I enjoy watching sports on the television as much as the next man.

I have said, on occasion, that I do 85% of my television watching during football season.  I have already watched some Canadian Football League games and I will be glad when Thursday night gets around in a couple days so I can tune into another CFL game.  That three down game is pretty nice in contrast to the four downs we will be seeing later.  The chronology of it is all rather quaint.

The other sports I pay a modicum to perceptive view are as follows:

Baseball:  The game has lost its relevancy on the national stage.  Sad, but true.  I still watch the World Series.  I still watch All-Star game.  I don’t think I have watched a game this year from out number one to out number fifty-four.

Golf:  The Masters, The British Open (my favorite), The RBC in Hilton Head…just because I stood by the 18th green around this past New Year’s.

I always look for the TPC at Sawgrass and anything that is played a Pebble Beach, because I like to look at the courses on television.

Basketball:  The college tourney in March is awesome.   The NBA playoffs ate too long.

CAR RACING:  I’m a first ten and last ten man….unless it is the I-5…that would Indianapolis 500 to you novices.

Right now I am indeed gearing up for College Football season.

The air in Southern Indiana today resembles something like burnt pea soup.  I went out the door a few minutes ago and I can tell you that I don’t think I have EVER felt air so hot, thick, and nasty!  Because of this, I did my exercising inside today.  I am blessed to have a nice collection of exercise equipment at my disposal.  This evening I spent twenty minutes on an elliptical and rode three miles on a stationary bike.  There is a television in the air-conditioned room where I exercise indoors.  I made the mistake of turning it to ESPN..and then the NFL Network.  Both were talking about how National Football League Commissioner, Roger Goodell, upheld the four game suspension of New England quarterback Tom Brady for his actions revolving around the inflation, or lack of inflation, of a collection of footballs.

As I moved my legs up and down and pumped my arms forward and back, I wished I had found a Bugs Bunny cartoon or a rerun of Gunsmoke instead of listening to a few talking heads of sports television pontificate about Bradygate.  It is a sad commentary in itself.

With all these sports shows…you know…the “NETWORKS” like NFL Network and ESPN…it seems that sports reporting and objective idealism about the positive connotations of sport has gone the way of the dodo to a degree.  These days when I turn on a sports television show fraught with experts, non-experts, and a few folks that have trouble pronouncing some of the names of the players they are supposed to know so much about, I feel like I am watching yet another divisive “news network”.  You know what I am talking about.  Fox News caters to the Republicans and CNN favors the Dems. These two networks have become the bastions of thought for each respective (that’s a stretch) political party and thus politics has in large part been relegated to sound bites and politicians hoping for face time on television instead of value time aimed at helping their constituents.  Call me old fashioned.  Even the sports shows are politically motivated.  Who is at fault?  Did he or did he not?  What a bunch of whooey.  How about these questions:  Was the pass complete?  Did he score?

I do know with each new year I watch less pre-game shows and just tune in about the time they kick the ball off.  I am that way with the Super Bowl.  I don’t listen to the super hype before the game.  I want to interested when the game starts.

Though as a kid I loved pro football, my favor is truly with College Football.  The confines of the NFL “shield” don’t cloud college football.  The PAC 12, The Big Ten, The SEC, The ACC, CUSA, all these leagues have the autonomy that allows their regional fans to love them like no one can enjoy the NFL.

The NFL has become a machine that is running out of control.  One day it will implode.  We’ll yearn for Lindsey Nelson calling a Chicago Bear-Green Bay Packer game and we will be sad, though I doubt the whippersnappers in charge of the NFL will remember Lindsey Nelson by then.

Speaking of out of control.  ESPN…Endless Sorry Pathetic  Nonsense.

A few days ago I caught wind that ESPN had put a muzzle on a guy named Colin Cowherd.  Cowherd had a show on ESPN…and I think it was simulcasted on radio.  I have never been impressed. Colin Cowherd said a few disparaging words about baseball players from the Dominican Republic.  I’m not going to relive his comments here.  You can look them up.  That is what I did.  I looked on an internet search engine.  I typed in “ESPN removes Colin Cowherd from the air”.  Where did I find the best information about the story?  Where do you think?  ESPN.com that is where.  How screwed up is that?

