Disclaimer: Know that I am a speaktherights.com gamer. Though I have been given the business here of late for not offering more posts, know that I am typing this on the back porch in weather that is eerily similar to the day I was at this very spot…before speaktherights.com…and gave way to a lightning strike to the right bicep that threw a fork out of my hand with a flash of white light I had never seen before or since.
7 bucks. No, not the number of deer I have hit in my lifetime…that is actually six. Seven bucks. That is what we routinely coughed up at a TG&Y or and Ayr-Way…before Target…or a 3-D for those of you in Indiana remembering that store. Maybe they were a dollar more in a proper record store that had a huge 45 selection. No, I am not talking about a gun rack. I am talking about the RPM speed of a stereo record with a big hole in it.
Near 40 years ago my parents were kind enough to buy me a few records. I saved some money and bought some other “albums”, as we called them. At this moment I am listening to one of those “recordings” for the first time in over thirty years. The recording is by my favorite music group as I was growing up at 204 S. Jackson Street in Brownstown, Indiana. My family moved into that house when I was 4. I was eleven when we moved. That was 1979. Consequently, The Bay City Rollers best days were behind them by the time we moved from Brownstown to some rural outpost in Northern Harrison County.
Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues has, on occasion, echoed a realization I came to long before I hear him say it or read him quoted as saying it…There is something special about holding on to the music of your youth.
As I sit here listening to some songs I listened to over and over and over again when I was ten, I am enjoying it all over again. I was 9 years old in 1977. The Bay City Rollers, keepers of the flame of bubble gum rock at the time, with the 1975 feel-good anthem that is S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night were not destined to last long. A flame will melt bubble gum sooner or later. So The Bay City Rollers, in 1977, turned to some more serious songs. “The Way I Feel Tonight” took over in place of “Shang-a-lang” which was… well… Shang-a-lang. Music then, like it does today, was moving here and there and the sound was changing with every new recording technique and the stupid desire to appease the taste of the next twelve year-old crowd to come along.
I was 9. I knew the BCR’s sound had changed. I liked it. I know that sounds kind of crazy. But know this, I grew up in a high school locker room. I was privy to many horizons that most “kids” did not know existed yet. Music was one of those things I was made aware of and I latched on to. I have always enjoyed songs that are guitar heavy and, in contrast, I have always had a soft spot for love songs. While I have made mention of the song “I Can Help” by Billy Swan as being the song that caught my attention when I was six, Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was right behind. The soaring sounds in that song took me off the ground.
In 1978 The Bay City Rollers were lured into making a Saturday Morning television show. In my ears right now is a song called “Inside a Broken Dream” that was released in 1977. When you listen to this meaningful song and think about how in less than a year they were on NBC on Saturday morning cartoon television, you know why their star burned out. A classic case of you can’t have “both”.
It’s 2015 now. The songs off of this “grown up” Bay City Rollers album still sound good to me.
Remember how I mentioned the cost of an “album” to be some 7 dollars in 1977? Well, the compact disc I am listening to came via an internet vendor…a credible one at that….and this this disc came with 4 others. A five CD reissue of Bay City Rollers albums still sealed for the exorbitant price of $13.90…for all five cds in a nice sleeve.
But as I listen I think of my friends Jerry and Jeff Miller and Craig Lewis. We would put on our own concerts in the basement of that house at 204 S Jackson Street. We did our best to emulate Les McKeown, Woody Wood, Eric Faulkner, Alan Longmuir, and Derek Longmuir. We were lip-sync marvels and The Bay City Rollers were our band.
For some reason I feel like I just wrote the ending of a “Wonder Years” episode. So be it. After all, I was just…
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson