Sidebar: Was there more to Life than the Radio?

     I’m going to switch the beat for a minute here. The radio and my extensive K-tel record collections weren’t the only sources of music in my life. There was also television. (I wasn't quite old enough for the concert scene.) In the early 1970’s ABC had The Partridge Family, which I remember watching every Friday night. I have this bizarre memory of driving down Garfield Ave in Cramer Hill, sitting in the back of my Dad’s Lincoln Town Car singing I Think I Love You out the car window at the top of my lungs. I guess I got caught up in the Tiger-Beat hysteria!

     In 1975 The Monkees make it in to local syndication. The show had originally aired from 1966 to 1968, but local syndication rights were available in 1975. While everything about the show just screamed ‘60s, I really liked this show. It was on just about every afternoon and the songs were great. I had a Monkee's Greatest Hits album that had a few songs on it that I don’t remember ever seeing in the series like Peter Tork’s Shades of Gray. My daughters are big fans of Nickelodeon’s Big Time Rush. I’ve seen a few episodes and it really does remind me of the Monkees. They even drive around in a big GTO convertiable that is rather reminiscent of the Monkee Mobile.

     On Saturdays, we still had American Bandstand, with Dick Clark. A lot has already been written about Bandstand’s place in the pantheon of Rock and Roll, but even in the 1970’s it was still relevant, at least for the pre-teen set. I never cared about who was dancing but I always wanted to see the performers, and the Rate-a Record section. Of course on a show that featured dancing, Bandstand was an unwitting accomplice in the take-over of Disco. KC and the Sunshine band were regulars, but I also remember a young Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats doing the eerily out-of-place I Don’t Like Mondays a few years later. If I was feeling funky I could follow that up with Soul Train, but that wasn’t really my thing. In the summer I think ABC had the Steel Pier Show. I’m sure I could fill another entire memoir with my memories of Saturday morning cartoons and those totally psychedelic Sid and Marty Kroft trip-fests. I still have flashbacks from Lidsville, the Bug-a-Loos and HR Puff-n-Stuff and I never even took LSD!

Often over-looked when recalling those sugar overloaded Saturday mornings are the various variety Shows that populated the line-ups. The main one I recall was The Hudson Brothers’ Razzle Dazzle Show. The Hudson Brothers were a middling group with a few hits that I never heard anywhere else but on their show. I would watch the show religiously, though. Mostly I think it was for the guy with the emu puppet. I’m pretty sure that at one point, the Bay City Rollers even had their own TV show. Saturday Night hit big in 1976 and it was probably one of the last of the golden AM radio classics. Somewhere in this whole mess, was of course, The Banana Splits. The show had the best theme song of them all. I can’t place when it was on in the Philly market, but it was most likely earlier in the 1970s. Asking folks for the names of the Splits is one of favorite trivia questions.

     There were also quite a few prime-time variety shows that I remember watching. Of course, earlier in the ‘70s there was Sonny and Cher. Cher charted a few hits in the 1970’s like Gypsies Tramps and Thieves and Half Breed and they had channeled their earlier success as a duo into a prime-time hit series that actually had a few iterations. First there was the married Sonny and Cher show, and then the solo Sonny show, then the divorced, yet reconciled Sonny and Cher Show. Well, c’est al vie!

     I don't think there is anyone in the 40 something age group that doesn’t remember the Donny and Marie Show. Whether you were a little bit Country or a little bit Rock and Roll, you probably tuned in for the antics of Donny’s “Captain Elprup” and his purple power socks or maybe to see brother Jimmy (try to) steal the show. The show ran from 1976-1979 and my sister had a Donny Osmond album – The one with Puppy Love and The Twelfth of Never on it, and she played it a lot. Puppy Love would later be parodied to great effect in the cult classic Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Just don’t get me started on Shaun Cassidy, although I’ll admit to being a big fan of the Hardy Boys on ABC.



     The Brady Bunch and even the Captain and Tenille had a go at the prime time variety show as well. Every one of these shows featured the music of the show hosts, of course, but also guests and covers of popular tunes of the day.