ESPN is disapproving of the guy enough to take him off the air.  I suppose that means television.  You see, I live out in the country.  Some of us in America still don’t get  a good cell phone signal or high speed internet without the benefit of a satellite dish.  I fall in that category.   So that means I got ESPN’s story about removing him from the air (television) via the air (satellite).  Oh… it was a story in great detail.  So much so that ESPN.com allowed you to watch the gaffe that spelled curtains for Colin Cowherd…you could watch it over and over again.  That my speaktherights.com friends is a shame…and pathetic on the part of ESPN.

It’s like this:

We’ll get rid of him…but we’ll get a three pegged stool out first and milk his demise like a cow on the internet and see what it will do for ratings.

This is a network that has done some very weird things lately.

Maybe if Brett Favre decides to take up the harmonica  ESPN will petition the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to offer him an award for being courageous out of his musical comfort zone.  Maybe not.  Perhaps ESPN has something against harmonica players.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

I have been to a place we will never go back to again.  Hold that thought.  We’ll get back to it.

A short while ago I checked in on my in-laws.  My mother-in-law was not in the room and I assumed she was in another room taking care of things one normally does not take care of in the living room or the kitchen.  So there was my father-in-law…he was demonstrating his cultural know how and he impressed me immensely with the educational television he was watching.  No…I am not joking here.  He was watching a replay of last year’s Auburn Tiger visit to Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium to take on the Ole Miss Rebels in October.  It was good to see football back on the television again.  My father-in-law is a Kentucky Wildcat fan, but I will give him credit, he knows and enjoys his football in spite of his Big Blue fall disadvantage.

I will always cherish the day I was in Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium in late March 2003.  It was Eli Manning’s senior year.  My name managed to find its way onto a clipboard that allowed me entrance into the stadium to watch a “closed scrimmage” during Spring Practice.  I will forever be indebted to the great Walker Jones for taking care of that for me.  There were only a handful of us in the stadium and I walked on the grass field in Oxford one last time.  After spring practice that year, Ole Miss installed an artificial surface.

One of the healthiest posts I did last year, I think it was over 3000 words, was my College Football Preview.  I believe we did that in mid-August a couple weeks before the season began in earnest.  I am going to do so more research this weekend to prepare for the College Football Preview of 2015.  I must do better this year.  Last year I was in love with the Iowa Hawkeyes and the South Carolina Gamecocks.  They both disappointed.  My research has been limited.  I have a new job that has taken up some of my football study time.  The reason for the majority of my behind time is due to the fact that Carrie, my dear wife, and I did not go to the beach this summer.  That is usually where I gear up for the college football season.  With Athlon, Lindy, The Sporting News, Phil Steele, and maybe another football preview in hand, I would sit by the beach and read up on the football horizon for the entire country.  I miss the beach.

As I spoke with my father-in-law this evening, we talked about how current Texas football coach Charlie Strong took away some of the luxuries the Longhorn players were used to during the course of the season.  I actually read that the players used to take buses to a practice field a practice field all of a half-mile away.  I’m forty-seven.  I walked 11 miles today.  Charlie Strong changed all that.  The Longhorn players walk to the practice field now.  I truly hope Charlie Strong succeeds in Austin.

This talk made me think of a much simpler time.  When I was in the 4th and 5th grade I played in the Brownstown Central Pee-Wee Football system.  All the players in the elementary school playing pee-wee football would leave the elementary school on assigned buses and ride over to the middle school where we would change into our football practice uniforms in a little locker room that was called “the dungeon”.  The dungeon is gone now.  I remember it vividly and I am thankful for that memory.

After we dressed for practice, we 4th, 5th, and 6th (they were already at the middle school) grade football players would walk three and a half blocks to the town park where we would practice in the outfield of the little league baseball field most of us played on during the summer.

Oh…our coaches?  The were waiting for us at the park.

We were nine, ten, and eleven years old and we were plenty enough independent and trustworthy  to ride a bus to another school, go to a locker room and change into a practice uniform, and then walk to practice field a half a mile away…and never see an adult until we got to practice.  Did I say simpler time?

I am so glad I was there.  That place doesn’t exist anymore.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

My dear wife, Carrie, and I have an ongoing difference of opinion.  Though I am blessed to have lovely bride, we do have a notion or two that will find an opposite view now and again.

Carrie is of a mind that clothes are at their best if they “fit”.  What a cantankerous word…fit.

