But the ‘ignored’ plant he told it to shrivel up and die.

With the record player being so conveniently setup for my cactus, I played them the Carpenter’s Singles album. Most of the songs I didn’t know. Karen Carpenter sang “We’ve Only Just Begun” to my spiny friends and they glowed in late morning sunlight. I think my Powder Puff actually swayed a little.

Karen and Richard moved on to “Top of the World”. And my friends and I just smiled at each other. This was really good music. Karen lowered the happiness level with “Ticket to Ride”. I think my Aloes pickup up on it and drooped a bit. It was when she went into “Superstar” that I began to really listen. She was singing about a singer on the radio. The chorus built up dramatically and I was wondering if I was even listening to the same song. When Karen moved on to “Rainy Days and Mondays” I was still thinking about “Superstar”. What a great song. I’m sure my cacti and succulents enjoyed it as much as I did.

I flipped the album over and played side two. I found “Sing” and it reminded me our my old music teacher at Devonshire. And while many of the songs were sad I was still feeling pretty groovy when lunch time came.

Eventually I would learn that The Carpenters were not cool. And like most bands over time, many people began to feel the same way and the Carpenters stopped being Superstars themselves. Dave never figured out they weren’t cool and collected their album into the 80’s. And I secretly enjoyed them too.

It wasn’t until Chris Farley and David Spade played off how ‘uncool’ Carpenter’s “Superstar” was in this comedic scene in Tommy Boy that I felt comfortable playing this song in public.

My friend Ralf and I recreated the scene in our road trip to his parents in Cleveland in 2010. I never do a road trip without planning a disc or two, and as I’ve been accustomed to do, I would drop in some movie dialogs or standup comics sound bytes inbetween the songs. The original Road Trip to Cleveland disc had the Farley and Spade dialog but I did not not follow it up with The Carpenter’s “Superstar” song and Ralf immediately chastised me for not including it. So when we returned home, I ‘corrected’ the disc for Ralf.

And while the Carpenters will probably never be considered cool for two guys on a road trip, or a young boy and his spiny friends, “Superstar” wasn’t such a sad affair. And now, when I’m looking for a song from my yesteryears, I don’t mind coming back this way again.

Long ago and oh so far away
I fell in love with you before the second show
Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear
But you’re not really here
It’s just the radio

Don’t you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you’d be coming back this way again baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do

Loneliness is a such a sad affair
And I can hardly wait to be with you again

What to say to make you come again
Come back to me again
And play your sad guitar

Don’t you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you’d be coming back this way again baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do

Don’t you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you’d be coming back this way again baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do

Who knew the future arrived in 1973? Possibly some fat kid from Des Plaines, Illinois. At ten years old I was experiencing a lot of changes. For the first time in my life, we were moving. We were moving from my beloved home in Des Plaines, IL to an older home three miles away in Des Plaines, Illinois. I was leaving the only friends and school I had ever known.

Before I was to leave the Fourth Grade at Devonshire Elementary, I had a report due. Specifically for this morning, we were to turn in our first paragraph and I still had not decided on a topic. I wasn’t too worried yet since I still had at least two hours before I had to turn it in.  There was plenty of time to write it on the bus, but I still had not decided what to write my current event on.

“Why don’t you do it on the 17 Year Locust?” my mom suggested. Hmm – bugs. I knew all about mammals, reptiles, a little about birds and fish. I was also the family expert on dinosaurs and monsters. And I was catching up to my mom on plants but I was specializing in cacti and carnivorous plants. Only Lee had entered the insect world with his butterfly collection. Maybe it was now my turn.

Luckily Mom had seen an article on these locusts in the paper. Grabbing between the scissor blades as Mom cut the article out for me, I made the bus and ignored my friends on our trip to school as I wrote out my opening paragraph for my paper.

It turned out the 17 Year Locust were not locusts at all but cicadas. They lived underground feeding off of tree roots, crawled to the surface, changed from a nymph to an adult just to mate and die in a few weeks. These particular cicadas lived underground for 17 years – this was going to be awesome!