     I was a little too young for Saturday Night Live, The Midnight Special or Don Kirschner's Rock Concert, at least until high school, but there a number of years I remember staying up for Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Of course a show that featured KC and the Sunshine Band as a guest loses the right to refer to itself as “rockin”. I can still remember the conversation between Dick Clark and the band when Clark asked them who came up with the “Uh-huhs” in That’s the Way (uh huh uh huh) I Like it. I think it was KC who said, “Well someone asked if I wanted some coffee and I said ‘uh huh uh huh’” To which his bandmates responded “What? Why would you say it twice? You only wanted ONE cup of coffee?” Well I guess it was funnier in 1977.


     Back in the Day, every show had a theme song. Some of them became radio hits in their own right, like John Sebastian’s Welcome Back or the theme from the Rockford Files and of course, the theme from Happy Days. There was catchy pop music to be found everywhere. All of that added up to a world where it seemed like I was surrounded by music.

Next: Disco Sucks!

1975 - 1977 The Golden Shine Begins to Fade

     A I recollect about the past, I realize that there was a lot more going on musically than what was happening in my little suburban world. The 70’s became known as the era of classic rock, and that music still thrives today. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Eagles and many more bands and artists came into their own during this time. Some of that music managed to seep through, mostly because I had two older brothers who were in high school at the time. I would go through their record collections and find things like Led Zeppelin I & II, or The Beatles Abbey Road or Sergeant Pepper’s. I definitely remember playing 45s of Cream’s White Room The Jackson 5’s ABC, The Beatles Hey Jude/Revolution and The Cowsill’s version of Hair. I played them all. A Lot.

     The first real rock album I owned from around this time was Wing’s Band on the Run, released in 1973. It was probably a Christmas or Birthday present. I really wanted the album that had Junior’s Farm on it – but Band on the Run was pretty cool, too. The title track and Jet were stand-outs and I played them over and over.


     It was also around this time when I first heard Bruce Springsteen. My brother Ted was a huge fan of the New Jersey native and Bruce played a lot of local clubs and colleges back then. There was one summer when Ted was coaching little league for the Cramer Hill Boy’s Club. I would go with him and sit in his Volkswagen Beetle, and listen to The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle on his 8-track player. Mostly I remember Rosalita and the rambling lyrics about a rag-tag collection of friends like Little Dynamite and Big Bones Billy and a car being stuck in the “swamps of Jersey”. Jersey? Hey! New Jersey gets mentioned in a song! And I live in New Jersey! How cool is that!! Ted bought me the 45 for Born to Run for my birthday, probably in 1975, about a week after the album was released.

     I would eventually make my way back to a lot of the music from this era and discover what I had missed. The Eagles were getting a lot of airplay during this time, especially when Hotel California came out in late 1976. Johnny Come Lately and the title track were AM mainstays, but before Hotel California, most of the Eagles’ hits reflected their “Soft Rock” side. Together with America, (And even a little Neil Young) there was a streak of acoustic guitar flavored rock that definitely had an appeal to me. I was still a few years away from my first guitar lesson, but this may have been where the seeds were planted!


     Looking back it seemed that around 1975 -1976, R&B and disco were making more inroads into the Top Forty, driving fans of the rock flavored songs to FM radio, where you could find Steely Dan, Pink Floyd and others. But let’s return to those cultural sign posts – the K-tel collections!



The Music Express

     The collection from 1975, Music Express marks the appearance of a singer and songwriter from New York, who would dominate the easy listening charts for the next 5 years. Barry Manilow’s break-through hit Mandy was everywhere in late 1974. In the break between Christmas 1974 and New Year’s we drove down to Walt Disney World for our family vacation. I think there was a foot of snow on the ground when we left, but it would be the vacation of a lifetime! We stopped at South of the Border the first night and St Augustine the second night before making it to Disney. But Barry Manilows’ Mandy was with us every mile down and every mile back. We couldn’t get away from that song and by the end of the trip we had had enough of Mandy. I still don’t care for that song, but I would eventually own all of Barry’s albums up through Even Now, including the big double record live set.