You have probably guessed by now that she and I differ as to the definition of the word “fit”.  Her “fit” is my “I think I may suffocate”.  Translation:  She thinks a shirt should be contoured to own’s personage in order to offer its best presentation.  I think a shirt should be comfortable and not uncomfortable.  My comfort level fits me just fine.  Be that a half a size…or maybe one size of extra comfort to spare.  Now…I do agree there are times when one must go the extra mile in putting together an ensemble of apparel and there may even be a time to compromise one’s level of comfort to complete the task at hand.  I try to stay out of those situations as often as possible.  Job interviews…funerals…weddings…maybe even special occasions during Sunday Preaching.  Give me a t-shirt I can tug a few inches in any direction with great comfort and you’ll find a happy man.

A new era.

I start a new job tomorrow.  I still find it a bit awkward to say that.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am glad to be working so much closer to home.  I have met many of the folks I will work with and they have been very accommodating and have done a good job of saying “welcome home” to me.  Though I graduated from this school thirty years ago, that aspect of things means very little.  It is a new building filled with new people.  I now walk in the building with much more experience than the 18 year-old version of me could imagine.  Fortunately, I have not lost all sight of the 18 year-old vision.  That helps when trying to help young people.

Many of my new colleagues have said complimentary things about my Dad.  He taught at the school for many years and was the school’s head football coach during the program’s infancy from 1979 to 1985.

This hangs above my desk in my office at North Harrison High School where I am a school counselor.

Penn State University in State College, PA is the place of the lounging rabbit.

I’m no rabbit expert, but this little guy was on a bare spot in the yard near the library.  I assume that bare spot is his and he made it.  If the rabbit is indeed a “he”.  Maybe it is a “she” and that is her sunbathing spot.  I know I have seen rabbits in some awkward positions as they were in pens at the county fair.  This is the first one I have seen lounging as such in free public.  We found this critter last month on a visit to campus.

Brett Favre was immortalized one more time by the Green Bay Packers last night, as he entered the team’s Hall of Fame and had his number retired.  I was fortunate enough to see Brett play in college when his Southern Miss (my Dad’s old school) Golden Eagles came to play the University of Louisville in October of 1989.  Southern won by virtue of a miracle pass. Twenty years later to the weekend, Carrie and I saw him pull one out again as his Minnesota Vikings beat the Seattle Seahawks in Minneapolis.

Last night Brett seemed humbled by the welcome he received.

When I heard him talk about the people that had welcomed him back to Green Bay after a messy time of it upon his departure from Titletown to play for another team, I felt like I could relate to him a little bit.  I never thought I would  pull a blue polo shirt over my head with the letters NH on them again.  Fact of the matter, the polo was given to me as a welcoming present along with a few other articles of clothing.

Brett said it was good to be back…I know what he means.  The shirt fits very nicely, by the way.

Speaking the rights..

Danny Johnson

I’m not ashamed.  I have a bracelet on my left wrist.  It is called my “non-dominant” hand, given I am right-handed.   I am wearing what they call a “fitbit flex”.

This fitbit gadget tells me how many steps I have taken, how many miles I have walked, and how many calories I have burned, and…I am actually supposed to trust it.  Oh, and it also measures how much sleep I get, when I wake up, and when my sleep is restless sleep opposed to plain sleep sleep.  Again, I am actually supposed to trust this thing.

Do I trust it?  Well…I trust the process.  I am not denouncing the product here.  I would not do that.  Without this bracelet on my wrist I have my doubts that I would have walked a total of 10.58 miles today.  That was the total the last time I checked.

There is a thing I plug into a USB slot in my laptop that “syncs”…that is short for “synchronizes” the little bracelet I wear.  Speaking of bracelets, I have not worn a bracelet in decades before this fitbit thing came along.   I wore a bracelet with my name on it when I was ten.  Every kid that walked the streets of Gatlinburg, Tennessee had a leather bracelet with their name on it in 1978.

Anyway, this thing that “syncs” my bracelet from the USB port is called a “dongle”.  I must say I have never seen or heard that word before.  The spelling is something I consider awkward…and I think they could have called it something a little more physicality related…something like the “atlas” or the “strengthel”.  Dongle?

No matter what you call it, the thing said I walked 10.58 miles when I got home this evening.  Yes, many of those mile were based on some serious over the pavement hoofing.  I walked a great deal this evening.  Not many cool breezes are to be had in Southern Indiana in mid- July.  I wanted to walk and enjoy this atmospheric anomaly.

