Concert Review: Night Ranger 7/14/2017 - by Jeremy Porter

Concert Review

Night Ranger - Detroit Riverfront

July 14, 2017   by Jeremy Porter

 

Photos by Jeremy Porter

Photos by Jeremy Porter

I first saw Night Ranger some 30 years ago, in August of 1987, at the Upper Peninsula State Fair in Escanaba, Michigan. Concerts were few and far between in the U.P., so we didn’t miss them when they came, even if they weren’t our A-list bands. I was 2 months out of high school, and still reeling from missing Cheap Trick on the same stage a year earlier as a punishment for wrapping my parent’s Monza around an elm tree in downtown Marquette with an open Old Milwaukee in my hand. Great White opened, who I initially liked with their heavy metal debut EP, but quickly tired of as they started butchering the blues as only white dudes with poofed out peroxide hair can do. Brad Gillis, Night Ranger’s guitarist who replaced Randy Rhoads in Ozzy’s band and played on the live “Speak of the Devil” album, handed me his guitar pick after the solo in (You Can Still) Rock In America. They were great. It was a cool night, and sort of a symbolic end to my high school years.  

I loved (and still love) Don’t Tell Me You Love Me and (You Can Still) Rock In America, but, I didn’t hold their biggest hit Sister Christian in the same regard, preferring power ballads by slightly heavier bands like Scorpions, Ozzy and Cinderella. By the time I first saw Night Ranger I was listening to The Clash and Black Flag and driving to Milwaukee to see The Replacements, REM, and Hüsker Dü, but I never abandoned them. They were over-polished, but they had a certain power-pop element with ahead-of-the-beat energy and easy hooks that provided some salvage to the MTV onslaught of Tears for Fears, A-Ha, and other, less engaging drivel. Jack Blades was a cool rock star. I liked the way his bass hung low and sat on his leg, like a short, blonde Nikki Sixx with cleaner hair. And the harmonies, melody and lyrics of When You Close Your Eyes had me the same way some of the better indie songs of the time did, though I knew it wouldn’t make it into those conversations. I liked the line about “a hard night of drinking” which seemed like something other bands wouldn’t touch so blatantly in their radio hits. I wasn’t a fan of the Miami Vice look that they adopted, and I couldn’t put them on at a party with my friends, but It seemed to me like Night Ranger weren’t trying as hard as the other bands to be cool, and that made them even cooler.

[Now that I’ve spent 2 paragraphs justifying my appreciation for Night Ranger…..]  

So it’s 2017 and here I am again, at a Night Ranger concert. No one would go with me - my friends, band-mates and co-workers chuckled, as if I wasn’t even serious about it. My wife probably would have enjoyed it, but she was out of town. I spent the 48 hours before the concert talking myself in and out of going, but 6pm Friday night came and I was in my car with the Detroit skyline and it’s centerpiece - the Renaissance Center - looming in the distance. What the hell was I getting myself into? And really, this is what it’s come to? I am going to Night Ranger concerts by myself now?  Time to re-evaluate?  I stopped into the Checker Bar for a shot of courage and walked into the crowd.

The setting was a thin patch of concrete and stone between the Ren-Cen and the Detroit River in the center of the city. Somehow I managed to quietly and stealthily weasel my way into the “friends of the band” section (I am not a friend of the band and had no business in there) which offered a great vantage point. The 2 openers were local cover bands delivering largely predictable and generic-at-best classic rock staples. The first band’s version of Say What You Will by Fastway had me entertained for a minute, but the Bryan Adams, Billy Idol and multiple Led Zeppelin covers had me still questioning my decision to come. I almost left about every 3rd song, to be honest, but I stuck it out.  

Brad Gillis Rocking in America / Detroit.

Brad Gillis Rocking in America / Detroit.