Side 1

Love Will Keep Us Together – Captain & Tennille

Swearin’ To God – Frankie Valli

Get Down Tonight – K. C. & The Sunshine Band

Philadelphia Freedom – Elton John Band

Cat’s In The Cradle – Harry Chapin
Mandy – Barry Manilow
I’m Not In Love – 10CC
Poetry Man – Phoebe Snow
Chevy Van – Sammy Johns
Run Joey Run – David Geddes

Side 2

Rocky – Austin Roberts
Jackie Blue – Ozark Mountain Daredevils
The Rockford Files – Mike Post
Sky High – Jigsaw
Brazil – Ritchie Family
Get Dancin’ – Disco Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes
Long Train Running – Doobie Brothers
My Eyes Adored You – Frankie Valli
Dynomite – Tony Camillo’s Bazuka
Black Superman –Johnny Wakelin & The Kinshasa Band


     From this set I also like the song Rocky a maudlin tune about a husband struggling to deal with the death of his young wife. Interestingly, the year before, Seasons in the Sun which also dealt with premature death was also the first track on Side 2. And the year before that, in the same position on the Fantastic collection was The Morning After which the theme song from the Poseidon Adventure – a movie where a lot of people died tragically. Was this a recurring theme with the folks at K-tel? Nah, probably just a cosmic coincidence.


     This also marks the first appearance of KC and the Sunshine Band on the list. They would be at the tops of the charts for the next 3 years and along with the Bee Gees, would become icons of the Disco era. Music from both bands still gets played today and often lands in movies. Forrest Gump used KC’s Get Down Tonight and Stayin Alive was used in Madagascar. Actually, right now (8/4/10 at 6:17 am) I have the TV on in the background. A commercial is on for the appliance/electronics store HH Gregg. Guess what song they’re using? Yup, it’s Get Down Tonight.

     I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think the cultural battle lines were being drawn for the first time within the same generation. During the birth of Rock and Roll, the young, post-war kids latched onto to the likes of Elvis, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry. The kids loved it, the parents hated it, and Colonel Parker milked it for all it was worth. Even in the sixties, From Dylan to the Beatles, and Hendrix to Woodstock, rock and roll music was the backdrop for the clash between youth and the establishment. But in the 1970’s there was an added twist. Sure, parents would always lament the popular rock and roll of the times. Hell, I’m a parent and I do it now. I mean Nickelback? Geesh that’s not music, that’s just noise!!!! But anyway, back in the 1970s the intra-generational war was shaping up between rock and Disco and for a while it looked like Disco would win out.

Next: Sidebar: Was There More to Life than the Radio?

1975: Kiss, Queen and Bruce Springsteen

     As I reminisce about the 70’s I find that my memory isn’t quite what it used to be! I keep using the internet to check facts, find pictures and check time lines.  1975 seemed to be a pivotal year for me, when my tastes would begin to drift away from the sunny pop of the early 70s . There were some great rock albums released that year, but part of my drift to the rock side had to do with some of friends for that time. As I think back through the years, I find that I had a number of musical “soul mates” that I could easily use as milestone markers on my lifelong musical journey.


     In 1975, that soul mate was Larry Fanrak. I think it was just a coincidence, but in the fall of 1974, we both ended up on the same bowling team in the Saturday morning league at Maple Lanes. Our team was the Silver Dollars, and though we wouldn’t go on to win much of anything, we did have some good times. Larry and I started palling around quite a bit from then on. We would talk about music a lot and listen to records at each other’s house.

     When Kiss’ Rock and Roll All Night came out, it was a head turning moment for just about every pre-teen and, of course a head-shaking moment for every parent. Kiss was hard to ignore, no matter what you thought of them. They were certainly the lightning rod for the 1970s version of the generational wars that have been around since Elvis first shook his pelvis on Ed Sullivan. But Kiss’ fans were legion, in fact they were an Army – The KISS Army, and if you were part of it you had the rub-on tattoos to prove it. I think they had a few albums under their belt, but hadn’t created much mainstream buzz until they released Alive in 1975, when they became the “Hottest Band in the Land!”

     1in 1975 Aerosmith released Toys in the Attic. I never had this record, but a lot of my classmates did. Walk this Way and Sweet Emotion were off of this album while Dream On, originally released in 1973, was re-released following the success of the single Walk This Way and made it to # 6. I preferred the raunchier, hard rocking Walk this Way, which would eventually re-ignite Aerosmith’s career when RUN DMC enlisted the band for its cover version in the 1980s.

     1975 was also the year of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Killer Queen had been floating around the charts a year or so earlier, but even that couldn’t have prepared us for this quasi-operatic masterpiece. The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations has often been described as a “pocket symphony”, so it would be fair to call Bohemian Rhapsody a “pocket opera”. The song was just great to listen to. Well produced with a musical and lyrical complexity that put it in a class of it’s own. However, to this day, for some reason I always associate this song with the TV movie Bad Ronald – a TV move about a teenage boy who commits an unspeakable crime and ends up living hidden inside a house owned by another family – It’s weird!

