School of Rock: Misinterpreted Lyrics, Vol 1

That's right, not misHEARD lyrics, but misINTERPRETED lyrics. And just what the hell do I mean by that? Well, if you could cut out the swears, I'll let you know.

  First off, listen to the tune:




  And now I will tell you how the lyrics of this song was misinterpreted by me. Honestly, I'm not even sure if misinterpreted is the right word. In the song, John Fogerty was singing about Lodi, California. Something that everyone might not know? There is also a Lodi in New Jersey. The Lodi in New Jersey is where one of the DMV offices is located. When I was a kid, this was the DMV where you had to go to get your car inspected. Suffice it to say, it was not a place people really wanted to go. I remember going there once with my Dad(I think it was probably in the Country Squire station wagon, but that may just be nostalgia), and sitting in a loooooong line of cars for a loooooooong time.

    So, whenever I hear CCR sing "Lodi", I think of poor John Fogerty sitting in a DMV line in Lodi, New Jersey. I'm guessing that's a misinterpretation.

School of Rock: I Didn't Know What To Say When You Called Me Bay-Bay!

Okay, so I have finally had to come to grips with the fact that I have a fondness for the power ballad.
  Wow, typing that was sort of freeing.  So Rock on...But also Feel, Crimestoppers!!
  I don't know what it is about them, but I love them. Home Sweet Home by Motley Crue, If I Close My Eyes Forever-Lita Ford & Ozzy Osbourne(maybe the best power ballad ever?) High Enough- Damn Yankees, I'll Remember You- Skid Row, etc.
  I don't know if it's the heightened sense of drama, the heartfelt lyrics, the slow motion effects of the videos...Whatever it is, it brings the awesome, it gets to me, and it cuts me deep, and I FEEL it, you know what I mean ? Because every rose has it's thorn, man...

  And I'm on my way...Just set me free-ee-ee, HOME SWEET HOME!!!!!!!!



Facebook link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BBlWxkwJtU







Facebook link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et6b0ftDq1U






Facebook link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loyTCkV06xQ




So Rock on...But  don't forget to Feel, Crimestoppers!!

 P.S.- And don't forget your lighters!!

School of Rock: The Only Band That Mattered...

The Clash... a public service announcement...WITH GUITARS!!!!

Writing this installment of School of Rock has been a daunting one for me...It forces me to admit some things...I am a political ignoramus. Especially concerning the politics of other nations.

I love the Clash's music. I still don't own "Sandinista!", but I consider myself a fairly big fan of the Clash. I know enough to know that they had a strong political philosophy, but I never bothered to really learn anything about it. I mean, I think i know enough to know that they were not militant racists or anti-minority or anything like that, I knew that they had a deeper political bent, having to do with economics and class and such in the U.K., but beyond that, I just don't know...And I'll be honest, I really don't care to know. I'm sorry, I know that makes me a lazy, politically ignorant tool, but so be it. I'm a selfish dick, and I have got my own shit to worry about.

I know, if Joe Strummer were alive(and damn, I do wish he were) he would probably take me into an alley and kick my face in for my apathy, and he would probably be right to do so (and yet, I STILL wish he were alive-hmmm). I don't have an excuse. I have never really had an interest in larger scale politics. I try to not be apathetic on a smaller scale, and I think I succeed, but the larger scale has never really done it for me.

Having admitted and said all that, can I get back to just how kick ass the Clash's music is ? Can I get it in before someone comes and revokes my Clash listening card and repossesses my albums?

The other day(and I mean that literally, it was like, last Thursday) I was having a shitty,shitty day...and I put on London Calling...And by the time "Hateful" came drifting out of the tiny,tiny speakers in my office, I was feeling much better. "It's hateful, and it's paid for,and I'm so grateful, to be nowhere".



I don't think I could possibly count how many times I have listened to this record. it is, hands down, one of the greatest albums ever recorded. The music styles on it are so diverse, the lyrics are brilliant...AND there's a song about Montgomery Clift !! How does it get any better than that?

I could go on and on about the songs: Car Jamming, Safe European Home, White man In Hammersmith Palais, Straight to hell, Career Opportunities,Lost in the Supermarket, Koka Kola, Jimmy Jazz...But i won't. I'll leave you with a few videos...

Stay Free and Julie's In the Drug Squad...



I'm So Bored With the U.S.A. & Train In Vain



Safe European Home



Straight to Hell



Class dismissed.

