My Musical Odyssey: From Classic Rock to College Radio to IndieBrit Pop
My grades could barely be heard above C-sharp minor?
A teenage Republican who rocks to The Who?
Peter Bollenbecker had so much influence on me.
It was my senior year of high school. I was still shedding my jacket and tie and Wall Street Journal and seven years of Reaganism. I wrote a column for the school newspaper called ‘Wally’s Corner’ where I discussed Dudeism and politics.
My current students do not believe I wore a tie to school, and then I show them my high school yearbook. Yep, tie. And then I say, “I wonder why I didn’t have girlfriends.”
Classic rock was also my religion. My album collection — we’re talking vinyl — is extensive, and full of everything from The Allman Brothers to Frank Zappa and the Mothers.
Of course, I worshipped The Big Three — The Beatles, The Who, and Led Zeppelin. The seniors on the football team called me “Led Head.” I didn’t carefully read books for school, even though I was ‘literary.’ Instead, I read books on the Beatles, Led Zeppelin’s The Hammer of the Gods, and The Who’s In Their Own Words.
I owned every album of The Beatles — The Who — the list continues — hundreds of albums. The good money I earned as a busy busboy went to Wall to Wall Sound and Sam Goody.
Many of these albums now reside with my college radio DJ daughter, Nancy, who blows me out of the water with her eclectic and amazing tastes in music. Most of those albums, too, were soon replaced with CDs — and I was the first one I knew to buy a CD player.
I spent hours listening to my first two CDs in the early 80s. They were sold in those long, rectangular boxes because stores only had the storage for albums. What were these things?
And guess what two I bought? Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” No, but that would have been a good one!
Yep — it was Sgt. Pepper and Dark Side of the Moon. I was in headphone heaven — listening carefully to that George Harrison squeak of the chair at the end of “A Day in the Life.”
I didn’t need drugs. I had this. And it was ecstasy, man — and no need for MDMA — or Molly — a drug I would see, but not do, later in my musical journey.
Before everything was online, I would listen to WMMR in Philly, and during the Memorial Day Countdown for the 500 Greatest Rock Songs of All-Time, I would keep a journal, which I still have, of the top 100. If “Stairway to Heaven” wasn’t #1 — that was an outrage. (It always was). And #2 would have to be “A Day in a Life” from The Beatles, and #3 “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from The Who, and “Sympathy for the Devil,” from the Stones, and so on. I made my own mixes on tape — Rock’s Greatest Hits — Volume I-X.
Is it any wonder my grades could barely be heard above C-sharp minor?
“Phony Beatlemania Has Bitten the Dust”
Then Pete arrived from Los Angeles. He hated New Jersey. Despised the place. He had the craziest haircut — a tamer version of A Flock of Seagulls — dyed almost white, and flipped over, almost always covering one eye. He wore no socks, ever — and he wore his jeans rolled up. He was LA hip. I was NJ lame. The day after graduation, he promised he would leave South Jersey forever, and never return.
I think that’s what happened. I have never heard from him since, but his influence lingers. Pete Townsend sings “Let My Love Open the Door.” But Pete opened the “doors of perception” to new sounds and flavors and styles.
And when I threw a party at my house, I made sure to have beer on hand — I was a Molson Man then, and I stored the beer in my mom’s dryer. Then she decided to do laundry — in the middle of a great party — and long after we cleared away the toxic smoke from an uncooperative chimney flue. I always threw parties, but I never had beer — before 21. I really disappointed my mom, but Pete wanted to show up and he wanted a beer. And Pete was cool. Was it worth the trouble and the betrayal of faith?
Perhaps.
Pete would make fun of my old man’s music. He quoted The Clash — a band that is now in my Big Three, that “phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust!” He curated mixes of The Cure, The Dead Kennedys, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Joy Division, and New Order — as well as a bunch of other “Indie UK” pop that never really hit Southern New Jersey.
I listened to U2 — we all did, really. But Bono warns all classic rockers that “you glorify the past while the future dries up.” And my best friends, like Dan and Alec would listen to The Violent Femmes and other bands, like PSB — The Pet Shop Boys that were “outside the Realm of Classics.”
There was this small band of Southerners out of Athens, Georgia that Alec wanted me to see when at Rutgers University. Some band called R.E.M.
Like an idiot, I didn’t go. Now, I have all of their albums and even have pictures of the restaurant, “Automatic for the People.” It was also convenient that my brother was studying at the University of Georgia in Athens.
It was the last semester of high school. I tossed my Michael J. Fox jacket and ties in the back of the closet, signed myself out of school, for a half a day, now that I was 18, and I drove to The Dry Goods to “update” my look to “Uber cool.”
The next day, I shocked everyone. It was like when I wore Led Zeppelin shirts every day in middle school, and cried copious tears when John Bonham died in 1980 — along with John Lennon — two god-like legends with me — but then saw a Reagan speech, and then came to school like a prep-school-wanker-Tory-pratt — looking like the smartest kid in class.
My knit ties were cool before they became cool again a few years ago. Are they still cool? I can’t keep up.
Then my shift in music began. While I still worshipped the Gods of Classic Rock, other bands started infiltrating my bedroom — basically, a closet that my mom’s boyfriend Bill made into a room. It contained a bed, a desk, and my stereo — with speakers and a system that must have weighed 200 pounds.
That’s when I discovered The Clash, The Sex Pistols, and The Ramones. Then more “college radio” like R.E.M, the Pixies, 10,000 Maniacs, The Pogues, XTC, The Replacements, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
London Calling — 1989
But the true transformation didn’t fully occur until I crossed the Atlantic just after Christmas in 1989 with my good friend Tim, a huge Who and Genesis fan, and landed in Heathrow.
For much of that year, I was my own American invasion — finding music that didn’t really make it to the States, and at least not to Southern New Jersey. But I’m sure Pete knew about The Charlatans and Pulp long before I did.
And it was there that I fell in love with IndieUK, Shoegazer, the Madchester Sound, and ultimately, BritPop — and that adventure in British clubs and pubs is another story. And it’s a great story because I was in school at one of the best places for Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing” — Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
And I have Pete to thank for showing me the light of new experiences. I just wish his beer was colder. Dryers don’t keep beer cold — even when closed from the eyes of a prying and busy divorced mom.
As for now, to quote The Sunday’s, “Here’s where the story ends.”