At 9pm sharp Night Ranger came out with the 1-2 punch of Touch of Madness into Four in the Morning. “I get hiiiiggghhh when I want to” Blades crooned to the revved up Detroit crowd. This was their 35th anniversary tour and he didn’t let us forget it, incorporating the fact into virtually all between-song banter. They did a couple Damn Yankees songs, his band with Tommy Shaw from Styx and the Motor City Madman, thinking that the crowd would be more into hearing Ted Nugent’s name hollered out than they actually were. They also covered Alice Cooper (guitarist Keri Kelli did a stint with Alice) and Ozzy (noting Brad Gillis’ tenure in his band) and the energy level stayed pretty high throughout. Things really picked up towards the end. When You Close Your Eyes isn’t a full-blown rocker, but as I said, I’ve always had a spot for that tune. Don’t Tell Me You Love Me is arguably their finest moment - it pretty much kicks ass and stands up with most stuff from that genre, though I could have done without the transition into Hotel California and Highway Star in the breakdown, and (You Can Still) Rock In America holds it’s own as an anthem despite the easy and obvious patriotic plug. Sister Christian was in there too, giving drummer and second vocalist Kelly Keagy another opportunity to come out from behind the drums (set up stage left, at a right angle rather than center back) and croon to the ladies. Eric Levy even adopted the beard-n-beret look that original keyboardist Alan Fitzgerald had back in the day, rounding out the complete experience.        

The band was tight and energetic, looking fit and running around like dudes half their age, while still hitting the changes right on beat. The harmonies, often 5-ways, were impressive as hell.  The sound was surprisingly good, though I think at one point one of the mains blew, causing some cackling in parts. There was certainly a nostalgia-act aspect to the show, but it was ultimately better than that - the band was on fire, having a blast, and at least putting on like they believed every minute of it. The songs hold up surprisingly well, and even the deep cuts had some teeth. They could have skipped the covers and the Damn Yankees songs, but at the same time most that stuff is a part of this band’s past, so it wasn’t as frivolous as it might appear on the surface. I knew everything they played except the new one, and stayed easily engaged until the end.  

I can sure think of a few worse ways to spend a Friday night in Detroit with the wife out of town. I doubt I’ll head back down to the Riverfront to see .38 Special or Everclear, but I’d go see Night Ranger again. After all, there’s some comfort in knowing that (You Can Still) Rock in America.            

Touch of Madness, Four in the Morning, Sing Me Away, Somehow Someway, Coming of Age (Damn Yankees cover), Sentimental Street, The Secret of My Success, School's Out (Alice Cooper cover), Crazy Train (Ozzy Osbourne cover), Eddie's Comin' Out Tonight, High Enough (Damn Yankees cover), Goodbye, When You Close Your Eyes, Don't Tell Me You Love Me / Hotel California / Highway Star, Sister Christian, (You Can Still) Rock in America

Jeremy Porter lives near Detroit and fronts the rock and roll band Jeremy Porter And The Tucos. Follow them on Facebook to read his road-blog chronicling their adventures and see his photo series documenting the disgusting bathrooms in the dives they play. He's a whiskey snob, an unapologetic fan of "good" metal, and couldn't really care less about the UofM - OSU rivalry since he once saw The Stones at the Horseshoe. Still, go blue.     
www.thetucos.com
www.facebook.com/jeremyportermusic  
@jeremyportermi
www.rockandrollrestrooms.com

一番愛したバンドの一番好きな曲なのに、このパフォーマンスがyou tubeにUPされてないようなので、UPします。エンディングのアレンジ素晴らしい！

League Bowlers (featuring Guitar Slinger Mike Parks) @ The Fair, July 26th

The League Bowlers will be appearing at the Ohio State Fair Wednesday July 26th with Erica Blinn and McGuffey Lane. The show is free and runs from 7-9 pm. (Details here)  Also, the new League Bowlers CD Some Balls Deluxe will be available for pre-order any day now.  With so much Bowling going on, we thought it would be a good time to revisit this piece about the finest guitar player I've ever stood next to onstage, Mike Parks. - Colin G. 

-----------------------------------

(I'm having trouble coming up with anything new & coherent to say about Mike Parks right now, so I'm gonna harken back to a piece I penned for Pencilstorm in earlier, better days, January 27th, 2014 to be exact.

 I mean it all now as much as I did at that time, and then some.  I love ya, Mike. - Ricki C.) 

 

MIKE PARKS / GUITAR SLINGER / JANUARY 27TH, 2014

Today is Mike Parks’ birthday.  I’m not sure exactly how old he is, but he’s older than Mumford & Sons and too young for Social Security & Medicare.