     A Night at the Opera was one of my brother Glenn’s albums, but he left it at home when he went to college, so I um…took care of it for him. There were two other great songs from that album. You’re my Best Friend was a straight forward pop-rock song that featured band’s signature sound, but my other favorite from the album was Brian May’s “’39”. This was an acoustic guitar based number with some trippy lyrics that sounded more like science fiction and time travel, but had a great melody and rhythm. It’s a song I would listen to several times in a row. As an FYI for the younger crowd – in order to listen to a song on a vinyl LP several times in a row, you would have to get up and reposition the needle arm of the turntable over and over again. It was a labor of love! We didn’t have pause or repeat or shuffle buttons back then. In fact, even the Sony Walkman was still a few years away.

     Before I get into the most significant album release from 1975, I’d like to give an honorable mention to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Later on this one would be on my turntable a lot, but at the time, the coolest thing about this album was the cover. This was another album from my brother Glenn’s collection. I think I spent more time looking at it than listening to it. For years after learning to play guitar, I would toy around with the opeining to Wish You Were Here, but I I finally added the song to my performing repertoire at last year’s Fourth of July picnic. I’d like to thank my cousin-in-law for requesting some Pink Floyd!

     That brings us to Born to Run. In 1975, Bruce Springsteen wasn’t all that well known outside of the northeast. Hyped as everything from the “next Dylan” to the “Future of Rock and Roll” Bruce had two albums under his belt when he found himself on the covers of Newsweek and Time in advance of the defining work of his career – Born to Run. The single "Born to Run” had hit the radio waves in advance, and my brother Ted bought me a copy for my birthday that year. I remember that the single was a bit scratchy, but the power of Ernest Carter’s opening drum roll and Bruce’s power E Chord had me from the start. Over the years, as I would go back and discover the history of rock and roll from Chuck Berry and Elvis through The Drifters and Motown and classic bands like Credence Clearwater Revival, I would get a better understanding of Born to Run’s place in time. I don’t think there has ever been a song that in one singular instant captured everything that had gone before it and fulfilled the promise of everything that Rock and Roll could be.

     Most people that know me know I’m a huge Springsteen fan, but they would be surprised to learn that Born to Run wasn’t the first Springsteen album I owned. In fact I don’t think I bought a copy of it until I was in high school, but in 1975 I was hooked. At 11 years old I may have been too young to appreciate the themes of a generation struggling to find a place for itself, of young love struggling against the odds, of redemption, survival and identity but the song rocked!


     1975 ended with another defining moment of my life. I was selected by my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Rinaldi, to play the role of Bob Cratchit in our grade school production of a Christmas Carol. Mrs. Rinaldi must have been a fan of the musical version Scrooge starring Albert Finney, which was released in 1970. I remember her writing the lyrics to several of the songs from the movie on the blackboard and I copied them all down. The musical had made its way to TV that year and I was reveling in all things Dickensian. Every year afterwards, I would look forward to watching the musical at Christmas and last year I finally watched it with my kids. Anyway, being in the play was one of the fondest memories from my youth and some of friends were also in the play. We all had a great time and I did enjoy being on stage and delivering the final line “and so, as Tiny Tim observed, ‘God bless us, everyone!”. I never did any acting again, but I’ve never had a problem with being in the spotlight after that either! I would trade in the long coat and top hat for a Telecaster, but the thrill of being on stage was part of me forever after.

Next Up:  1975 - 1977: The Shine Begins to Fade

The K-tel Years

     My tape collection was getting extensive, but the recording quality was just so-so and there was always a lot of background noise (including my own singing). Wouldn’t it be great if there was someway to get a collection of the day’s hit music all together in one place? You know a company that could put together a compilation like that could make a fortune! I don’t remember what year I got my own record player, but it had to be around 1973 because that’s the year I got my copy of:

Fantastic 22 Original Hits Original Stars

     Long, long before anyone ever heard of “Now That’s What I Call Music” our generation had K-tel. I think Fantastic was their first compilation and they advertised it like crazy on TV and my parents probably bought mine at Two Guys. In case you’re wondering, I do still have the album. I’m looking at it right now! I was searching the internet for a track listing and I was surprised to find several different versions of this LP, but I was finally able to find the listing that matched the version I had.