School Of Rock: Give This A Listen....

Kinda feels like having class out on the lawn or something, doesn't it ?











Peace, y'all.

School Of Rock: I Miss the Challenge Of the Mix-Tape/Cee-Dee

Don't get me wrong. I loves me my iPod, and I like that I make playlists that have a thousand songs in them.And that you can put a playlist together in a matter of minutes. And I like that I can take a ton of music with me in a tiny device. But, I must admit, I miss having to select a certain number of songs so that they will fit on a 60(or 90 or 120) minute cassette or even an 80 minute CD.

I used to obsessively make mixed tapes. I think I probably have hundreds of them,and they all have very clever names(Jackson Browne is God,Absolut Dead(that has six or seven volumes, i think), "Don't lie to me, I won't tolerate your lies!", "Do you have a receipt, quote, unquote, sir?"-often lyric or movie/tee vee quotes. I think I still have a couple that I made my freshman year in college, including "Question Reality", which included"Love Street" by the Doors, Zappa's 'Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?",and "Get Started...Start A Fire" by Graham Parker.

And then, when it came to cee dees, I could add pictures to the cee dee label as well! I was in heaven ! And I still occasionally get to make up a mixed cee dee(not much call for mixed tapes anymore), like the one I made as a party favor for my girls third birthday party, but not as much as I used to.

I don't enjoy the cee dees as much as the tapes anyway. I liked that you could try and fit a song on a tape, and even if it ran out, as long as it was on the fade out or something, it was okay. on a cee dee, the computer just tells you that your 2 seconds over and won't allow you to make the mix. Plus, I so rarely get to use my little under 2 minute songs anymore. I can't even tell you how many tape sides ended with "Bron-yr-Aur" by Zeppelin, because it's like a minute and a half long. or "the Baby Song" by Husker Du, or the Live/Dead version of "And We Bid You Goodnight" by the Grateful Dead, which I think is under a minute.

And the "random" aspect of the iPod(and of the cee dees, too) removes a lot of the artistry( I realize artistry is a bullshit word here, but what the hellfuck, right ?), of the mixed tape as well. I used to try and figure out what songs fit where, what would be a great opening song and all that, but now, it's just click and add to playlist, then the playlist will be on random anyway.

Wow, this all makes me feel very old.And sad. Pardon me, I have something in my eye!

School of Rock: Does This Rock ?

It's kinda mellow, but I think it does rock...What do you think ?

School Of Rock: Definitions....

I have never been particularly comfortable with definitions when it comes to music. Acid rock, hard rock, stoner hippie crap... I never knew what was what. And forget about it if you start talking about rap, hip hop, freestyle....My one definition was always..."I know what I like". A bit of a copout? Probably, but what the hellfuck, right ?

I mean, I really don't care whether something is pop or nerd rock or wuss rock...If I like to listen to it, I'm gonna listen to it. If I don't, then I most likely won't.( And if you try to make me, I will make sure that you are so miserable listening to it, that you may never want to hear it again.) I don't really understand all the need for all these classifications, can't it just all be music ? is that so much to ask ?

Is Green Day punk ? Don't know. Don't care. I like some of their tunes though.

Is Bon Jovi rock ? Soft metal ? Who cares ? It's all shit anyway.

Is John Denver wuss rock or neuter rock ? Don't care...Still love Rocky Mountain High and Take Me Home, Country Roads.

Is Dave Matthews a jam band or rock or what ? I don't care...It makes my ears bleed either way.

Is Pat Benatar ovary rock or vagina rock ? Does it matter ? I love her.

See what I mean ? We don't need all these rules and genres and definitions. Dig what you dig, don't dig what you don't dig...You dig ?

Alright, that's recess...Break out your IPods !!!

School Of Rock:Brooooooooooooooce !!!!!

Bruce kicks ass live.

Let's just get that out of the way first. There may be some equals, but I don't know that there is anyone who puts on a better show than Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band does(or is it do? neither looks right.) If you have never seen them live, you really should, it's well worth the money/effort.

I also happen to think he's a brilliant songwriter. I think he has written some of the greatest lyrics this side of Bob Dylan. Of course, he's a totally different type of lyricist than Dylan as well.
It's hard for me to write anything about him without slipping into drooling fanboydom, but I guess that's part of what School Of Rock is about too, isn't it?