I thought I first met Mike when I joined the road crew of Willie Phoenix & The True Soul Rockers in 1990, but after Mike and I got to talking one night at a gig and discovered our shared West Side roots, it turned out we had actually met – though fleetingly – 20 years earlier when I was a senior at Bishop Ready High School.  

The band Mike was in at that point – The Tree (which later went through various permutations and ended up as Pure Prairie League of “Amie” fame) – played a dance at Bishop Ready and my Catholic school nerd rock & roll friends and I put together a “light show” to accompany the appearance.  (Said light show was cobbled together from oils made with colored Jell-O and overhead projectors from the Bishop Ready audio-visual lab.  I think Life Magazine had run an article on “hippie culture” that week and provided a tutorial.)

The members of The Tree – including, I believe, longtime Parks friend & bandmate Phil Stokes – were drawn from that most dangerous of 1960’s subcultures: Greasers Who Took Acid.  Laid-back run-of-the-mill hippie types who did acid were problematic enough when bad trips got into the mix, but Mike’s particular band of brethren – working-class toughs who had formerly beaten up on longhairs before they discovered the pharmaceutical joys & benefits of the late 60’s – were a particularly volatile mix.  (Think, those clearly whacked-out-of-their-skulls bikers at the side of and ON the stage in the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter.”)

Anyway, The Tree sauntered into our Bishop Ready high-school gym like gunslingers: arrayed in a mix of boots, blue jeans & black leather jackets, topped off with the longest hair we had ever seen close up.  They looked, and moved, more like a gang than they did a band.  My friends and I were afraid to even speak to them.  After the dance, Mike came up to us in the gym at our pathetic little audio-visual station and said, “Hey, cool lights.”  We couldn’t have been prouder, but were struck so dumb by Mike’s acknowledgment of our existence that I think only one of us managed to stammer out, “Th-th-thanks.”  Mike just turned and walked off in a haze of badass guitarslinger cool.  (Somewhere around that time, Mike lived in the house The MC5 maintained at 1510 Hill Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan, FOR TWO WEEKS before the communal-living residents figured out that no one in the house knew Mike and that he didn’t belong there.)

By time we met up again 20 years later, Mike had become one of the five best lead guitarists I have ever seen in Columbus, Ohio.  (Actually, we later discovered I had seen him one other time in the intervening years, when I was writing for Focus magazine and reviewed Brownsville Station in 1978, a show Mike’s then-current band – Shakedown - opened.)  (Right around there Mike also served time in The Godz, see photo below.)  Mike’s white-hot guitar style was especially cool when he played alongside Willie Phoenix – no slouch of a lead player himself – in The True Soul Rockers.  Mike’s straight-ahead solid-rock lead guitar attack contrasted and dovetailed with Willie’s more idiosyncratic playing to killer effect in The Rockers: having Mike & Willie onstage together was like employing Duane Allman & Richard Thompson in the same band, no small musical feat and treat.  (Sadly, there is not one bit of recorded evidence of the dual-lead guitar fireworks Mike & Willie deployed nightly.  Tragic.)  (2017 editor's note: We have lately come into possession of a KILLER live show from the High Beck Tavern in 1992 that it would be great to release as an "approved bootleg" if we could get Willie Phoenix's permission.)  

One of the things I love about Mike is that he doesn’t just PLAY rock & roll, he actually THINKS about rock & roll, has IDEAS about rock & roll.  One of those ideas about rock & roll brought about his and my biggest dust-up ever.  By their natures, guitar heroes and roadies are gonna run into problems.  One night at Ruby Tuesday’s when Willie gave me the song list for the first set I had the bright idea that I would line the guitars up in the order Willie & Mike were going to use them, so it would be easier for me to hand them up to the stage between songs.  We didn’t have a guitar rack in the True Soul Rockers, just individual guitar stands.  More to the point, we had EIGHT OR NINE individual guitar stands between Willie and Mike, some with guitars in alternate tunings.    