Side One


Tony Orlando & Dawn - Tie A Yellow Ribbon

Elton John - Crocodile Rock
Focus - Hocus Pocus
The Sweet - Little Willy
Bill Withers - Lean On Me
Raspberries - I Wanna Be With You
Albert Hammond - The Free Electric Band
Foster Sylvers - Misdemeanor
Jerry Jeff Walker - L.A. Freeway
New York City - I'm Doin' Fine Now
Barry White - I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little More Baby


Side Two

Maureen McGovern - The Morning After
Rod Stewart - Twisting The Night Away
Vicki Lawrence - The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia
Donny Osmond - The 12th Of Never
First Choice - Armed & Extremely Dangerous
Lobo - It Sure Took A Long, Long Time
Blue Mink - Randy
Gunhill Road - Back When My Hair Was Short
Gary Glitter - Rock 'N Roll Part 2
Cliff Richard - Power To All Our Friends
Elton John - Rocket Man


     The K-tel albums were supposed to be a collection of top hits, but to be honest, every time I got one of the records, there was always a couple of the songs I never heard before and I would never hear anywhere else, but on that album. From the first record – I don’t think I ever heard Albert Hammond, Jerry Jeff Walker or Blue Mink on the radio, but the folks at K-tel promised me these were all top 10 hits! Of course some of these songs still make rounds on Oldies and Classic Rock radio. When I got older I was glad to find that The Sweet and the Raspberries still had Greatest Hits collections and I have many of their songs in my iTunes library. It’s great to be able to share this stuff with my kids, too. They dig a lot of this stuff now just as much as I did then.



     On the other, while the K-tel collections contains some of the greatest one-hit Wonders hits from the 1970’s, there are also those songs that still cause people to shudder and wonder what were we thinking?? I loved The Night Chicago Died by Paper Lace. I mean I loved it. I can still remember standing on the asphalt playground at St Pete’s and singing this one with my buds at lunch time. This one probably made a lot of the critics of the day cringe, but I didn’t care. Seasons in the Sun still gets derided as an example of the worst from that era, but I would bet it’s still a guilty pleasure for a lot of you. However, I wouldn’t mind if every copy of Afternoon Delight was destroyed.

Side 1:

The Night Chicago Died-Paper Lace,
Takin Care Of Business-Bachman Turner Overdrive,
This Flight Tonight-Nazareth,
Be Thankful For What You Got-William De Vaughn,
I Shot The Sheriff-Eric Clapton,
Hollywood Swingin-Kool & The Gang,
Stuck In The Middle With You-Stealers Wheel,
I'm A Train- Albert Hammond,
Rock Your Baby-George McCrae,
Honky Cat-Elton John,


Side 2
Seasons In The Sun-Terry Jacks,
Rock & Roll Hoochie Koo-Rick Derringer,
Meet Me On The Corner Down At Joe's Cafe-Peter Noone,
Save The Last Dance For Me-Defranco Family,
Rings-Lobo,
The Lord's Prayer-Sister Janet Mead,
Love's Theme-Love Unlimited Orchestra,
Show And Tell-Al Wilson,
On And On-Gladys Knight,
Let's Put It All Together-Stylistics


     There is also something about this particular collection from 1974 that I think is rather interesting. It wasn’t uncommon to hear a lot of these songs on the same radio station in 1974. Sure WIBG was top 40, but the mix of styles was rather eclectic. You had the Power Pop of the Raspberries and the Sweet, the bubble gum pop of Paper Lace, or the Bay City Rollers, R&B and proto-disco, funk. It was almost like the wild west of radio and it was all gold! GOLD! Or maybe I should say it was like some sort of Fantastic, Dynamite Music Machine colliding with a Hit Machine somewhere on the Music Express of Radio!!


     I never heard the Peter Noone song anywhere but on this collection, and I didn’t even realize he was the singer form Herman’s Hermits until years later. There were a few songs from this collection that would hint at the course of music to come by the end of the decade. George McCrea’s “Rock Your Baby” Barry White’s “Love’s Theme” got a lot of air play, but they were definitely part of the musical foundation that would evolve into Disco. In about 4 years, Disco would eclipse just about everything else out there, but for now, it was just a proto life form crawling around in a musical swamp somewhere in Los Angeles.