As bad as my Bruce-itis is now, it was faaaar worse when I was in high school, at the height of Brucemania, after the release of "Born In The U.S.A.". I actually had the cover of "Born In the U.S.A." painted on the back of my jean jacket. Whoo-hoo !! I think I had a different Bruce concert t-shirt for each day of the week. How was I not a chick magnet ?

I remember we had to write this major paper on poetry for English class in 9th grade, and for one part of it we could choose our own poet, and I chose Mr. Springsteen. I think I dealt mostly with the songs on "Darkness On the Edge Of Town". I did get an "A", but that may have had more to do with my brilliant deconstruction of Ogden Nash's "The Camel".

Gee, I think this had a point when I started, I'm kinda rambling a bit now, I guess.

I think I have written at some point on this blog that what I love about him is that his music gives me hope. But it's not a naive hope. I mean, sure, "Thunder Road" and "Born To Run" are these sweeping, romantic tunes, but there's certain realism to them as well. In "Thunder Road", he tells the girl, "you ain't a beauty, but hey you're all right", and that "all the redemption he can offer is beneath this dirty hood", and the town in "Born to Run", "rips the bones from your back", and that's what they need to run from.

On his Video Anthology, he does an acoustic version of "Born To Run", which I will place below this paragraph,that is just gorgeous. In the intro(which is not included in the YouTube video-dammit), he talks about how the idea of running and never looking back was 'a nice romantic idea", but he realized that "after I put all those people in all those cars, I was gonna have to figure out someplace for them to go", and he talks about how "Born to Run" is about "two people trying to find their way home."



And it's interesting to hear him have that sort of take on it.

I also think he does a great job of capturing darkness and despair as well as hope, and it feels just as authentic. It does not come across as "trying" to be dark. In that way, I think, it feels like he's like the rest of us, he has light moments and dark moments, and we get a glimpse into all of them.

I doubt I have said all I can say about Bruce, so this may be continued, but right now, I'll leave you with a bit of the dark( a duet with Eddie Vedder, no less),




And a slightly lighter moment, where Broooooce makes a bit of fun of his sex symbol status.





Class dismissed...

School Of Rock :Epilogue:Scalpers & Miracles:AKA:Didja Get Tickets, Part 3

Jesus Christ, THREE fucking posts about Concert tickets ?!?!?!?! Are you shitting me ?

Alas, I am not, but this one should not be long, hence, the reason for it being called the "Epilogue". Just a little something to tie it all up. A little piece on the Apex and nadir of the concert ticket allocation system. The "miracle ticket" and the "scalped ticket".

Now, I'm not even going to go into "ticket brokers", quite frankly, because I don't really want to.
I don't really have a lot to say about your more garden variety scalpers, either. I have purchased a ticket or two for a concert for more than the face value. I have never SOLD an 3extra ticket for more than face value, however.

I remember one time, we were up in Saratoga to see...Can you guess ? Say it with me: The Grateful Dead!!, and we did not have tickets, and I ended up buying one from a guy wandering along the road as we were driving to the parking lot. i think I paid somewhere around 60 bucks for the ticket(which did earn me the privilege of sitting next to a guy who decided that Bob Weir was a "fag now" because he had a pink guitar. Yikes)my friends were more fiscally responsible, and I do believe they ended up inside as well, eventually.

I also remember walking around Madison Square Garden in the rain in September of 1987 trying to get tickets, and failing, and missing an exquisite "Morning Dew", as well as one of the novelty performances of "La Bamba" tucked into the middle of "Good Lovin".

On the topic of Miracle tickets. Those are tickets to Dead shows that you get in the lot when someone just gives it you. Free of charge. I was the recipient of one of these tickets once. It was actually a friend of mine, but she gave me her ticket to the show because she had seen the previous night's show, and I was not gonna see them on the tour at all(broke-ass broke, I was). And because she was(and is) a fantastic person, and one of the many people in my life who have been far kinder to me than I probably deserved-So, cheers to you, KSW, you are one of the best, my friend. Though she did warn me, just as I went in, that if they played "Queen Jane" or "Mighty Quinn", she might kill me. Thankfully for me, they did not.

I was able to miracle someone once as well. It was a Jerry Garcia Band show at the Meadowlands(Byrne Arena, to be precise) on Halloween. In the interest of full disclosure, I did try to sell the ticket first, at face value, but when I had no takers, I just handed it to this girl we were passing by, and the look on her face was more than worth the price of the ticket.