As I was sorting out various Fenders & Gibsons, Mike walked up, watched for a minute and said, “What are you doing?”  “I’m arranging the guitars in the order you’re gonna use them,” I replied.  Mike was quiet for a coupla beats, then said, “You can’t do that.  It’s not very rock & roll.”  “I don’t care if it’s rock & roll or not,” I said, with an edge in my voice, “I’m juggling eight or nine guitars here and it makes things simpler.”  “It’s still not rock & roll, though,” Mike said, “I’m taking all my guitars onstage with me.  I don’t want you handling them anymore.”  I watched incredulously as Mike made six trips back & forth to haul all of his guitars up on the stage.  It was the one and only time in my roadie existence that I ever wished for a guitarist to break a string, so that I could refuse to help.

Mike and I got along ever so much better when I wrangled guitars for The League Bowlers – Colin’s offshoot covers band when Joe Oestreich first moved away and Watershed was on hiatus – and we could use Watershed’s guitar rack.  Again, Mike’s endlessly inventive lead guitar style – imagine Chuck Berry if Chuck had ever deigned to PRACTICE the guitar after 1957, or picture the bastard mutant offspring of Keith Richards & Wayne Kramer – was set off perfectly against Colin’s Cheap Trick-inspired stylings.  Mike’s playing in the Bowlers really was quite stunning.  He could play anything Colin tossed at him – from Gawel/Oestreich originals to Tom Petty to George Jones to Georgia Satellites to Dwight Yoakam – and, on top of that, Mike could play ALL NIGHT LONG without repeating a lick.  I’m pretty sure I saw, from my roadie station at the side of the stage, every show the latter-day incarnation of The League Bowlers played and I don’t think I ever saw Mike play the same solo twice.  (For a full eyewitness account of the last night of The League Bowlers when they imploded and broke up ONSTAGE at the old Thirsty Ear in 2008, check out Growing Old With Rock & Roll, The Friday Night Massacre, August 1st, 2012.)    

Happy birthday, Mike, it’d be great to see you on a stage again sometime.  – Ricki C. / January 25th, 2014

And now I will get to see him, this Wednesday at the Fair.  You oughta come, too. - Ricki C. / July 23rd, 2017

Mike (extreme left) in Shakedown, mid-1970's.

Mike (second from left) in The Godz, late 1970's.

Note: I am frankly amazed that Mike was not pistol-whipped by Eric Moore (extreme left)

for showing up at a Godz performance in this get-up.

Mike (extreme left) in The True Soul Rockers, 1992. Jim Johnson, extreme right, Koz & Willie in the middle.

 

Tags The League Bowlers, The Godz, Shakedown, Willie Phoenix & the true Soul Rockers, Columbus rock & roll, Willie Phoenix & the True Soul Rockers

Baby Driver: A Movie for Music Freaks - by "Wild Jon" Peterson

A MUSIC FREAKS DREAM MOVIE!  I’m not big on the “Action Film” genre.  I mean, I love “Die Hard” and “True Lies” as much as everyone because those films are the ‘gold standard’ with dynamic character relationships and great dialogue.  

But you’ll never catch me at a ‘Fast & Furious’ or Mission Impossible franchise movie, nor did I even see ‘The Italian Job.’ Crash & Bang means nothing to me without a killer plot, great acting and the right amounts of romance and comic relief.

So I was reluctant when my friend and fellow movie, music & TV super fan Karena Liakos came to me singing the praises of one of the Summer’s big action films, BABY DRIVER.  But the hook for me that piqued my interest was how much she was singing the praises of the music soundtrack and how it “cut to the beat” of the action in both a thematic and very cinematic way!

I knew that Edgar Wright was a talented young director from 2004’s killer zombie send-up SHAUN OF THE DEAD, but I never was expecting something like this.  It scores on every level (Action, Comedy and Romance) in a big way!

The plot is fairly simple… a young guy  (Ansel Elgort) is the ‘wheel man’ driver for white collar crime boss (Kevin Spacey) who hooks him up with various gangsters (Jon Hamm and Jamie Fox) who perform dramatic stick-up robberies while he (The “Baby Driver”) zooms, bobs and weaves the getaway car through the streets of Atlanta, GA.  

Lots of directors have used music as a “foreground” element: most notably by George Lucas in “American Graffiti” and “Goodfellas” (or any film) by Martin Scorsese.

The unique angle here is that our leading man (“Baby”) does virtually everything in life hooked up to is I-POD’s Earbuds.  Entire songs often play throughout the film in real time, as he skips, dances, drives around and falls in love.  

