I'm the same age as Bob Greene, but in England we'd already had a year of the early Beatles. The experience was the same though. Teenagers knew that they belonged to us. It was wonderful that from '64 onwards the world could share them, and watch their progress together.
I was 10 years old when the Beatles hit. Greene's narrative resonates so strongly -- I had gotten my first guitar in order to be able to play the folk music my sister and older cousins were listening to, and then, bam (and even the early Beatle songs were a big step up in chords and complexity from late 50s/early 60s folk music). It's virtually impossible to explain to anyone younger than I what it was like, the impact the music and styles had on the culture, and on the freedom we felt to diverge from our parents' identities.
I saw the Beatles on their first US tour in Atlantic City, Convention Hall, NJ: 1964. I went with my friend and her parents. Her Mom was from UK and was talking to a man at the bar. They were from the same town! He was George Harrison’s father. He got us the Fab Four’s autograph on the hotel stationary (blue). I kept it for years in my little treasure box. When my Mom separated from my Dad for a year I was sent to a relative’s house for a few weeks. When I came home to our new apartment, the autograph was missing. I still have the satin zip case it was in. I think my sister knows what happened to it, bc every time it’s discussed (I’ve called a halt to this) she remains silent. The concert: mostly young girls. Pandemonium. Screaming the WHOLE TIME.
I was only 11 in “64 but I remember lounging on the floor, looking up at the black and white TV when the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan show. It was like a bolt of lightning went straight up my spine! I had realized in that moment that I had to be a musician. Nothing else would ever get in the way of that. Sure, I had been raised on listening to my mother sing Handel and Bach and church music, and I was a boy soprano (a treble as they say), but the Beatles just absolutely sent me. They still do. My musical training and experience is quite broad, but there will always be room for appreciating what the Beatles did. It is rich and remains important.
My mother use to threaten to my bangs in April of 1964. I also had to shave my sideburns because they were nearly to the bottom of my ears! Those were the days!
I was mostly oblivious to all of this, when it was happening. By 1962, when I was 13, I was already a jazz snob. Sure, I loved the songwriters of The Great American Songbook, my favorite being Cole Porter, but I assumed that good popular songs died with them. I must have seen The Beatles and the Stones on Ed Sullivan, because we watched it every week. And I clearly remember José Greco, Señor Wences, Steve and Eydie, and Kermit THE Frog. But I have no recollection of seeing any rock music on Sullivan. At all. No Elvis, no Turtles. I saw Jerry Lee Lewis on the Steve Allen Plymouth Show in 1957, and thought he was funny, but not art. I also remember seeing Buffalo Springfield on Hollywood Palace in 1967 and being mildly impressed (maybe due to all the fringe they were wearing), but I still didn't buy their records until later. It wasn't until the end of the '60s that I started listening to rock music, initially rock music that had similarities to jazz or 20th Century classical, another love. Then, with the help of friends who had been paying attention, I had to go back and discover what I had missed. As a result, though, my favorites were more heterodox, like The Small Faces & The Move, early Who (through Sell Out), early Kinks (through Muswell Hillbillies). Also UK pop psychedelia like early Soft Machine, Tomorrow & Creation.
As evidence of his initial claims (or perhaps my own bias), as soon as I saw the title I immediately assumed teenage girl, and was rather confused by the opening paragraph.
My pal and I were so deep into Herb Alpert(!) that we competed to see who could get the newest albums. Then he moved a few miles away (different school, too far to see every day) and the next time I DID see him I mentioned the new Herb album and Bob said "Electric Prunes, man."
I'm not saying it changed my life (I really didn't care a rat's patoot about the Prunes), but it DID change my radio station. And THAT changed my life. KMPX was about a week old when I managed to pull it in on my laughable radio. And soon after that KSAN. All good – all of it. Surrealistic Pillow maybe the most. A year later I heard Sweet Child late one evening, and the Bert Jansch/John Renbourn rabbit hole is one I've never completely climbed back out of. And of course Sly.