After reading the article, I was a little confused. It said there would be millions of these cicadas and we should be ‘prepared’. But I hadn’t seen any outside. During recess, I checked the playground and the field didn’t see any. I checked bushes as we waited for the bus to take us home but nothing.

As Dave, Dawn and I ran in from the bus that afternoon, Mom called me into the kitchen. Unexpected gifts are always the best. And any gift outside of Christmas or your birthday was even better.  As I entered the kitchen Mom presented me with a glass jar of dirt.

“I was talking to Mrs. Johnson from church and she was talking about all the locusts that were coming out…”

“They’re cicadas, mom,” I interrupted.

Being used to my interruptions she continued without missing a beat, “and she said she kept digging up the grubs…”

“They’re called ‘nymphs'”, I said, interrupting again.

This interruption caused Mom’s eyebrows to lower in the middle of her face and her speech to slow, but she continued, “so she put one in the jar for me.”

My eyes widened and I grabbed the jar and shook it over my mom’s protests. Out of the jumping dirt popped the coolest bug I’d ever seen. It was a copper brown and you could tell it was built for digging. Its front two legs were like Popeye-legs that could just tear through the dirt. It moved slowing trying to right itself.

I spent an hour just staring at the nymph that eventually righted itself but it didn’t seem to want to do anything more. When Dad arrived home Mom reminded us we were going to go to the new house. I showed Dad the nymph Mrs. Johnson had given Mom to give to me and he picked up the jar. Shaking the jar the nymph moved to tell my dad he was still alive.

“Are they any cicadas at the new house?” I asked.

“Ton’s,”  Dad said. “They’re all over the place – and they are loud.”

Oh — My — God!

In those days we could sit in the back of a station wagon – seatbelts be damned. Dave, Dawn and I sat in the ‘way back’ with our arms dangling over the gate. As we drove into the new neighborhood, you could hear them – even over the car noise. I could tell Lee was just fascinated as much as I was. At a stoplight, their chorus was incredibly loud. Occasionally I would see something fly from tree to tree, or a bush or the ground but we were too far really see anything.

How many were there? I wondered. As we pulled down Rose Avenue where our new house was and Dad drove slower, it was like we were in a cave of sound and their chirping was echoing off invisible walls. I continued to look at the trees and bushes and while I would see the occasional flight of something I still could not tell what they looked like – but they were here, they were most certainly everywhere.

Dad pulled into the driveway and Dave, Dawn and I jumped out the back. They were here and they were loud. I walked over to the white picketed fence and something flew past me. It was big and it startled me. I saw it land on the other side of the fence. I walked over letting my hand bounce off the individual pickets looking for other cicadas but they didn’t swarm like flies or mosquitoes.

As I walked to a tree, I saw one. It sat on the fence and it was about the coolest thing I had ever seen. Its black body was accented with red eyes, their translucent wings were framed in orange. I reached for it grabbing it around the middle. The article said they didn’t bite but it was so big. As soon as I picked it up and tried to fly but it wasn’t going anywhere.

Picking it up, I stared into its red eyes. This was something from another planet, or so it seemed. Its legs flailed as it tried to escape my grip. When that didn’t work it ‘buzzed’ – or that is the only word I can think of to describe the sound it started making. But it wasn’t a buzz from its wings (I had those clamped against its body), I was a buzz that caused its whole body to vibrate. I was weird and fascinating.

I cupped my hands around afraid I was hurting it. If it was going to bite it was going to do it now; but it didn’t. I opened my hands when the buzzing stopped and it settled down. It sat on my hand looking at me – or so I thought. I was thinking I was bonding with this alien entity. This creature from 17 years ago freshly mottled encountering its first human. Instead, its wings lifted and flew to the other yard. The wings carrying the oversized body. It flew level at first then angled up and then I lost sight of it. My first encounter with the 17 cicada was surreal.

I continued to a tree that bordered our new yard and our new neighbors. Immediately I saw four or five nymph shells stuck to the tree. I pulled the shell off breaking its dying(?) grip.