And the sound mix in the theater mimics how he is hearing the music,  If a character pulls out Baby’s IPOD ear bud, then the right channel drops out of the main speakers and is heard as tinn-y  ambient sound, mimicking Baby’s “first person” perspective.

The plot reason for all this? He was in a car accident as a child that resulted in severe tinnitus.  So he needs music to mask the hum & pink noise in his ears/head.

A complete song list and link (with corresponding plot action) is provided below.  But the highlights for me included:

  • “Baby” dancing around the city to Bob & Earl's “Harlem Shuffle” while lyrical references and street life action are perfectly synced to the song.  A/V Synergy and visual choreography!

  • A gangster tries to make a prick out of Baby for listening to music during a robbery prep meeting while “Baby” is listening to Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers.  The thug even reads the song title “Egyptian Reggae” from his IPOD screen to embarrass him.

  • The instrumental “Let’s Go Away For A While” from the Beach Boys Pet Sounds LP plays as he admirers a pretty young waitress. (That title is thematic in foreshadowing their dreams of escape.)

  • The waitress is singing Carla Thomas’ “B-A-B-Y” as she works.  “Baby” doesn’t know the tune, asks her the name of the artist, and then runs out to local record store to buy it.

  • The waitress “Deborah” and “Baby” discuss human names in song titles. She knows “Debra” by Beck, but he teaches her “Debora” by T-Rex.  Being a dumb millennial who knows nothing about Marc Bolan and only sees the artist name on his small IPOD screen, Baby doesn't see the ‘dash’ in T-REX and tells the waitress that the musician’s name is “TREX”

  • Then there is the GETAWAY MUSIC, including “Neat, Neat, Neat” by The Damned, “Brighton Rock” by Queen, and “Radar Love” by Golden Earring.

  • Of course, the film ends with the obligatory “Baby Driver” by Simon & Garfunkel.

FOR COMPLETE LIST, CLICK HERE:

https://www.tunefind.com/movie/baby-driver-2017

Another use of ‘foreground music’ in the plot revolves around the fact that Baby carries around a tiny handheld recorder, catching snatches and snippets of character dialogue from everyday life, and then runs home to digitalize and manipulate it into mix tapes with looping, drum machines, etc.  This becomes a critical part of the film’s climax when Kevin Spacey finds out that he has been taping him.

A 95% ROTTEN TOMATOES rating says it all… as everything about this film is firing on all pistons.  This great action film is also a great comedy and romance movie!   It was written and directed by Edgar Wright, who also had a lot to do with the soundtrack selections (think of how Quentin Tarantino hand-picked every song in “Pulp Fiction").  With superb cinematography from Bill Pope and great ensemble cast, this movie not only has vehicular mayhem, but is also a MUSIC FREAK’S DREAM!

“Wild Jon” Peterson is the Host/Producer of SHAKIN IT RADIO on WCBE.  BABY DRIVER is now screening at the GATEWAY FILM CENTER, AMC LENNOX TOWN THEATRE, GRANDVIEW THEATRE & DRAFTHOUSE and SOUTH DRIVE IN.

Beginnings: My First Ten Records - by John Potwora

Confucius says: If someone tells you their first-ever record purchase was Einstürzende Neubauten, unfriend them immediately- he or she is a bald-faced liar.

For those of you who share my love for - no - obsession with music, it probably isn't necessary for me to describe the infatuation that first takes hold of one's consciousness, and then diabolically sets about invading your living space.  Besides, mere words fail to describe the mania that drives a kid to blow his weekly allowance on singles and albums, never mind the thousands of hours of half-assed research one must conduct in order to discern treasure from tripe - particularly back in the days before Google could save intrepid explorers from a misguided purchase. Yes, millenials - me and my comrades-in-arms sometimes found it necessary to roll the proverbial dice merely on the promise of a garish twelve-inch square, hoping its cryptic contents might justify repeated visits to Mom and Dad's faux walnut cabinet, more precisely named a JC Penney Penncrest stereo phonograph.