I think that's it for my discourse on scalpers and miracles. See, that was not so bad, now was it ?

School Of Rock:Mail Order And The Old Re-Dial Button:AKA: Didja Get Tickets ? Part 2

I will assume that you have all read Part 1 already, so let's move on.

So I told you about some of my adventures waiting in lines for the ever elusive concert ticket to the "Rock Show".
At some point, the waiting in line became sorta quaint. The new system was to call on the telephone, and order your tickets THAT way.
Wow, it was fun!! Dial the phone....Wait...Busy...Dial again...Wait...Busy...Dial again...Wait..."IT'S RINGING !! IT'S RINGING !!"...Nope, busy....And on and on...
A barrel of laughs...Unless you had a rotary phone. Remember those ?
That's right... No re-dial button. trying to get concert tickets with one of these babies was like some sort of Gitmo welcoming party for your index finger. And, of course it was an 800 number, so you had to dial 11 numbers EVERY time!!! Good times, good times.
We thankfully did not have a rotary phone, so we were able to just hit the re-dial button again and again and again and again and again and again..
This WAS before the overwhelming popularity of cellphones, though, so we did only have one line to call from at each house. Poor, poor pitiful us.(Thanks, Warren)
It did not have the camaraderie of waiting in line, but it was easier, and it seemed to be more successful as well. Overall, I think it was an improvement.

Now, there was a band that did things a little bit differently...The Good Old Grateful Dead, of course.
When we decided to try to see the Boys in concert, or "live" as the kids like to say,we learned of this thing called "mail order" for Grateful Dead tickets. The band set aside a certain number of tickets for every show, and you could mail in to request tickets. It apparently started in 1983, here's a link about the genesis of it.

It was very simple, let me see if I still remember the system.

First, you would call the Grateful Dead East Coast Hotline, and there would be a recording that would announce the tour dates, the dates for mail order, and the instructions for the mail order. Of course, you never knew EXACTLY when the announcements would go up, so you would have to call the number, and the beginning of the recording would say something along the lines of"This is a new message as of..." and there would be a date...If the date was new, you kept listening.
Then they would lay out the info: Venues, dates, whether there was taping at the shows. And then: The Rules:(I am doing this from memory,and it has been 14 years since I have ordered tickets, so be kind if I'm getting it wrong)

A number 10 size envelope

A 3x5 card with the venue the date and the number of tickets requested. With "anything" written on it if you are willing to accept any available tickets. I can't remember the specifics, but I think it mattered where on the card you included the info.

A postal or American Express money order made out to GDTS(Grateful Dead Ticket Sales)

A self-addressed number 10 sized envelope, with the appropriate postage for the number of tickets you have requested( I might be, as Roger Clemens said, "misremembering" the postage thing, but i don't think so)

Then there very explicit instructions on WHEN the order could be mailed. If they were postmarked before a certain day, they got returned.

I know that last bit first hand. I believe it was for the same Spring Tour shows for which we waited out in the snow for tickets(unsuccessfully). We listened to the recording, got our envelopes and index cards and filled them out. Bought our money order, put everything into the envelope, and got into line at the post office at around 4:45 p.m. on the day BEFORE the first day that the orders could be postmarked. We paid for the postage, and asked the clerk if he was SURE that this letter would not get postmarked until the next day. he pointed to the clock, indicated that it was almost five o'clock(it was about 4:55 by then) and said that there was no way that the envelope would be postmarked that same day.

Well, he was wrong(or he was a dick and he lied). A few weeks later, we got the whole order pack, and the postmark was circled !!One day EARLY!!!! AAARGH !!!!

Amazingly, that was not the only time that the post office screwed me(gave me the old "Joan Collins special") on my GDTS order. When I was a freshman in college, I was trying to get tickets to the Spring Tour(again with the spring tour-what is it with the spring tour and postal ineptitude ?) and I bought a money order at the POST OFFICE, which one would assume is a POSTAL money order. well, apparently not at this branch in West Lafayette, Indiana. For I got that order back, with a little piece of paper indicating why it was returned- WRONG MONEY ORDER !!! AAARGH !!!

But, I must say, other than those two instances, I had 7 pretty good years with the GDTS mail order system.

Nowadays, of course, you can buy tickets on the Tubes, and bands have fan clubs(for PREMIUM tickets) and such. I still kinda miss waiting in line.

Next Time: Epilogue:Scalpers and Miracles:AKA Didja get Tickets ? Part 3

School Of Rock: Didja Get Tickets ? Part 1

The concert ticket.
Dare I say the Holy Grail of the young rock fan's life ? I think I dare. you may dare to disagree.

I'll talk about the actual concerts at a later time. Today, I would like to spend some time on the concert ticket. And of course, the procurement of the concert ticket. In fact, I guess this will mostly be about the procurement(or non-procurement, of course) of the concert ticket.


I remember the first concert I went to : The Kinks:State Of Confusion Tour-I'm guessing it was the fall of 1983. maybe spring '84 or could possibly Spring of 83. Damn you, demon weed !!!
I'm pretty sure it was 8th grade. I don't really remember why I wanted to go see the Kinks. I think "Come Dancing" was fairly big at the time, and I remember hearing some of their tunes on WNEW-FM, 102.7, but I was not a huge fan. I do remember my friend Dave having tickets,and wanting to sell one to me, but for some reason, he couldn't or didn't, I honestly don't remember the specifics.
A bit of an aside here, I do believe that the tickets to this concert cost somewhere around 12 dollars. This was for an arena show. it's amazing to me how quickly the cost of concert tickets skyrocketed in the 80's and 90's. Okay, that's my crotchety old man bit for today.
Anyway, the Kinks tickets. I was talking about the concert at the dinner table and one of my older brothers said that he was going to the concert. My Mom immediately asked if he had an extra ticket. he did. She also asked if I could go with him. He agreed. I was pretty excited, I thought my older brother was pretty cool. The concert was good. But, perhaps more about that later.
That's probably the best way to get tickets, someone else already has some, and they give/sell you one. It's not necessarily always cool to have your Mom ask for you, but sometimes that is unavoidable.
Then there's waiting in line. This one may be completely obsolete by now. I did it a few times in high school, but I don't know that anyone really does it anymore. it was kinda on it's way out back then, what with the new-fangled invention called the tallyphone, and now, with the computers and their Tubes, I don't know that anyone waits in line for anything anymore.

But I did, dadgummit ! I remember me and my pal Glenn standing in the rain on a Saturday morning behind a place called Collector's World, I do believe, to get tickets to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on their Southern Accents tour. A successful morning.We bought four tickets, so that my brother(the same one as the Kinks concert) and his girlfriend would drive us. A small price to pay for "going to the concert".

I remember standing in the sun in FRONT of that same store in order to get a bracelet so that I could gain the PRIVILEGE of standing in line to get U2 tickets(for the Unforgettable Fire tour- I eventually saw them on the Joshua Tree tour). That mission was not so successful.

Then the worst one of all- winter of '87-'88. My friends John, Michele and I go out at 2 a.m., to stand in the freezing cold(and some snow, I believe) to buy tickets to the Spring Tour for the Good Old Grateful Dead. Normally, we would have Mail ordered for tickets, and we did try, but our failure is a story for Part 2 of School Of Rock:Didja Get Tickets ?

Anyway, we trudge off in the cold and snow to nearby Closter, and arrive to a line, but not a huge line, so we think our odds are not too bad. We're probably somewhere in the teens.It's a pretty pleasant(and fairly loaded) group, and the time passes as quickly as is possible, standing out in the cold and snow. One thing that made it go faster was having all these folks who are tripping their balls off come back from using the bathroom in the Municipal Hall across the street, and regale us with their tales of trying to act "straight" amongst the cops in there. One girl talked about trying to read the "Community Information Board", but "the letters wouldn't stop moooving around." Good times, good times.


So we get closer to 9 a.m., and all of these people start showing up and getting in line ahead of us. we inquire as to what they are doing, and we get the following reply:"Oh, they signed the book." and a spiral notebook is produced that, I don't know 20 or 30 people signed at some time before we arrived last night, stating that they have spots in line. After using my hand to scoop my jaw up from the cold, snowy ground, I was really prepared to go very "un-Deadhead" on these folks, but then I realized I just didn't have the energy. We did, of course, end up being about 6 people from the door when they announce that the shows were sold out.Not cool, not cool at all.


Okay, so that's it for today, I think.
next time, Mail Order and the Old Re-Dial Button AKA-Didja Get Tickets ?, Part 2.

