Listen to the Music

 

Don't you feel it growin' day by day?
People gettin' ready for the news
Some are happy some are sad...
Oh... we got to let the music play* 

I’ve enjoyed listening to music as long as I can remember.  As a young boy, I yearned for one of those small, battery-powered transistor radios that you could carry around without having to plug it in.  I had a little black cuff link box that I would hold to my ear, pretending it played music.  When my godparents gave me a transistor radio as a first communion present, I was in seventh heaven.  I carriedthat radio with me constantly, usually tuned to KQV in Pittsburgh. I listened to Hal Murray in the morning and Chuck Brinkman through the evening.  I learned the lyrics to all my favorite songs and sang along with The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Beach Boys and Four Seasons when their tunes blasted from my little radio.

When I got a little older, I abandoned KQV and its top forty format for the soul sounds being played on WAMO by Brother Matt and Sir Walter.  I grooved to tunes by The Temptations, Four Tops, The Dells, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.  In the early evening, WAMO featured Porky Chedwick spinning dusty discs containing songs I was too young to hear when they were new.  Late at night, I enjoyed Terry Lee’s Music for Young Lovers on WMCK.

My musical tastes changed again in the late sixties as single 45s gave way to album rock and FM radio.  WDVE became my radio station of choice.  They played obscure cuts from albums, and often they would play an album in its entirety.  If I couldn’t find an FM radio, I listened to progressive rock on AM 1590, WZUM.  One of my best friends joined the Columbia record club, initially getting something like 13 records for $1.99, and then being forced to buy another 13 at “regular club prices.”  We’d gather around an old stereo in his basement and listen to Déjà Vu, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tarkus by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Cruisin’ with Ruben and the Jets by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and The Gilded Palace of Sin by The Flying Burrito Brothers.

It was around the time I was in high school that I finally earned enough extra money from my paper route to buy tickets for a live concert.  So, two like-minded friends and I purchased tickets to see The Band at the Syria Mosque in Oakland.  To this day, The Band’s music counts among my favorite.  Having experienced one live concert, I knew I had to attend more.

So, to the best of my recollection, the following list includes the acts I was able to see in live concert over the next 40 years:

• Argent and The Kinks, together at the Syria Mosque in the early 1970s;
• Traffic and Edgar Winter’s White Trash at the Civic Arena – we had floor seats; they frisked all attendees and made one of my party empty the wineskin he tried to smuggle in under his shirt; despite those precautions, a young girl sitting in front of us threw up, perhaps from what she had been drinking before entering the Arena.
• I saw The Beach Boys, Boz Scaggs and The Rascals during my freshman year at IUP (1971-72).  It may have been one concert or three – I honestly don’t remember;
• Sha Na Na at Clarion College – a great time was had by all;
• Michael Franks, most famous for his “Popsicle Toes,” at IUP with my future wife around 1976;
• Blood, Sweat & Tears at Duquesne University with my wife, Susan.
• Neil Diamond at the Civic Arena with Susan;
• Barry Manilow at the Civic Arena shortly after the release of his 2:00 AM Paradise Café album with Susan.
• Many years passed between the Manilow concert and the next one I saw with The Mavericks and BR549 at the Byham Theatre in Pittsburgh.  I attended that concert with my son Samuel who was in high school.
• More years passed before I attended the Rodriguez concert at Barclays Center in Brooklyn with my son Michael a year or two after the film “Searching for Sugar Man” received an Academy Award for best documentary in early 2013.  Since then, I saw:
• Three Dog Night at the American Music Theatre in Lancaster, PA with my brother Bob;
• The Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show at the Petersen Event Center at the University of Pittsburgh with Samuel;
• Jason Mraz at The Mann Center in Philadelphia, the summer of 2018 with Susan, my daughter Anna and our friend, Kirsten;
• Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden in January 2019 with Susan;
• The Outlaws Concert featuring Willie Nelson, The Avett Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show, Allison Krauss and Dawes at the Key Bank Pavilion in Pittsburgh in June 2019 with Samuel.
• I saw several big name acts in concerts at PNC Park after Pirates games including Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Steve Miller Band, The Clarks, and Huey Lewis and the News.

Since moving to West Chester, I’ve attended several concerts featuring local bands.  I listen to WMGK (102.9 FM) when I want to hear Classic Rock and WXPN (88.5 FM) when I want to hear something new.  I still love listening to the music and hope to never stop attending live concerts. 

Even when I’m not near a radio, there is always a song playing in my brain.   Like The Doobie Brothers sing, “Whoa oh, listen to the music, all the time.”* 

 

* Listen to the Music, by Tom Johnston, as performed by The Doobie Brothers.