Newsflash…just checked my new distance.  I have not been running in place, but I did have to go to the bathroom a few times…my new distance, according to my dongle, is 10.82 miles!  Hooray!

What do we have here really?  Bottom line:  We have a healthy toy.  Is it real?  Who cares?  Is it accurate?  The company will say it will.  I do know the range of motion on the wrist may or may not be an issue.  I recently rode 3 miles on a stationary bike and my fitbit dongle said I had traveled 2.3 miles.  Just which one of these is correct.  Maybe I rode 2.3 miles and not 3…indeed.  Reminding myself…this is a healthy toy.  So, there is not much bad to be said about that…providing my dongle does its job!

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

EDITORIAL NOTE:  I wrote this yesterday and I mistakenly called Billy Falcon’s tune “Best Day”…it is called “Best Song”.  My apology to Billy Falcon and his talent.

You’re a Big Boy Now…that is the name of The Lovin’ Spoonful album released in 1967…I just found that it was actually the soundtrack to a movie by the same name.

I recently found and purchased a The Lovin’ Spoonful compilation album.  For years I have admired their sound having never turned one of their tunes over when they showed themselves on radio.  I suppose this group is most famous for the following:

Do You Believe in Magic

Summer in the City

Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind

You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice

Nashville Cats

The song that took me aback was a song I have heard as long as I can remember.  To me, it is a tune that just kind of makes time stand still.  For the last how ever many decades when I have heard this song, I had no idea who sang it.  It just showed up as I was sitting at this very spot doing some research.  And I thought…oh my…I love this song.  I have always loved this song.  It is called “Darling Be Home Soon”.  Look it up.

My compilation says it came from the album called: You’re a Big Boy Now.  Before I realized it was a part of the movie by the same name, I figured it about the maturation of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s sound.  It has strings and a sensibility about is way beyond “Do You Believe in Magic”.

Once in a great while you might find a treasure like I did with this song.  There are not too many songs like that to add to my shelf and catalog of music.

With that said…and meant most sincerely…this morning as I was driving away from Nashville, Tennessee, I heard a song that moved me like I didn’t think a song could anymore.  The artist was a guy called Billy Falcon.  The song was called “Best Song”.  It played on Hippie Radio 94.5 as part of a local artist  vote for the best thing.

Those of you who read speaktherights.com on a regular basis know that I have spent a day or two in the studio myself recording and having a great time doing it.  This morning, as I listened to this WONDERFUL song, I wondered if Billy Falcon ever met my friend Tim Krekel?  Hearing Billy Falcon’s sound, I just figured they had met somewhere.  It is a romantic notion, I suppose.

“Best Song” was the BEST SONG I have heard in years.  Can I relate to it better than you?  Probably.  I do write songs.  Still, there are images and allusions there we can all treasure and hang on to.

I was blessed to be heading up the road today on I-65 North and having my radio tuned into the station that gave me a song I needed to hear.  That is saying something!  I am a tough critic.  Billy Falcon…God Bless You.  You excited me with song.  That is not an easy thing to do.  I am usually wrapped up in either my own sound or The Moody Blues.

Speaking the Billy Falcon is AWESOME rights…

Danny Johnson

I just mashed over to ESPN-something…and heard the news that Ken Stabler, the former Alabama Crimson Tide and Oakland Raider quarterback,  is dead.  He was 69.  A tear came to my eye.  I am shocked.

As a kid I was a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals.  My favorite player was Ken Anderson, the Bengals quarterback.  I thought he was awesome.

Even though the Bengals played in the same division, the AFC Central back in those days, as Terry Bradshaw,  the most feared quarterback my Bengals would face as far as I was concerned was Ken Stabler.  He was awesome.  The coolest cucumber that ever took the field before or since.  His fluid motion and his left-handed delivery transcended all that was expected and standard in the National Football League.

Ken “The Snake” Stabler was larger than life.  That is why I can’t believe I have made it longer than he did.

The 1975 the 11-3 Bengals went to Oakland at the end of December to play a playoff game.  My Bengals got beat 31-28…in large part to Ken Stabler.  I watched that game at my Granny’s house in Shreveport.  She was for the Raiders.  I was for my Bengals.

Ken Stabler…dead…those three words have no business together.  After a couple of weeks of finding out anything is possible, Ken Stabler’s death reaffirms to me that anything is indeed possible.  My prayers go out to The Snake’s family.