School Of Rock: The Doors

"No one here gets out alive."-Five To One- the Doors

11 year old Paticus: "You see, man. You see that ? THAT is the fucking TRUTH, man !! And Morrison is telling it ! No on here gets out alive. Does it get any truer than that, man ? We're ALL gonna die, man."

Okay, I might not have said it exactly THAT way, but I'm pretty sure I probably said it. Yes, there was a time in my life when I thought that Jim Morrison was deep. really deep. Like genius deep. I'm not proud of it, but it happened.

Don't get me wrong, I still like the Doors, I think they have some great tunes, but I think Jim Morrison was a bit of a self indulgent dick.


But not back when I was 11. Oh no. He was a rock god. In fact, one of the first albums I remember buying is "The Soft Parade" on cassette. I heard it when my family and I rented a house down on the Jersey shore, and our neighbor had the album.

Then, I read No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, and that cemented it. Jim was a poet, a misunderstood and persecuted genius. And you know what ? I bet he's still alive. He just gave them all a big FUCK YOU ! and slipped off into the darkness, to continue being a genius in peace. That fucking ROCKS, man !!

And I wish I could blame drugs and alcohol for this thinking, but no(they were a few years off), it was just the mind of a fat,lonely, and unattractive 11 year old boy.

Why Jim Morrison ? I guess my perception was that he was an outsider(like me !) who still became what he wanted to be, and he didn't give a damn what people thought. Of course, the larger picture was that he didn't seem to give a damn about anybody, period, and that's not so much something to which I wanted to aspire.

Having said all that, I still love me some Doors songs. I just don't follow the Jim Morrison personal philosophy. Unless I'm telling chicks to touch me.




Thus endeth the lesson.

School Of Rock: Rock Causes Lustful Thoughts...Part 1

What ? Alert the media !!! Lock up your children !!

Rock and/or roll, Satan's own soundtrack, causes lustful thoughts !! How do I know ? I purchased Madonna's first two albums, purely because I was under her sexual spell. Ever heard of a singer named Fiona ? Here, I'll refresh your memory: Warning-This is PAINFULLY '80's.





I own that album. Why ? Because I thought she was cute. Hey, I was a fat, ugly kid, whaddya want from me ?
That is an example of the worst of rock(loose definition) causing lustful thoughts. But sometimes, lust does ROCK!

Example number 1 ?

Pat freakin' Benatar !!!








Pat knew how to ROCK. Particularly on her first three records(In The Heat Of the Night, Crimes Of Passion, and Precious Time), and boy, did she cause the lustful thoughts.

Hell, Pat was so kickass, she had 3 characters based on her in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High"!

And, oh the lustful thoughts.

Okay, so she went a little wacky when it came to videos. Like this one:




And THIS one:




Though you gotta admit that the "pimp repellent" dance is pretty damn cool.

And her voice always kicked ass.

And did I mention the lustful thoughts ?




Up Next: More hot chicks ? Hmmmm...could be.

School Of Rock:Ringo And The Other Three

Okay, I need to step away from the sheer embarrassment(fear not, there will be more-in fact, I'm fairly certain that parts of this post will be embarrassing-not "Seasons In the Sun" embarrassing, but embarrassing just the same.), and take a detour into some of the better music that I like.By the way, I only misspelled embarrassing ONCE in that run-on sentence! Whoo-hoo!!
Music like the stuff made by that band that Ringo Starr was in- the Beatles.

Aaaah, the Beatles. I have had a bit of an on and off relationship with the Beatles, but I suppose I will start at the beginning.

I must admit, I first really started getting into the Beatles...When John Lennon died. I know..I suck, I'm a morbid fuck, whatever, but it is the truth.
I was 10. I remember I was laying(lying ? I never get that one right) in bed. Listening to the New England Patriots, I believe, play someone (I cannot remember) on the radio on Monday Night Football, and they interrupted the game to announce that John Lennon had been shot. I went to my sister's room and told her, and I remember her having a look of shock on her face.
Obviously, John Lennon and the Beatles were everywhere for the next few weeks, and it piqued my curiosity. Nobody in my family really listened to the Beatles, so I remember talking to my friends about them.

