Turn The Radio On...

You could hear the music on the AM Radio

The VCR and the DVD - there wasn't none of that crap back in 1970
We didn't know about a World Wide Web
Was a whole different game being played back when I was a kid
Wanna get down in a cool way?
Picture yourself on a beautiful day
Big Bell Bottoms and groovy, long hair
Just a-walking in style with a portable CD player - No!
You would listen to the music on the AM Radio
Yeah, you could hear the music on the AM Radio 

 As far back as I can remember, music has been a big part of my life.

I got my first record player when I was 7.  It was a tiny portable "toy" record player that ran on D batteries and skipped.  I remember wanting one of those big record players like the music teacher had in grade school, with the big speaker in the front and the locking, hinged lid.  Brown handle.  I didn't want no stinking plastic PLAYSKOOL record player.  I wanted the real thing.

I started collecting records around the same time.  I'd get a weekly allowance and would save up my money to buy 45s.  I remember begging my mom to get me "Afternoon Delight" because I liked the "rocket" sound in the song.  I had no clue it was about a little afternoon nookie and obviously my mom didn't either because she bought me the record.  My second favorite song was a little country ditty called "Never ending song of love" by someone named Dickey Lee.  (I can't believe I still remember these artists.)  I don't know why I liked the song so much but I did.  Google it.  It's pretty sappy.  I guess I was a hopeless romantic as a child, too.

By the time I graduated high school, I had at least 20 of those round plastic record holders for my 45s and several plastic milk crates of albums (LPs).  Sadly, I left them all behind when I left for college and they eventually met their demise in the great storage shed fire of 1990.

I also spent a lot of time listening to the radio.   AM radio.  Barry Manilow, Captain and Tenille, Carpenters, Bee Gees, Eagles, and an odd assortment of country (and western) singers.  

In junior high, I remember holding a cassette recorder up to the radio to record songs.  This was before radios came with recorders built in.  I would wait for Casey Kasem's countdown on Sunday morning and sit there in my room, waiting to record my favorite songs, and get very upset when the DJ would talk through the beginning of the song.  Believe it or not, I still have some of those "mixed tapes" of the songs I recorded off of the radio.

I'm feeling kind of nostalgic because today is the 30th anniversary of the launch of MTV in 1981.  I remember the day MTV came on.  I was glued to my television for the entire 80s, watching music video after music video.  Who remembers that other channels tried to do their own video shows, too?  There was a show on one of the main networks on the weekend called Friday Night Videos ... and I believe TBS even had their own version called Night Tracks. I watched them too.   And yes, sometimes, I would hold my cassette player up to the tv to record songs or interviews.

I was such a dork, but music helped me survive my adolescence.  Seriously.   

I was a pretty shy kid.  I had some friends, but for the most part, I stayed in my room, reading books and listening to music.

Every mood has a song.  Every moment of my life has a song.  If you play a song from the 80s, I can pretty much tell you where I was and what I was doing when I first heard the song.   I can probably tell you who I was crushing on at the time and what outfit I was wearing.  I can tell you who my best friend was when the song was out.  I always felt like the lyrics were written just for me.  I would write in my diary parts of songs and analyze the lyrics.  There used to be a magazine that published the lyrics to songs that I would buy at National Record Mart and then highlight and underline the lyrics to songs that I found meaningful and significant. 

And I still do it today, evidenced by the lyrics I pop into my blogs on occasion.  I have a vast music collection rambling around in my head.

So, want to play a modern version of name that tune?  I warn you -- I play to win.

And as ABBA says, "The winner takes it all."