     Another prescient song was represented by Rick Derringer’s Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo. If you hear that song now, on Oldies or Classic rock,  it fits right in, but in 1974 you usually had to go to one of the fledgling FM stations to find something like that. This song was a big AM hit and, I think paved the way for the commercial acceptance of hard rock. I mean, look where it is positioned on the track listing – right after Terry Jacks. That’s a bizarre juxtaposition of musical styles – but that’s what was happening on the radio in 1974. The song featured a heavily distorted guitar track and some wicked riffs along with a blistering solo. Later on KISS and Van Halen would bust through the door that Rick Derringer propped open for them, but I think the success of “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo” on AM radio really pushed the envelope of what people would accept as popular music.

     The K-tel collections were great snapshots of the year, and they usually captured what was going on, for at least some part of the year they were released. While a lot of these songs still make the rounds on the radio, others have faded off and there are others that have been forgotten all together. One song I miss from that era was Vanity Fair’s Hitching a Ride. You don’t seem to hear that one on the radio anymore. But the Five Man Electric Bands’ “Signs” still gets played. “Signs” is alright, but there was so much great music from that era that has been overlooked.



     Back then I definitely had my favorites. The Sweet and the Raspberries were tops on the list. While I listened to everything, I did find myself drifting to the Rock side of top 40 more than the Pop side. Even though that crunchy power pop sound would always be hovering at the fringes of the mainstream it would turn out to be part of the foundation for a lot of the music I would be listening to in the 1980s and 1990s.

Next: 1975: Kiss, Queen and Bruce Springsteen

The Golden Age of AM Radio

     I was born in 1964, but I missed out on the whole ‘60’s thing. Flower Power, the Summer of Love, Woodstock, The Beatles – that belonged to my brothers who were about 8 years older than me. I do remember watching the moon landing in 1969 and then there was something about a solar eclipse in there, but that was about the extent of the historical and cultural impact of the 60’s on me. At the time anyway - when I was older I would really get into the music of that era, but let’s not get too far ahead of the story.

     Pennsauken in 1971 was green, clean and pretty safe. I took the bus to school and I roamed the neighborhood on my bike – an Apollo 3 speed. There was a green, open field behind our house that was perfect for everything from pick up baseball and football games to catching fireflies and playing “Jailbreak” on a summer night. There was a small creek where I spend many hours with a shovel building damns and getting dirty. And then there were the railroad tracks than sat up on a raised hill. The slopes of the hill were perfect for sledding in the winter and I spent many hours walking the tracks in my day. We used to leave pennies on the tracks in the morning and then come back after school to find them flattened by the freight trains. There was also a dense wooded area cut with bike trails that we used to call “The Baja”. You couldn’t ask for a better place to grow up. There was plenty of family nearby and I would make a lot of friends there.

     But let’s talk about the music of the times. You can’t talk about music in South Jersey in the early 1970’s without talking about WFIL and WIBG. I always thought WFIL was more for Philly kids and South Philly transplants. My folks usually had on WPEN during the week. WPEN played the big hits of the Big Band era. Later they would incorporate the easy listening of Neil Diamond, and Barbara Streisand. On the weekends my dad would always listen to Sid Mark, who had two shows dedicated to Frank Sinatra – Fridays with Frank and Sunday with Sinatra. But I was starting to come into my own and I wanted something of my own – that was WIBG. Without a doubt, I was a WIBG listener. They were at 990 am, but they rounded up for their promos – “Wibbage 100” they called themselves.


     I remember getting a radio clock. I guess my folks wanted me to get up in time to go to school. I can still picture the green time clock glowing in the dark, but that thing was always set to 990, WIBG. Okay – WFIL had the Boss Jocks and I probably couldn’t name one of the DJs on WIBG, but they played The Sweet and they had Casey Casem’s American Top 40.


     On the other hand WFIL created one of the greatest novelty records of all time. Anyone in the Philadelphia area in the early 1970s has to remember “Between the Periods” - a mash-up that had WFIL DJ George Michael “interviewing” members of the Philadelphia Flyers. He would pose questions and the responses were snippets of popular songs from the era. I remember everyone at St Pete’s talking about it the day after it was first played on air. It was funny. I seem to remember the station doing a new one each year for the three years the Flyers made it to the Finals, but I could be wrong about that one. The Flyers of 1974 – 1976, known affectionately as the Broad Street Bullies, basically owned professional hockey for about three years in the early 1970s. At one time, I think I remember having an Dave Schultz autographed hockey puck.

     I also remember, one of the coolest presents I ever got – a red Panasonic tape recorder called a Panasonic Take-N-Tape. I kept it right next to the radio and whenever a cool song came on I would jump up and press the record button. I never was able to capture “Between the Periods” but I did record stuff like Little Willy, Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, Mandy just about anything and everything, and even Sinatra’s My Way. I wasn’t discriminating in my musical tastes and I liked just about everything I heard. It wasn’t until I got into high school when I realized there was music that people didn’t like. I filled up a bunch of cassettes with songs, and I would take the tape player into the bathroom and sing along while I took a shower. I definitely used up all the hot water on more than one occasion while belting out those tunes.

        My tape collection became rather extensive, but the recording quality was just so-so and there was always a lot of background noise (including my own singing). Wouldn’t it be great if there was someway to get a collection of the day’s hit music all together in one place? You know, a company that could put together a compilation like that could make a fortune!

Next:  The K-tel Years

The Faintest Memories

     I can remember bits and pieces of growing up in Cramer Hill – a neighborhood that was part of Camden, NJ. But even before that, there were things going on that would make music commonplace in our house and in my life. My parents were born in the 1930’s and their musical heritage was steeped in the Big Band Era:  Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra. In the post-war prosperity, radios, TV’s and stereos were more and more affordable and quickly became commonplace. In our house, we had a stereo console that was about the size of a Volkswagen. I can remember stacking up about 7 or 8 records on it at Christmas time and having Christmas carols playing nonstop from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. My parent’s record collection was mostly Big Band music, and maybe some soundtracks, like The Sound of Music or West Side Story. I guess it’s odd, though, but I don’t really remember them playing any records on the thing, except at Christmas time.

     The first records I can remember playing myself were 45s with songs from Sesame Street on them. Sesame Street debuted in 1969, when I was 5 but I think the records came out a year or so later, after the show established itself as a hit with kids and parents. I had records with “I Love Trash” and the “Alphabet Song” on them. I can still see the bright primary colored labels spinning on the turntable and the melodies are etched into my memory.

     I also remember the Christmas when I was in kindergarten, 1969 I think. I was sick for a day or two and I missed the class gift exchange. Maureen Zealberg, who was in my class and lived across the street, brought my gift home. It was an album of songs from Disney movies. I remember it had “Chim Chim Cheree” on it and maybe a song from the Jungle book. It was my first 33rpm LP. Hey, thanks to the internet, I found it! The track listing was:

Side A

1. Chim Chim Cheree

2. Whistle While You Work

3. Work Song

4. Lavender Blue

5. Siamese Cat Song

6. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

Side B

1. Ten Feet Off the Ground
2. Give a Little Whistle
3. Work Shop Song
4. The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers
5. I Wanna Be Like You
6. I'm Late

     I definitely wore that thing out! And it turns out I still have it!

     In the summer 1971 we moved out of Cramer Hill trading our cobblestone street for the suburban splendor of Pennsauken, NJ. Bye-bye St Anthony’s, hello St Pete’s.

Next Post:  The Golden Age of AM Radio

Introduction

     I grew up in Southern New Jersey – South Jersey to the natives - in the shadow of Philadelphia and a stone’s throw to the Jersey shore. I still live here with my family, and I think it’s still a great place to grow up. I want to take you back as I look through those misty, rose colored glasses on my life. One Christmas, when I was in high school, maybe around 1979 or 1980, I woke up to find a guitar under the tree. Well, truth be told, I saw it sitting in my parent’s closet a few weeks before Christmas, and when the music school in Merchantville called in mid-December to schedule the lessons, the surprise was totally blown, but it was still one of the best presents I ever received.

     Some kids wanted to learn how to play guitar so they could become guitar heroes. A lot of the kids I grew up with were into Kiss, and then Van Halen. Back in the stretch from 1975 – 1980, I think you be hard pressed to find a bigger influence on yearning guitarists than these two bands. It was a bit different for me, though. I wanted to write songs and tell stories with words and music. I think I wanted to do that ever since I heard Rosalita blasting out of the 8-Track player in my brother’s Volkswagen. But that’s getting a bit ahead of the story. I doubt that my relationship with music is unique, but for me it has always been a driving force for inspiration, for hopes and dreams. Those dreams were shaped by friends and family by locales and times. So I want to drift back in time and remember those days with an ear towards the music that was playing around me: The Soundtrack of My Life.