audio

i keep thinking about the beginnings. the am radios that our parents controlled while we sat in backseats (withOUT seatbelts, by the way) and waited patiently to get where we were going and listened to the family tunes of the early sixties, the elephant walk, walk on by, walk like a man. a lotta walking going on in the sixties. we never thought about the radio quality, just that a tune was coming out and thank God it wasn't KFWB all news like my grandparents had on 24-7. then came the boxed hinge-covered single record player i had in my room with 45s of three dog night, classics IV, grass roots, guess who, the archies and the buckinghams.

the reverberating organ music of the late sixties that wasn't listened to by any parents i knew, but by the teenagers on the block, the ones who baby-sat but probably shouldn't have. barbara scott showed me which drugs she took by pointing to the pamphlet the police handed out at school as a pre-curser to 'just say no'. all the brightly-colored pills with the cool nicknames, she took them all, and i was afraid of her, and her music. grace slick sounded like what i'd heard an acid trip felt like and i didn't want any. i preferred whichever 45s or even an album or two that my cool cousin Tommy would buy for my birthdays or christmas. my favorite: in-a-gada-da-vida by the iron butterfly. this one didn't sound dangerous, just reminded me of my cousin and drove my parents crazy as the only place to play it was on the stereo console in the living room. they thought it was a disrespectful reference to the bible and still think the words go 'in the garden of eden, baby'.

we wanted to carry our tunes outside our cars or homes and the only way to do that was to get one of the very strang looking, very American-made, personal transistor radios trying to come out as fashion accesories to eclipse little handheld rectangles with indented speaker stripes in front. mine was a blue panasonic radio ball on a chain. worse sound than even the car radio, but it was mine and it was portable! i could listen to 93-KHJ all i wanted and did. jerry reed, the jackson five, and three dog night, all came with me from my own radio. wow.

fm came on strong in the mid-seventies, i could listen to KIQQ or KTNQ (ten-Q) on my bedroom stereo that took up almost a whole wall in its massive white painted cabinet with black accents. that's when life took off for me. i discovered rock, funk, love songs, disco, rock-a-billy, anything and everything my friends or boyfriend-of-the-moment was listening to. and i did too, loudly and often. they wouldn't come with me, but charlie, chicago, boston, lynnard skynyrd, the eagles, bad company, doobie brothers, cat stevens, elton john, santana, bee gees, charlie daniels, bread, rose royce were all ambience for anything that went on there in my room. i collected albums like penny candy and studied the cover art harder than i did any of my schoolwork. there could've been less-than-savory things going on in the world, even in my own family, but to me and my music, it was the most perfect of times.

the walkman was invented just for me. when i moved to a strange part of the country and was left to myself more than i expected, def leppard, yes, genesis and zebra kept me company on the long walks and drives i took to keep myself busy. all the strange sights i had yet to get used to were exciting and so was the music in my ears. everytime i hear 'foolin' by def leppard, i think of take-off from either LAX or JFK (EWR, LGA) with words in my ears as i looked out the window at the tinier and tinier houses: "Is anybody out there? Anybody there? Does anybody wonder? Anybody care?"

fast-forward to this morning. i decided to escape the droning football commentaries and crowds cheering that my husband chose to punctuate his sunday and strapped on the iPod armband so i can fill my head with tunes that light a fire under me. i clean the house, wash the clothes, strip the beds, even rid the fridge of serving dishes holding the last of the thanksgiving leftovers. i contemplate over again the complex organ tunes of the late sixties, the hard-hitting electric guitar solos of the seventies, the harder and longer ones of the eighties hair bands and let's not forget the disco and hip-hop tunes. they kick my ass like nothing else can, the house is done in no time and i don't want to take the buds from my ears. i'm re-connected to the music in my head. such an eccelectic mix taking me back to re-live pieces of my life, places i've almost forgotten, and people i no longer see but had once 'grooved to the tunes' along with me, however they came to us.