Which might help explain my early foray into delinquency: "Why," I reasoned, "risk another barely listenable recording, evidently captured somewhere in Hamburg by a handheld reel-to-reel recorder stashed deep inside a down pillow, when they might be procured, completely free of cost, from the 'oldies' bin?" (A lesson misconstrued via a recent purchase by my older sister, Laurie.) Yes, I must confess that my quivering armpit once secured a small stack of discs while Mom was blissfully scanning racks of geometrically-adorned blouses in some distant corner of Sears. Which, judging from my American Graffiti induced selections, was entirely appropriate behavior from a latter-day Potsie.

Please don't assume I condone this sort of thing - in fact, I feel pangs of guilt as I recollect my eventual mastery of this technique years later as a misguided, hormone-frenzied teenager who pillaged the hundreds of floor-level boxes of 45's at a certain collectors' record shop on Chicago's South Side. Believe me when I say that life itself soon meted out a surplus of punishment for these transgressions, some of which can only be characterized as the product of a perverse and ingeniously twisted empyrean mind. Or perhaps my Catholic upbringing has implanted a skewed sense of imperfect justice. Either way, I digress.

Anyway, when not spiriting ill-gotten gains from local ledgers, I would seek sound (and unsound) advice from my more seasoned and battle-tested friends. For instance, I had recalled being transfixed by a certain clip from a TV commercial for a now-forgotten K-Tel compilation of "British Invasion" tunes. At that time, my pleas for a seemingly impulsive want had fallen on weary, dismissive ears. But now, armed with strategically withheld lunch money, I was more than ready to take the plunge. Between munches of anemic cafeteria pizza, my friend Tom tried to identify the source of my three-chord hum, assuring me that "Smoke On the Water" was the ticket. Even then I had an inkling that Deep Purple were anything but Ed Sullivan fodder. Nonetheless, I duly paid the extra bus fair for a side trip to Record Town at the Evergreen Park Shopping Mall. Blackmore and company soon became a staple on my ridiculously outsized Panasonic boom box (eight...count 'em, eight D-cells), although the riddle remained unsolved.

Undaunted, a second query yielded the title, "Cocaine." Again, this didn't quite add up, as I had difficulty imagining four moptops gleefully lip-synching their way through an ode to blow, but anything was still possible to this impressionable, wide-eyed pop culture junkie. And so, book bag slung over one shoulder, I embarked on another pilgrimage to Mecca. This time, however, there was little serendipity, and I reluctantly returned to my lunchroom oracle. His final deduction was "Sunshine of Your Love", which at least netted a stunner of an album - one that inspired a further addition to my burgeoning stash of wax, Cream's "Wheels of Fire" twofer. (Thankfully, this hit-or-miss methodology eventually led to the Kinks' katalog, but that's a whole 'nother story.)

Returning to the main subject at hand, 1976 was the start of my proper musical awakening. I can state this with complete confidence because I recently set about compiling a list of my first dozen or so records, and each pressing dates from this banner year. Keep in mind that this second grader was pretty well insulated from edgier contemporary sounds, and, although punk rock was raising eyebrows outside of my suburban Cheektowaga, New York enclave, it would be several years before my second awakening. I would more than make up for any lost time.

The best way to reconnect with this auditory jigsaw puzzle is to actually sit down and LISTEN to the original recordings, rapid-fire. The experience was overwhelming, unlocking feelings and impressions I had tucked away long ago, ensconced somewhere between Gold Key comic books and my first crush (both orange and Jacqueline: Christ, I had it bad for Jacqueline).

 So let's do this.

 1) The Bay City Rollers "Saturday Night" (45 rpm)

Bubble gum rock of the first order. Choco 'Lite candy bars and RC Cola. An opening that grabs you by your khaki, elastic-band cargo shorts and won't let go. Then that fuzztone lick kicks in, and you're launched like a Smash-Up Derby. The whole thing is a sing-along dum-dum that's over too soon, guaranteeing endless replays, or at least until the Donald Duck tonearm turns the grooves white.

I have vague memories of Laurie jumping up and down screaming like a Salem waif as these tartaned teens (was that a Dick Clark special?) flashed across our brand-new Zenith color TV, the one that could have passed for a simulated wood-grained shipping container. They were supposed to be the next Beatles, but vanished quicker than pink & blue cotton candy at Fantasy Island Amusement Park (Grand Island, New York). Listen here!