“I found a shell!” I yelled back to everyone who was waiting for Dad to open the backdoor.

Lee was coming over to look as well as Dave. Hope and Dawn were already going inside with Mom and Dad. They didn’t seem as interested in this whole cicada discovery. I proudly held the shell out to Lee who looked at it briefly and then walked to the tree to pull off his own shell. Above us, the cicadas droned on and on like a rolling wave of sound cheering summer in.

“Don’t you guys what to check out the new house?” Dad yelled.

Dave looked at the shells on left on the tree and ran to the open door. Lee took his nymph shell and and started hunt for his own cicada. I yelled to Dad that I would be there soon and plucked another shell off the tree. I told Lee I caught one. Well, not really, more like just picking it up off the picket fence.

I held the shell on my finger and imagined the night before as it dug its way out of the ground for the first time in seventeen years. It looked like it had eyes, but did it? I could picture it slowly crawl through the grass to the trunk of the tree as it began its arduously journey over the rough bark until they were ready to molt their old skin for their new winged life, although it was a much briefer life.

Seventeen years. I wasn’t even as old as this shell. (ok, forget the fact that the nymph would have molted a number of time to get this size but at ten years old I wasn’t thinking like that.) This nymph was hatched in 1956. Wow. The next time these cicadas would come, I would 27 years old, in the year 1990. The year rolled around in my head – 1990, The Nineties. I didn’t sound as cool as The Seventies. Even the Eighties sounds ok. The Nineties.

I did some quick math – I would graduate high school in 1981. Where would I go to High School here? West Main? I think I heard that’s where Hope and Lee were going. Nineteen Ninety – would my parents still be in this house? Where would I be still live here? I would be done with school, so would I be a botanist? Would I finally move to the desert so I could be with my cacti? Or maybe I would live in North Carolina where Venus Flytraps are.

And I could drive a car. What kind of cars would they have then? What kind would I have? Flying cars would be so cool. How would they fly? Would I be married? So I would have a girlfriend? Sex? Kids? When would that happen? Would that happen?

So in 1990, would we have a colony on the moon? Would there even be a future? Would the world still be around? Will the Russians blown us by then? Will I have to fight in a war?

Honestly, I didn’t worry about the future back then, I wasn’t the worrying type. I think like most kids, I was more concerned with ‘here and now’. THE FUTURE was Star Trek. I remember watching the original series with Dad in the basement and thinking how cool space travel would be. Star Trek made THE FUTURE very clean and very fantastic. I didn’t really dream about THE FUTURE, my dreams were more about dinosaurs and giant monsters like Godzilla. And as I got more into plants, about finding carnivorous plants in the wild or cactus in the desert.

I loved numbers and I lately I had been obsessing over Roman Numerals. I would fill pages counting in Roman Numerals, which I would hid from my siblings and friends in case they teased me about it – because it was weird.

So – the cicadas would come back in MCMXC and I would be XXVII. After they would come again in MMVII and then I would be XLIV. Forty Four – I didn’t even think my parents were that old. In MM, I would be XXXVII. This was all very interesting…

The Future – was very interesting.

I remember a song I picked up on last summer and in it, we saw the future of music, in a song called ‘Popcorn‘ by Hot Butter. Besides being a tasty snack, it turned out to a fun instrumental pop song. It had this strange new sound and it was just fun. With a ‘do do do do dadu do’ we knew what song it was (or the optional clucking with your tongue – if one was so talented). The unique sound was from a new invention called a moog synthesizer.

While we had no idea how much synthesizers would change music as we got to the 80’s, we recognized it was an instrument based on computers. Popcorn was actually written by Gershon Kingsley in 1969 on his album “Music to Moog By” highlighting the potential and capabilities of the moog synthesizer.

This version was by Stan Getz who programmed the synthesizer and was the main force behind Hot Butter. Hot Butter released their version in the summer of 1972 and it was an international hit. How he programmed the moog synthesizer we didn’t know but from how we were dancing and skipping to it the end of last summer, we sure had fun with it.

