PenguinPolozza: A brief history of music in my life Part 1

(On the right hand column is a Playlist music player which has some of the songs I will mention in this series. Feel free to play them in the background as you read, for the very popular multimedia effect)

When I was a kid, I didn’t listen to much music at all. My transistor radio, under my pillow at night, had either the Yankee baseball game with Mel Allen at the mic or WINS, news radio. Every once in a while we would listen to WABC and Cousin Brucie but that was it. It wasn’t until the early 1970’s, high school age, when music started to become a bigger part of my life. This is going to be a series, three distinct eras, when different people introduced specific music and musicians into my life. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoyed thinking about it and writing it all down. I begin with the early years.

The first time I heard it on the radio with my friend Tom and brothers Mike and Anthony, I was captured. The guitar, the story, the haunting tune, all made Don Mclean’s American Pie my first musical crush. It was the first album I bought at the local Woolworth 5 & 10 store and cost as I remember about 2 bucks. It got hundreds of plays on the ol’ Victrola, and still today brings up emotions of losing something, even though then, I didn’t know what was lost.
Tom also gets credit for introducing the Beatles and later, Steely Dan to me. As for the Beatles, yes, they were popular (there is an understatement) but they didn’t have meaning to me until Tommy would bring over the White Album for our Saturday night penny poker and pizza nights. (Yes CollegeBoy, my first V I Pizza reference; more on that in another blog in the future). Tommy was really into his music and as his taste matured, by the time I was going to college, he was listening to some Jazz. The music that I think sort of helped shape his taste and influenced me was Steely Dan. Their jazz influence is obvious and most of their sound is much more than just guitar and drum.