289136105

a little background on meI was born in 1961, the youngest of four children. Growing up I was exposed to rock music by listening to the records my older brothers and sister brought home. Also, at this time in the 60's AM radio was king. I used to listen to two local stations, WLEE and WSSV (Wonderful Southside Virginia). Even as a little kid I always loved Rock n roll and was pretty good at remembering who did what song. Sometime around 1975 when I was about 14 years old a simple event occurred that would have a profound effect on the rest of my life. My mother had gone to our local mall to get her hair done and she had brought me with her. While she was in the chair I decided to pass the time walking around the mall. There wasn't much in this mall for a 14 year old boy to do; however, a brand new store (to me anyway) had just opened called Waldenbooks. It was the first book store I had ever gone in. I went in not looking for anything in particular, but there on a display table was The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Rock Music. I was stunned. I thought, "people write books about rock music? What is there to write about?" A few nights earlier I had stayed up to watch whatever happened to be the late movie (Late would be about 11 o'clock) and this particular night the movie happened to be Head which was The Monkees movie. I picked up the book and looked up The Monkees. I found their entry to be fascinating and I thought, "There are actually are stories behind these bands?" I decided to continue my research by looking up books on rock music at the Junior High School library and our local library. They did not have many and what they did have weren't very good. But each time I would look up The Monkees I would notice no one ever talked about The Monkees without mentioning The Beatles. Also around this time I saw another book that was the first price guide I had ever seen for collectible albums. I had decided that this would be my new hobby, collecting rock albums. Now our story takes us up to Christmastime 1976. I looked through the Penneys catalog and saw the only thing I wanted for that Christmas. It was a combination turntable, AM/FM radio, 8-track tape player. It cost about $220, in 1976 that was a lot of money for my parents. I decided if I got this stereo that I would get rid of all of the hand me down records and the few that I had of my own. I decided that anything that I got on that Christmas day I would save forever. On Christmas day I got that stereo and I also got The Doobie Brothers Greatest Hits on 8-track, KISS Rock n Roll Over, and a K-Tell album called Looney Tunes & Merry Melodies. That was almost 30 years ago and I still have them. Around this time my favorite band was KISS and my favorite album was Alive! So I decided to check out The Beatles live album, The Beatles At The Hollywood Bowl. I was reintroduced to and fell back in love with A Hard Days Night, Help, and She Loves You. One night a few months later the late movie was Yellow Submarine. You know that scene after the opening title when all is quite and it just breaks into Eleanor Rigby? Well that scene absolutely blew me away. I used to tell people that when the song began two hands reach out of the TV, grabbed me by my ears, and a voice said, "From now on you'll look at life this way" and turned my head completely around. From that point on The Beatles and more particular, rock music, would be my number one obsession.