The funny thing about the future is you don’t know when it arrives. A month after we were dancing around to Popcorn, Dad brought home a microwave oven. With six pairs of eyes reflected on the microwave’s door, a hot dog cooked in less then two minutes. While Mom sighed in the kitchen about a $250 machine to cook hot dogs while boiling water worked just as well. Or the trash compactor Dad bought after we moved into the new house that would pound your trash into a two foot cube to save space in the land fills (forget the fact that only Lee and Dad could carry a garbage can fill of these ‘cubes’ to the street). Or a year later when Mom saved enough trading stamps and paid an additional $50 for our first calculator. It did everything – added, subtracted, multiplied AND divided. The future was AMAZING!

Looking back now at the ten year old me and seeing the future in a time perspective, I see the future is only one thing – the unknown. The parts we find amazing could be mere glimpses of things much more transcendent.  Some parts could be dead-ends or a fad that in retrospect appear ridiculous. Others may become common-placed, ordinary and mundane until reflected upon with more insight. And some, I would learn, could be downright terrifying. The true gift of the future is in the reveal and its discovery. The current me now understands that can happen with anything. It can happen wherever you are. And it can happen with who ever you are with at that time. Which means the future is now.

“John!” Dad yelled, “are you going to check out yours and Dave’s room? We can’t stay too long.”

“Coming,” I yelled back and started to the backdoor where Dad was standing. The drone and hum of the cicada continued everywhere. I carefully held the two nymph shells in my hand and lifted them to show my dad. He smiled, patted my back and guided me into the door. I climbed the five or six wooden steps that entered a crooked porch that led to the kitchen. Before could open the kitchen door and step into our future home, Dawn swung the door and skipped out. She was clucking the Popcorn song.

I don’t know if it was because I was leaving Devonshire but my fourth grade teacher let me eat one of my final lunches in the classroom. This was so a couple friends and I could play with the cicadas I had brought from the Gray House in the classroom. I was literally bring back paper garbage bags filled with cicadas back to the old house in the hopes of colonizing our old neighborhood.

We eventually moved to the ‘Gray House’, as we ended up referring to it as. We made a number of trips between the two houses. Hope never did get used to them. When Dad awarded her the privilege of pulling out the ‘For Sale’ sign in the frontyard the day we moved, she screamed as all the nymphs poured out of the hole left in the ground from the pole. Lee and I ran over to investigate. The nymphs disbursed as they crawled to a nearby tree. Lee walked the sign to our new garage. And I looked up to our new bedroom window to see Dave grinning and waving like an idiot. Surely this couldn’t be my future; but I waved back anyways.

I almost didn’t include this song on my list of ‘Songs of My Life’ – not because I didn’t think it belonged on the list, but because NO ONE will ever have heard of this song – except for Lee, who, again, found it originally. As far as music quests, this one was definitely my hardest. And my quest did not end until the internet came along; and even then, it wasn’t as simple as just a ‘googling’ it.

Once again Lee turned me on to another song. Although this time I don’t remember him actually listening to it. I remember going through the 45’s we had laying on the basement floor one day (today I would have been horrified to have vinyl just laying on a tiled floor and not carefully put in their correct album sleeves. We never noticed how bad these 45’s sounded. We were just amazed there was any sound at all). I remember recognized the title, “The Birdman of Alcatraz” so I put the 45 on our record player, hoping it was the song I remembered Lee had played – and it was.

Once again my search suffered from mis-heard lyrics – or rather – having the wrong title.  However, I don’t feel bad messing up the title after 40 years. I could hardly be blamed for thinking the song was “Birdman of Alcatraz” and not “Birdman of Alkatrash”.

This quest began at the Deerfield Record Shop in 1976, after Dave and I had moved in with Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack. The owner was a nice older man named Lenny who seemed to put up pretty well with four young boys in sixth and seventh grade.

The Deerfield Record Shop was not just a little store, it was a tiny store dating back to the 50’s. It had only 20 feet of aisle to walk down, covering record bins and a single glass case of 8-Tracks; and the beginnings of a cassette collection. The record bins began when you entered the store against the wall and leave only the two aisles for customers to avoid being blocked in. Lucky for us (but I’m sure unlucky for Lenny) it was never busy when we were dropped off.