I think the first album I bought was 1962-1966(the Red Album)
I'm pretty sure I still have it....I'm not sure if I have it on red vinyl or not, but I do know that shortly after buying the Red Album I bought this:


1967-1970 aka The Blue Album, which I KNOW I still have, and which I know looks like THIS:


And I loved those two(technically 4) records. They had all the best tunes( at least i thought they did at the time, and the DO have a lot of the best ones, with some omissions).
i don't honestly remember the order of the rest I bought. i know I had The Beatles(White Album) on cassette, and I had the Magical Mystery Tour. I will admit that I did not have Rubber Soul or Revolver until much later, and that will probably always be a stain on my Beatles cred.
I did, however, amass a collection of buttons of all of the album covers. Some of which I believe are still in my Mom's house somewhere.

Funny side story on the purchase of those buttons. They were sold in a record store in nearby Bergenfield, New Jersey. The place always "smelled funny" if you know what I mean. And I remember fearing that those folks might make me "try the drugs". Of course, they never did. But the fact that I was convinced that these people(perfectly nice, friendly folks) would force drugs upon me, surely proved that the propaganda worked(for awhile,anyway)...And it's probably good that it did. I don't think I needed pot(or anything else) at 10 years old.

I also threw myself wholesale into the "Paul is Dead" rumour/cover up. I even did a report about it for my 5th grade class. there was SO MUCH EVIDENCE!!!!
Paul was barefoot on the cover of Abbey Road-They bury people barefoot in England.(I remember the other Beatles clothing on that cover played into it as well-Someone was dressed as undertakers dressed, someone was dressed like a grave digger. AND on the license plate of one of the cars parked on the street is 28If, as in Paul would have been 28 IF he had lived, when Abbey Road was released.
Paul is BACKWARDS in the group photo on the back cover of Sgt. Pepper's.
the lyrics to "A Day in the Life"- 'he blew his mind out in a car"- Paul died in car crash!!
John CLEARLY says "Paul is dead" at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever".
The list goes on and on.

A few years later, I grew weary of the Beatles. I think I was in a bit of a rebellious, contrarian phase. I grew tired of Sgt. Pepper's(which I STILL think is overrated, and not even their best record) always being named the Best album ever. Screw the Beatles !! It was fun to see the looks on people's faces when I said I didn't like the Beatles. BLASPHEME !!!I think it may have coincided with the release of the Albert Goldman book about John Lennon, and every one's assertions that there was no way John could ever have hit Yoko, or had a heroin problem, or basically done anything else negative, and I found that kind of hard to swallow.

I'm not saying that the book was factual or anything( I don't know whether it was or not), but I think this thought that it was "not possible" kind of irked me. John Lennon always seemed like a bit of a negative, potentially nasty person, so none of that stuff seemed out of the realm of possibility. I didn't know him personally...I just knew that he wrote some great music. he never struck me as being particularly saintly or anything.

I won't dwell too much on the negative, but it was worth mentioning. I have obviously since come back around on the old Beatles. there is some pretty good music there, some truly great, revolutionary music. And, as silly as it was, I think the whole "Paul is Dead" thing really changed the way I look at, and listen to music. It made me realize that t here are layers there, at least to the really interesting shit. It's worth some poking and prodding.

Thus endeth the lesson.
I'll leave you with a couple of my Beatles favorites:












By the way, in the Revolution video, Paul is singing, but there is no sound !! Another clue !!

School Of Rock: .45's After School

Aaaah, the .45 rpm record. Do you remember them ?

Looked like this ?
And you needed one of these to play it ?



On your...TURNTABLE ??


I remember them...Shit, I still HAVE some of them. I have a limited edition "Grey Vinyl" version of "Touch Of Grey" by the Grateful Dead. I think I have .45's of all of the singles off of "Born In the U.S.A." by Brooooce Springsteen. And I have a bunch of really,really old .45's as well.

Why is the old fart droning on a bout .45's ? Why, I'm glad you asked. .45's are the basis for this edition of "School Of Rock".
5th grade- 1980-81, by my calculations. There was some great music out at that time...I was not listening to a lot of it. That's not true, but I was still leaning towards Top 40-esque hits, though I guess some of them were considered "New Wave", I suppose.

I'll get to the tunes later, first, I wanna talk a little about our "crew". By my memory, there was 5 of us: my friends Bruce, John, Mike, and Ricky and young Paticus, of course.(Don't you love the conceit of me referring to myself in the third person ? I sure do).