I guess maybe if I'd been a focused person I coulda written something...
OK excuse me if I run with this a minute or as my fellow fellow Palo Altan about to debut at the Warfield Remi Wolf would say “quiet on the set, run it”: In 1977 I was a seventh grader at Terman junior high and KYA radio had a contest with soundbites to spell out their slogan something like “the best news the best music K-Y-A”. You had to identify the nine soundbyes or listen to the previous contestant and pick up where he or she left off. I forget the prize but it was a sensation. My friend Andrew Zenoff son of a business school professor called in and guessed wrong for the big money. The final clue or final part of the puzzle was it fairly obscure song from six years previous Brewer and Shipley “One toke over the line”. Which if you strip it down to just the long “a” sound is even more obscure. I’m producing a Pablo Cruz show tomorrow in Palo Alto which has me thinking about all this when I am not FM or the Internet was your source of new music as Mr. Greene says in your example from 13 years before that.
Anyways I thought the word “toke” was related to the word “took”. I thought it was about a religious advocate proselytizing to the people waiting in line next one at the train station. I really didn’t get this correct until just a few years ago. The word toke is in my Webster’s 11th but not my Webster’s ninth — Its from the word touch.
For years Greene wrote for the Sun Times in Chicago. Honestly? He was awful. Sentimentality must be avoided at all costs, and that's mostly what he dealt in. One day, his columns stopped appearing in the paper. I always wondered what happened to him, but I certainly didn't miss him.
I got a chuckle reading Greene relating how he spent 2 hours in front of the radio, waiting for a Beatles song to come on so he could tape it. I remember those days, all too well. With everything so accessible these days, in many ways we are quite spoiled.
If I wrote a journal today my section of new music I’m excited about today would take 0 words unfortunately. I’m finding and listening to new music. But nothing worth writing about unfortunately. I haven’t had a new album on repeat in the last few years except Billie Eilish’s first record.
I'm the same age as Bob Greene, but in England we'd already had a year of the early Beatles. The experience was the same though. Teenagers knew that they belonged to us. It was wonderful that from '64 onwards the world could share them, and watch their progress together.
I was 10 years old when the Beatles hit. Greene's narrative resonates so strongly -- I had gotten my first guitar in order to be able to play the folk music my sister and older cousins were listening to, and then, bam (and even the early Beatle songs were a big step up in chords and complexity from late 50s/early 60s folk music). It's virtually impossible to explain to anyone younger than I what it was like, the impact the music and styles had on the culture, and on the freedom we felt to diverge from our parents' identities.
I saw the Beatles on their first US tour in Atlantic City, Convention Hall, NJ: 1964. I went with my friend and her parents. Her Mom was from UK and was talking to a man at the bar. They were from the same town! He was George Harrison’s father. He got us the Fab Four’s autograph on the hotel stationary (blue). I kept it for years in my little treasure box. When my Mom separated from my Dad for a year I was sent to a relative’s house for a few weeks. When I came home to our new apartment, the autograph was missing. I still have the satin zip case it was in. I think my sister knows what happened to it, bc every time it’s discussed (I’ve called a halt to this) she remains silent. The concert: mostly young girls. Pandemonium. Screaming the WHOLE TIME.
I was only 11 in “64 but I remember lounging on the floor, looking up at the black and white TV when the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan show. It was like a bolt of lightning went straight up my spine! I had realized in that moment that I had to be a musician. Nothing else would ever get in the way of that. Sure, I had been raised on listening to my mother sing Handel and Bach and church music, and I was a boy soprano (a treble as they say), but the Beatles just absolutely sent me. They still do. My musical training and experience is quite broad, but there will always be room for appreciating what the Beatles did. It is rich and remains important.
My mother use to threaten to my bangs in April of 1964. I also had to shave my sideburns because they were nearly to the bottom of my ears! Those were the days!