In one of our first visits, he explained he used to have the listening booths in the back of the tiny store but he had to close them because he would catch the kids making out in them. Four young heads peered down the aisle to the back room of past transgressions.

After each of our bedrooms received stereos from Grandma, Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jack supplied gift certificates for the Deerfield Record store. Four boys could almost fill the store as we looked for ways to redeem what was remaining on our gift certificates. Lenny had this giant book that you could look up any song in the world – it was called the Phonolog. He kept it to the side of the counter and would explain it didn’t have EVERY song, it did have every song that was currently available.

In the beginning, there were three songs I would be looking for. I imagine when I asked Lenny about them it went something like this:

“I’m looking for a song”

“What’s the name of it?” Lenny asked.

“I don’t know”

“OK, can you sing some of it?”

“No!” it was all I could do to ask him that I was looking for a song in the first place.

“OK,” peering at me from behind the counter and made his way to the Phonelog. “Do you know any of the lyrics?”

“Actually, I know the name of one song – ‘Those Were the Days my friend’,” I proudly announced. I knew he would soon be digging in a box behind the counter and pulling out the requested 45 and asking me about the next song.

“OK, well let’s see what we find” and Lenny would flip through the Phonolog running his finger down the page and adjust is glasses as he zeroed in on his target.

“There it is, now who sang it?”

“I don’t know”

Lenny peered over his glasses at me, “There are over a dozen versions of this song.” His finger ran down the possibilities. “Ah-ha,” he exclaimed, “I bet it was Engelbert Humperdinck.”

“No!” I said a bit too quickly. Engelbert Humperdinck – I was sure he was just making that up. “It was a girl singing.”

Lenny went back to his tome. “Was it Mary Hopkins? or Maria Schell? Maybe Sandie Shaw”

“I don’t know,” I said hanging my head.

“OK, what else are you looking for?”

“Well, there’s one song that the singer sings really fast and then he sings regularly.”

Lenny just stared at me as his glasses clung to the tip of his nose. “Do you know the name or any parts of the lyrics?”

“No, I mean yes, well, I only remember one line – ‘Doris Day and Jack the Ripper'”

Again ‘The Stare’. “Sorry, I’ll need more than ‘Doris Day and Jack the Ripper.’ Is the ‘regular part’ the chorus?”

“Yea, it kinda went like a-huh, ah huh, bump ah huh” I was getting desperate enough I was even humming a melody that sounded more like Crash Test Dummies’ ‘Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm’ song. Had I only known then…

“Sorry kid, try thinking of some more lyrics and we’ll try again. You said you had three songs?”

“Yea, this one I know the title, ‘Birdman of Alcatraz'”

Lenny peered back to the tome of tunes and flipping pages and chasing his fingers. “Here we go he announced, ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’ by Elmer Bernstein. It’s from the Birdman of Alcatraz movie. Is it an instrumental?”

“Yea,” I said, “It’s got guitars and drums, just like a regular song.”

“No no, kid, this is an instrumental, there’s no singing in it. It has violins and cellos. Elmer Bernstein is a famous conductor.”

Elmer Bernstein didn’t do ‘Birdman of Alcatraz,’ and that book doesn’t have all the current songs in. And Lenny didn’t know that much about music. And I was getting very frustrated. “No, that’s not it then,” I said.

“That’s your third strike, sorry kid.”

My brother and cousins were already waiting at the counter with their records and Deerfield Record Store Gift Certificates in hand. I think I grabbed The Beach Boys’ ’15 Big Ones’ and checked out with the others.

It was a lesson for me that things are not as simple as they seem. ‘Those Were The Days’ was covered by over 30 artists around the world. A single phrase from a song isn’t enough to find a song – unless you have Google or a Vanilla Ice wanna-be from the eighties. And even if you know the title of the song you could be wrong.