 2) Barry Manilow "Weekend in New England" (45 rpm)

Oh, stop. Sure, I'll admit I was reluctant to 'fess up to this one, but then YouTube graciously served up this guilty pleasure, no questions asked. And now I remember why I earnestly and unapologetically asked for a copy of this slick ballad, and why Mom and I would sit on the living room sofa together and sing the closing strains of..."Again...Again...". When was the last time you actually listened to it? Go ahead, I won't tell.

Barry doesn't make you wait even one minute for the giant hook, rolling and crashing a'la Paul & Artie's magnum opus, "Bridge Over Troubled Water." And then...it's over. Between him and the Rollers, things must have been pretty flush over at Arista Records. And I'll boldly state right here that McCartney was probably wishing he were still able to write songs like this.

 3) The Beatles "Got to Get You Into My Life" (45 rpm)

 Speaking of Macca...

My first Fab Four platter, complete with green monochromatic picture sleeve. This was hyped at the time to be the "new" Beatles single, never mind that it had been tucked away on Revolver some ten years earlier. It got tons of airplay, and was directly responsible for renewed mid-70s Beatlemania.

I don't usually go for horns in my rock and roll (save Chicago), but brass propels this thing like the morning sun on the first day of Summer vacation. "Yeahs" have morphed into "Oohs," and George's stripped-down guitar lick is as urgent as Paul's full-throated "Got to get you into my life!" Oh hell yes. And a certain seven year-old has got to sneak the Sunday paper bra ads into his room for further study.

 4) Rhythm Heritage "Theme from S.W.A.T." (45 rpm)

My second most-favorite TV show theme song next to Rockford Files. Outside of the inevitable weekly drug raid, its theme was the only real reason for watching this Aaron Spelling potboiler. Everyone else must have reached the same conclusion because once an extended version was made available on disc, ABC dropped the series.

This pseudo disco rocker was the closest I'd ever gotten to funk. More happily, I've also somehow avoided any scrapes with federal law enforcement.

Fun fact: If you listen closely, you can hear an SRT van's tires screeching at the end of the bass breakdown. Or perhaps it’s Evel Knievel at Wembley. Listen here!

 5) Bill Haley and the Comets “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock” (45 rpm)

It’s impossible to underestimate the impact television, and its inexorable link with music, had on my generation. Forty-somethings can still hum the theme songs of Welcome Back, Kotter (another early addition to my cache of seven inchers that escaped this list in an attempt to avoid redundancy), The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Barney Miller, All in the Family, and The Greatest American Hero. Before Happy Days became a bastardized hybrid of authentic Fifties nostalgia and oddly Seventies feathered hair, Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” fittingly served as the sitcom’s opener.

Even today it’s easy to see how the Comets whipped a crowd of Krauts into a violent frenzy at the Berlin Sportpalast. This exhilarating, crystal clear blast of rock ‘n’ roll still leaves me in awe, with Danny Cedrone’s supernatural  guitar solo, accompanied by Billy Gussak’s perfectly-timed snare drum and cymbal wallops. White lightning in a bottle. Performances like this aren’t so much planned as they are divinely inspired. And how, exactly, does one sit down and compose a song like this? Simple, but far from stupid; dynamic, yet uncontrived. Somewhere in Gonesville the planets were perfectly aligned when these heretofore unglorified shitkickers reinvented an entire genre, thus kicking AM radio’s posterior for all of posterity.

Side note: Contrary to what Bowser and Sha Na Na might have led unsuspecting teens to believe, their duck-tailed forbears most assuredly did NOT wear gold lamé jumpsuits. At least not out in public.

 6) The Surfaris “Wipe Out” (45 rpm)

Gene Krupa did it a generation or two earlier with his work on Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing.” Here, however, is the disc that created vanloads of drummers, for better or worse, beginning in 1963. My parents had a copy of the Ventures’ “Walk, Don’t Run” long player, but even that precursor to surf-rock paled in comparison to the raw power of this platter, featuring the stick work of one Ron Wilson (no relation to Brian, Dennis and Carl). Again, how are these things written? It is difficult to imagine the rock lexicon bereft of this immortal drum roll: it needed to be created, and so it was. And God saw all that He had made, and it was very good, daddy-o.

Make no mistake, this is pure garage rock. And, as mind-blowing as the drum breaks are, they’re only a springboard (no pun intended) for a nearly unhinged guitar solo. It still knocks me out.

 7) The Coasters “Yakety Yak” (45 rpm)

It’s one thing to sing Barry Manilow duets with your young son, and quite another to risk allowing subversive thoughts to creep into his formative consciousness, which is why Mom wasn’t all too thrilled with the lyrical content of this Coasters classic. But the shuffle rhythm was irresistible, and besides, the real fun wasn’t so much in singing the seditious “yakety yak” as it was in trying to properly mimic the baritone repartee, “Don’t talk back.”

Mom’s fears weren’t totally unfounded, as “Yakety Yak” would coincidentally find its way on to her wise-ass kid’s turntable from time to time, usually following a well-deserved scolding.

Trivia: King Curtis provided the iconic alto sax solo on “Yakety Yak”.

 8) The Playmates “Beep Beep” (45 rpm)

Largely forgotten today, this nugget enjoyed a modest revival via “golden oldies” radio stations, and regular spins on the Doctor Demento Show. Given my growing obsession with Dad’s old Spike Jones records, it is no wonder why this novelty number held special appeal. Accentuated with rhythmic toots on a bicycle horn, the musical narrative describes an apparent road race between a Nash Rambler and Cadillac.

The gag, of course, is that the contest is one-sided: the Cadillac driver is only trying to catch up to the Nash Rambler to ask how to get his car out of second gear. Ha.

But the truly sad part of this whole thing is that I didn’t understand the punch line. Pop tried to explain it to me, but neither Big Wheels nor Schwinn Stingrays were outfitted with transmissions. It only dawned on me years later in the middle of a driving lesson, as my poor instructor wondered why the hell I was laughing to myself like a maroon. Listen here!

 9) The Beatles "Rock and Roll Music" (2xLP)

Unlike Colorforms and Shrinky Dinks, my parents must have recognized that the "Got to Get You Into My Life" single was holding my attention nearly as much as the Sunday circulars. And so Santa got word that this compilation needed to appear beneath our tree on that storied Christmas morning of '76.

The first pressing of this two-LP set was housed in a silver foil gatefold sleeve. The artist, Ignacio Gomez, must have thought Elvis was the fifth Beatle because he inexplicably inserted images of Marilyn Monroe, a '57 Chevy, and Wurlitzer jukebox. Even the band's moniker was splashed across the front panel in neon lights, leaving one to wonder if Gomez was moonlighting from a gig as Happy Days' set designer. Perhaps the powers that be at Capitol Records were still high on the fumes from John Milner's Deuce Coupe. Whatever. None of this takes anything away from this album's impressive chronology of hits and misses culled from the Fab's miraculous catalogue. A true revelation.

 10) The Beatles "Meet the Beatles" (LP)

It wasn't too long before the "Rock and Roll" sampler helped me realize that I was an "early Beatles" kind of guy. (And, like any red-blooded American, I also preferred loads of reverb.) So "Meet the Beatles" was the logical place to continue my newfound fandom.

Like a mad scientist working in a lab, I obsessively listened to the album, deconstructing its magical formula with the Penncrest's balance control, intently honing in on one channel and then the other. (What the heck was Paul doing to those birds when he "sore them winging"? And why was he on the verge of hysterics during the last verse of "Hold Me Tight"?)

I've since owned many thousands of records, and comparatively few of them warrant this kind of immersion. I guess it was just a stroke of luck that I discovered it so early. It was also a mixed blessing: the bar was set very high, and it seems my relentless pursuit of recorded sound has been an attempt to recapture the euphoria I experienced upon first hearing the Beatles. Take an unequaled mix of youthful energy, chiming chords, seamless harmonies, and dazzling melodies, and add to that my own unspoiled idealism and a spare ten bucks, and you've got the makings for one helluva strange and wonderful adventure.

 John Potwora has a house full of records and plays drums in the semi-legendary power pop band Paranoid Lovesick. He also assailed radio listeners as the bombastic John E. Midnight over WRUW-FM, where he spun obscure Sixties garage rock (and dubious yarns) for several long years.