I was mostly oblivious to all of this, when it was happening. By 1962, when I was 13, I was already a jazz snob. Sure, I loved the songwriters of The Great American Songbook, my favorite being Cole Porter, but I assumed that good popular songs died with them. I must have seen The Beatles and the Stones on Ed Sullivan, because we watched it every week. And I clearly remember José Greco, Señor Wences, Steve and Eydie, and Kermit THE Frog. But I have no recollection of seeing any rock music on Sullivan. At all. No Elvis, no Turtles. I saw Jerry Lee Lewis on the Steve Allen Plymouth Show in 1957, and thought he was funny, but not art. I also remember seeing Buffalo Springfield on Hollywood Palace in 1967 and being mildly impressed (maybe due to all the fringe they were wearing), but I still didn't buy their records until later. It wasn't until the end of the '60s that I started listening to rock music, initially rock music that had similarities to jazz or 20th Century classical, another love. Then, with the help of friends who had been paying attention, I had to go back and discover what I had missed. As a result, though, my favorites were more heterodox, like The Small Faces & The Move, early Who (through Sell Out), early Kinks (through Muswell Hillbillies). Also UK pop psychedelia like early Soft Machine, Tomorrow & Creation.
Fab!
As evidence of his initial claims (or perhaps my own bias), as soon as I saw the title I immediately assumed teenage girl, and was rather confused by the opening paragraph.
Glad I never wrote a diary...but...
My pal and I were so deep into Herb Alpert(!) that we competed to see who could get the newest albums. Then he moved a few miles away (different school, too far to see every day) and the next time I DID see him I mentioned the new Herb album and Bob said "Electric Prunes, man."
I'm not saying it changed my life (I really didn't care a rat's patoot about the Prunes), but it DID change my radio station. And THAT changed my life. KMPX was about a week old when I managed to pull it in on my laughable radio. And soon after that KSAN. All good – all of it. Surrealistic Pillow maybe the most. A year later I heard Sweet Child late one evening, and the Bert Jansch/John Renbourn rabbit hole is one I've never completely climbed back out of. And of course Sly.
I guess maybe if I'd been a focused person I coulda written something...
OK excuse me if I run with this a minute or as my fellow fellow Palo Altan about to debut at the Warfield Remi Wolf would say “quiet on the set, run it”: In 1977 I was a seventh grader at Terman junior high and KYA radio had a contest with soundbites to spell out their slogan something like “the best news the best music K-Y-A”. You had to identify the nine soundbyes or listen to the previous contestant and pick up where he or she left off. I forget the prize but it was a sensation. My friend Andrew Zenoff son of a business school professor called in and guessed wrong for the big money. The final clue or final part of the puzzle was it fairly obscure song from six years previous Brewer and Shipley “One toke over the line”. Which if you strip it down to just the long “a” sound is even more obscure. I’m producing a Pablo Cruz show tomorrow in Palo Alto which has me thinking about all this when I am not FM or the Internet was your source of new music as Mr. Greene says in your example from 13 years before that.
Anyways I thought the word “toke” was related to the word “took”. I thought it was about a religious advocate proselytizing to the people waiting in line next one at the train station. I really didn’t get this correct until just a few years ago. The word toke is in my Webster’s 11th but not my Webster’s ninth — Its from the word touch.
For years Greene wrote for the Sun Times in Chicago. Honestly? He was awful. Sentimentality must be avoided at all costs, and that's mostly what he dealt in. One day, his columns stopped appearing in the paper. I always wondered what happened to him, but I certainly didn't miss him.
I got a chuckle reading Greene relating how he spent 2 hours in front of the radio, waiting for a Beatles song to come on so he could tape it. I remember those days, all too well. With everything so accessible these days, in many ways we are quite spoiled.
This made me smile.
Amazing.
Too bad Bobby didn’t discover Trane then too..!
If I wrote a journal today my section of new music I’m excited about today would take 0 words unfortunately. I’m finding and listening to new music. But nothing worth writing about unfortunately. I haven’t had a new album on repeat in the last few years except Billie Eilish’s first record.