I talked to Lee about the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’. He knew it was from the band Strawberry Alarm Clock and the flipside of their first hit ‘Incense and Peppermint‘. What he didn’t know, and what Goggle corrected, is that it is actually ‘The Birdman of Alkatrash‘. Those crazy Alarm Clock boys!

I was thrilled to finally find this song. Yes, it’s quirky. In fact, you could say it borders on being a novelty song – with its ‘quacking’ throughout the song. Ironically, this was the original A side but the radio stations responded to ‘Incense and Peppermint’, the original B side, they reissued the single flipping the songs. So ‘The Birdman of Alkatrash’ all but disappeared behind ‘Incense and Peppermint’ – except for two men who have fond childhood memories of this strange sixties song.

 

 

 

Probably my biggest flaw with my family was my father – he was a Country music fan. But he was a Johnny Cash fan, so that helps. I grew up NOT being a Country music fan, this fate fell to my brother Dave. And he will tell you he has a broad range of musical tastes – he likes both Country AND Western music.

Growing up my parents listened to country music stations in the car. Even as a child my immunity system was already kicking in because I have no recollection any any country songs growing up – with one exception. In fact, I don’t remember any of my parents albums except this Johnny Cash album. No other songs, just this song – “A Thing Called Love.”

The Hi-Fi was a regular piece of furniture for many families that were into music or gadgets. We were a gadget family. We have a automatic card shuffle machine, a hand-held cigarette rolling machine, a digital clock when they first came out (not an LED display, the kind that flipped to a new number every minute) and a microwave – all in the early seventies! I’m pretty sure all that ‘high tech’ stuff came from my dad. I’m also pretty sure he wasn’t an audiophile, most audiophile’s aren’t Country music fans, yet we had a hi-fi like this one:

Just seeing these old pictures brought back memories of being a kid, laying on the floor next to the hi-fi listening to records, mostly little kid records or Christmas albums.

I remember pressing my finger on the orange glowing power light and watching how it lit up my finger.  I often wondered if I see my bones as the light shown through my finger, but all I could see the small red glowing fingernail.

So I would lie on the floor listening to this Johnny Cash album called ‘A Thing Called Love’. Looking at a red glowing finger and singing along to this song. As I searched for this song I could only remember fragments of lyric’s from the song – phrases like “he was six foot six”, “like a cream puff” and “brought down by a thing called love. Those were powerful images to me.

As a kid, all adults are huge. And if you ask most kids, their dad’s were all between six to seven feet tall. Some dad’s could actually grow to nine feet when two boys are bragging about them. And if you asked a kids about a ‘tall man, one that wasn’t a dad, they would say he was about eight feet tall – you know – like Frankenstein. Kids tend to like whole numbers. My dad was six feet, so six foot six with shoes would make sense – to me as a kid. In reality I think he wasn’t quite six feet, more like five feet ten or so.

Later I would find out “Like a cream puff” is not part of the lyrics and “brought down by a thing called love” is a paraphrase of the correct lyrics. This is probably why I had such a hard time finding the song. I often thought the line was something like “crying like a big cream puff” but the image of a grown man crying was what I really held in my memory.

To me, the image of a grown man crying is one of the most tragic. This is because in our culture men are not supposed to cry. We expect men to face adversity and hardship being stoic and emotionless. ‘No crying in Baseball’? For men there’s no crying period. 10cc said “Big boys don’t cry.” We do not get overwhelmed, we don’t cry out of frustration, we don’t cry because we’re ‘so happy’ (that’s when we usually yell things, like “fuck ya!”, “now that’s what I’m talking about!” or we strut around – whether we actually did something or not). Society looks to men to be the rock during chaos, the calm during the storm. The stereo type goes so far as we are seen as unemotional, uncaring and cold. Which make spoofs like Kevin Wu’s “Shed A Tear” so funny.

There were three times I remember my dad crying. The first time was when he lost his job and my parents were fighting about it. I don’t know, but my memory was that he had been drinking earlier that day. The third time was during dinner prayer when he skipped over our normal ‘God is good, God is great…’ and launch into a prayer to save his marriage and even that was more sniffles then anything. The second time was the worst.

