So, there's a hint about my age, and how long I've been an obsessed music fanatic (OMF). Pre-internet, pre-CD, pre-streaming, pre-historic. The earliest tools I had to feed my addiction were transistor radios, portable cassette players, and a remarkably ugly orange and white clamshell record player for my precious 45s. There were crappy music magazines like Hit Parader and Song Hits that my mother would occasionally agree to buy for me. And I can't overlook the importance of Beatles bubble gum cards. They were like some kind of black & white magic tarot deck back then, showing us a future. The (lack of) haircuts! The hijinks! The Beatle boots that everybody in my grade school class would've gladly traded a sibling for. They smiled and bowed and sang a lot, and our parents thought they were tolerable most of the time. It was socially acceptable to listen to and talk about a long-hair rock and roll band because of them, so thanks guys.
And then came the Rolling Stones and the promise of evil. Or if not evil, at least the flowering bud of barely recognizable anti-establishment thoughts. Maybe the nuns in Catholic school weren't always right about the sullen guys with long hair in the back of the classroom, maybe some of them were misunderstood artists who didn't have the benefit of savvy management. Oh, they were going to hell, for sure, but maybe they were going to have some fun along the way. And the Stones got me started listening to everybody else not named John, Paul, George, or Ringo, so thanks guys.
What's going to follow will be lists, reviews, memories (some true, some not, some possibly drug-related), essays, and some pissing and moaning about how that kind of musical innocence doesn't exist anymore. Maybe more surprisingly, there will be a lot of examples of why that ancient spark is still alive and burning hotter than ever. Follow along if it sounds like fun. Agree, disagree, I don't care, arguing is healthy for the brain at my age.
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