I remember that Bruce and I shared a table in 5th grade(the "desks" were these tables that fit two kids at them each)..We had been in the same kindergarten class, but had been in different 1st through 4th grade classes. We fell right together in 5th grade. I remember that Bruce had an orange fuzzy pen cap that he called "Al", which I thought was the coolest thing EVER. And I had to have one. Over the course of the year, the Als grew. We built them houses that actually had working light fixtures(something we learned in science- I think the fact that we applied knowledge was the only reason they survived) that we kept on the windowsill next to our desk.

We also went by Beatles names. I had actually forgotten about that, but I contacted Bruce about it, and he remembered that tidbit. He thinks that I was John, he was Paul, and we figure John,Mike and Ricky were George,Ringo and Pete Best or Stu Sutcliffe, I guess. I'm not sure how that worked out. We're not sure who was who. John may have been Ringo. Suffice to say, the Beatles played a pivotal role, but this is not about the Beatles. I will get into my Beatles obsession in another post.

I would like to add, if anyone reads about this who was there, and I am misremembering something, feel free to leave a comment. I am not claiming these memories are set in stone. There has been a bit too much chemical interaction in my life for these to really be snapshots of the past. So feel free to set me straight if need be.

After school, our "crew' used to hang out in our classroom and play .45's on the classrooms turntable. We would read Bananas, MAD, and Dynamite magazines, and talk about our love for Valerie Bertinelli



and Olivia Newton-John.




But at the heart were the .45's. We played a whole bunch, but there are 4 that I remember distinctly. I think I still own a couple of them, actually.

Here they are:

Cars- Gary Numan




Turning Japanese- The Vapors





Shaddap you Face- Joe Dolce




AND: American Pie- Don McLean







I know I still own "Shaddap You Face" as I remember seeing it in my old room at my Mom's house when I was back in November for my Dad's funeral.

I remember us trying to "figure out" "American Pie", and I also remember that the song was split across the A and B side of the .45, so we had to flip it in the middle.

I also remember not having a clue as to the masturbatory theme of "Turning Japanese".

I could probably remember more if I tried, but what fun would that be ?

Thus endeth this "lesson" at the School Of Rock:Sandwich Flats campus.

School Of Rock: The Jukebox At The Laundromat

Okay, so we are going to start at pretty damn near the beginning. Now, I will warn you right now...School Of Rock will not always be pretty...But it will (mostly) be honest.
When I was a wee lad, (in the mid '70's) my family would travel via the family truckster(Country Squire Station wagon-it was not "metallic pea", though it did have the faux wood paneling) to my Grandfather's house in upstate New York in the summer.

The house had a washing machine, but no dryer. Sometimes, the clothes would get washed and then hung on a clothesline, but other times, we would go to the laundromat. It was always exciting to go to the laundromat. For me, anyways, I doubt it was quite the same adventure for my Mom, and it was probably torture for some of the other people in the laundromat whenever I was there, for reasons I will now explain.

You see, the laundromat had a jukebox. A jukebox in the mid '70's. The mind races with the possibilities, doesn't it ? Now, I would love to tell you that I regaled those folks with some early Bruce Springsteen, or some Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones. I would love to tell you that...But I did say that I would be honest. No, I played none of those tunes. I rotated three songs faithfully whenever we visited the laundromat. Brace yourselves....

Rocky Mountain High- John Denver:





Rhinestone Cowboy- Glenn Campbell

School Of Rock:Sandwich Flats Campus

That's right, Crimestoppers! it's time to drop some k-nowledge here at the Old Flats.

As many of you may know, Feral Mom has opened up a School Of Rock over at Gone Feral, in which she will detail how different purveyors of the "rock" have influenced her, and what a large role music has played in her life. "What a great idea", I thought to myself," I should steal that."

Alas, I could not steal from Feral Mom, not from the very person who introduced me to the blog world. So, I ponied up a nominal franchise fee, and voila, I was able to open up my very own School Of Rock campus here at Sandwich Flats.

Now, School Of Rock:Sandwich Flats will be, at best, a pale imitation of the original(much like Van Halen with Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone, or that abomination known as Starship), and for that, I will apologize in advance. But I will do my best. I will try to let you all know about the music that has guided me through life, and shaped the person you know as Paticus. There will be hippies, some Jersey guys, some hot chicks(of course) and lots more, and maybe even some shit that will blow your mind.

To quote Seymour Skinner: Are you adequately prepared to rock ?!?!?

Coming Up: ? I don't even know, that's how rock I am.

But here's an appropriate opener(not much of a video, but this song is KICK-ASS!!):