I believe it was the Fall and later in the evening because it was dark outside. I was playing at the top of the stairs in the hallway outside the bathroom overlooking the living room into the kitchen. That’s where I would normally have my plastic dinosaurs commit suicide on the basement stairs or kamikaze onto one of my passing siblings. The phone rang and it was for my dad. I don’t remember any of the conversation from my dad except remembering he was crying – huge heavy sobs, the kind that hurt your back. I remember peeking from the upstairs and not being able to see him because he had moved into the darkness of the dining room. He had just found out his brother had died, my Uncle Ron, in a plane crash.

I had never seen my dad struck down like that before. The pain was evident, transferable. I heart physically hurt to hear my dad in some much emotional pain.  I couldn’t see him as I peered down from my upstairs perch but I imagined my own red eyes on his tears streaked face. I heard his hitched breath and his agonizing sobs. Later in life I would learn my dad wasn’t always the most stable of individuals. But at that moment, he was my dad – The Enforcer, the Rule-Maker, the Judge, the Fixer, the Bread-winner, the Head of the Family, the Man of the House. And he had been struck down with a broken heart, with in a loss I could only imagine but learn sooner then any of us knew. Dad was brought down by this thing called love.

I think my mom told us what happened and I couldn’t help thinking about my cousins and what they must be going through. Uncle Ron was Dad’s older brother and, in my recollection, I’m pretty sure that Dad and Uncle Ron got along pretty well, like brothers – brothers that enjoyed each others company.

In a God-like twist of fate, in what was a lifetime later, we learned of a huge coincident. After my grandmother’s funeral, I believe in the late 90’s, my father side of the family gathered at my Uncle Dale’s house. I met my cousins Mike and Jerry, Uncle Ron’s sons. Uncle Dale had the newspaper articles about the plane crash that killed his brother Ron in a scrapbook.

I was shocked to find the plane crash was in Watertown, WI. This was Desi’s mom’s hometown. Desi’s grandparents had a farm outside of Watertown. The pilot had a heart attack and someone was trying to land the plane in a farm field. If you know the area, you’ll know Highway 26, and the other roads in the area, are raised above the fields. A plane landing in the field would slam into the road’s embankment. Mike and Jerry said they driven up the next morning, Mike was 16 at the time, they confirmed that is what happened. We checked with Desi’s mom if they remembered a plane crash in the early seventies and they did not.

In the first verses of “A Thing Called Love” has the lyrics “but I saw that giant of a man brought down, to his knees by love” and that summarizes what I saw that night. In our walk from childhood to adulthood it is these realizations, these moments of awareness that spur us along to becoming adults ourselves. I attached my male duty within the face of tragedy to this song.

But that’s not what this song is about. The song is about the power of love, even in the face of the strongest man. And this is the beauty and tragedy of art. The artist intends and the viewer interprets. And within that Walk of Life a child can grow, and a man can remember.

You can’t see it with your eyes, hold it in your hands
But like the wind it covers our land
Strong enough to rule the heart of any man
This thing called love

Do you remember the first song you ever heard? I mean the first song you recognized as a commercial entity on the radio. Mine was “Those Were The Days” by Mary Hopkins.

I’ve always been morning person. As a child, I would wake up, crawl into my parents’ bed with my dad. My mom would already be up getting ready in the bathroom. When she was done, she would go downstairs to make my dad’s breakfast – which consisted of coffee and oatmeal.

While Mom was getting ready, Dad would lay in bed having his morning cigarette with the clock radio playing. Most of the time, I would crawl in on Mom’s side while Dad faced the western window, which was usually dark or beginning to gray with the morning light.

When the room was darkest, it would always be lit by a crack of light coming from under bathroom door. With that I could see the smoke dance softly between Dad and the western window. The lit tip of Dad’s cigarette would magically dance up to the darkness of the ceiling. I would nestle under the sheets and blankets and squeeze up against Dad. Sometimes he would reach around and pat my leg but most of the time we laid together listening to the clock radio.

Dad would lay in bed propped up on his right elbow smoking. Occasionally knocking his ashes in one of those old beanbag ashtrays that he kept in the bedroom. The clock radio sat in the headboard of their bed with its analog face and its glow-in-the dark painted hands staring back at us. I would watch the second hand tick around its face from the bathroom light, while I was laying in mom’s pillows under the sheets and blankets. And cigarette smoke continue to rise and slowly curl around Dad and I.

When this song would come on, I remember wondering what ‘days’ she was singing about. The song was released in August of 1968. That would have made me 5 years old. The mandolin gave the song it’s ‘old country’ sound. I hadn’t learned about Europe yet, but I knew about the dreaded gypsies from my monster movies and they always played this kind of music – the music from the ‘old country’. Of course, that depended if that particular monster movie had enough budget to waste on gypsy music from the ‘old country – most didn’t.

I thought the woman in the song sounded sad. Obviously things were not going well for her. As a kid, it seemed adults always thought things were so much better in the past. Yet when I saw them, they seemed pretty happy – to me, a five year kid. This woman seem to be thinking of the recent past – because she was still young, or so she said she was.

There were lots things I didn’t know about this song. For example, that it was the first single from the newly formed Apple label that started by The Beatles. That Paul McCartney produced the single. And that Mary Hopkins covered the Byrds’ “Turn Turn Turn” for the flip side.

As I kid, I was learning that music existed outside of our church. That it was more than just commercial jingles, or interludes on our favorite sitcoms and morning cartoons. I learned that I could come back tomorrow morning and the clock radio could play this song again. And I would think about the sad girl and the old days.

And in this realization, as the song played and I would follow the smoke trail from my dad, to the window, to the clock radio and through the darkness of the room. And I would watched the little red tip dance from my dad’s face to his extended arm. My dad must have been very tired in the morning because occasionally he would miss the ash tray. When it was his turn to get into the bathroom, he would leave the bed and I would take his place. Next to me would be burn holes in the sheets where he had missed the ashtray with his red tip. And I would finger the burn holes, despite my mom constantly telling me not to.

Eventually I would traipse downstairs into the kitchen where Mom would be making his oatmeal. I would sit on the bench that dad had made for all us kids to sit around the kitchen table. I would talk to my mom and our days would begin. I don’t remember hearing that song any other time but those mornings, or maybe it was the fact that those memories were just so strong.

One of music’s strongest features is how it can capture memories. So when we hear that song that memory is released. And in the release a desire to relive it is passed through to the song. Most music people, which I consider myself, will seek out that song so they can relive that memory. Thus begins a music expedition, a quest. Back then you were only given hints – some times a brief melody or a few lyrics. mere clues to what the song is called. Some music expeditions will last for years. Some as short as talking to a friend at a party. Nowadays, these expeditions are solved with a google search or app. The enjoyment of this expedition has been lost in this internet age.

For me this particular expedition lasted 17 years. While I eventually found out is was a song by Mary Hopkins, it was not easy to get a copy of the single. My expedition ended when I explained to my friend Ralf that I was on this expedition for this song. And as we were discussing our first musical memories at his house one evening and I told him about “Those Were The Days.”

He knew the song very well.  He said “My parents used to play that song all the time all the time. My dad’s old tailor buddies would come over and they would all be singing it, especially my mom. Hold on.” And he left the room and reappeared minutes later holding the original 45 in his hand – “Here ya go.”

I had not heard the complete song since I was child. We played in Ralf’s room that night and I was transported back to those early mornings as a little boy. The fact that Ralf and I would smoke while we listened to music just completed the transformation. Turning his den to a bedroom of seventeen years ago, with smoke curling in the dark.

And it opened a new perspective to me on this song. I could picture Ralf’s parents and their friends all gathered in a room, in an apartment somewhere on the East Coast, singing their hearts out, as the evening wore on and the drinks loosen their voices. And the next morning, in a little tri-level home in Des Plaines, Illinois a little boy and his dad laid quietly listening to that same song.

Those were the days, my friend.