Speaking the football reverence rights…

Danny Johnson

Okay.  I feel like a dunderhead about now.  For whatever reason,  my pea-brain thought…was certain…that today, July 8, 2015 marked the one year point of the first post on speaktherights.com.  After all, I am the only one who has posted anything on the website!

Well..upon further review (that is what NFL refs say after they have looked at a replay of a play)…I actually started this on July 6TH!  Not July 8th.  For some reason I was certain today was the first anniversary of this sight.  Just goes to show I am more interested in speaking the rights than I am keeping track of numbers.

Here is the first installment of speaktherights.com

Thanks to those who have joined for the ride.

WHY SPEAK THE RIGHTS?

Good question…

Hopefully a good answer.

I like the sound of it.  It sounds true.  Truth is a very good thing.  The truth will set you free from the bondage of untruth.  That does sound good.

I tell many folks I don’t believe in fairness.  It is the stuff of mythology.  I gave a eulogy at a friend’s funeral in May of this year.  I looked at his grown son and I said what I had to: life is not fair.

While I do not believe in fairness I do believe in good and bad.  I do believe in wrong and right.  When we speak wrongly we have screwed up.  We all do it.

It just feels good to speak the rights.

Hopefully no one out there will mistaken the connotation of “rights” with political overtures. That would be to err.  Just like we are not talking about “rights” as a notion of…gulp…fairness.  That would be a painful mistake.

Speak the rights really took on a life of its own when I was broadcasting high school football games.  My buddy Gus Stephenson and I had a grand time for a while relaying the plaudits of the athletic endeavors of teenage heroes on the gridiron.  We enjoyed doing so for a number of years until it was time to move on.  When I would agree with Gus at times, I would steal a line from a Shakespearean play where the character says to another: “Thou speak’st aright”.

I would say to Gus in agreement of his explanation to what happened on the following play: “You speak the rights, Gus”.  It became a part of the lexicon of many around me.  I just figured it must be time to share.

A number of years ago I wrote a weekly human interest column for a fledgling and now defunct local newspaper.  I was flattered by the offer to share on a regular basis.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I got a kick outta folks agreeing with what I said.  I enjoyed it much more when I made someone laugh.  I did not enjoy getting chewed out by my mother for using the word “hell” in a column.  I’ll try not to do that again.

I will, however, within the confines of this space…quite oxymoronic in the year 2014.  Does anyone else out there still want to date a document starting with 19…?  I am guilty, on occasion.

Let me thank my dear wife Carrie for putting me behind each letter I type here today.  She reminded me that…and convinced me that…all the column writing I did needed a comeback.  She was right when she told me folks enjoyed what I wrote about.  I just hope that will find a way to continue as I write some more.

I will write about friendship, sports, love, faith, music, time, work, movies, travel, family, history, heartache, politics, movies, schools, and whatever else may present itself that day.

Regardless…and sometimes it may hurt a little…I will speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Tomorrow will mark a year to the day of the first speaktherights.com post.  There are days when I will tell you this year has gone by oh so quickly.  There are days when I will tell you the year did not fly fast enough.  Still, I am delighted that this is the 169th installment of speaktherights.com.  It has been a pleasure.  What make’s it a pleasure?  I just like to write.  That is where is starts and ends.  A dear friend of mine asked a few questions about this blog when he came to the realization that it had been a year.  he said he doesn’t look every day…or every week for that matter.  I do appreciate him paying any attention at all.  He asked the following questions:

Do you get tired of writing that stuff?

My answer is no….I do not.

When are you going to write some more about music and making music again?

I hope and pray I get back into the studio soon with a handful of songs and the time to do it right.

What is the hardest thing about you blog?

Time.  There are days and evenings when I wish I was writing and just did not have the time to do it.  There have been many occasions…and I am sure there will be more in the future… where I yell to my dear wife, Carrie, “Just a few minutes longer and I will be right there.”  Carrie is very understanding of the time I put into my writing and I love her for it.

Do you plan on writing more about food?  I liked the story you did about the tenderloin in North Vernon.

You, my good man, are a true Hoosier.  Some folks may read this in other parts of the country and the world and think of completely different cuts of meat than what you and I know.  I think I wrote that last July or August for those of you interested in looking back at it.  Anyway, I do plan on writing about food again.  Right now I am trying to think less about food…and keep it away from my fork.  When Carrie and I go out of town the next time, albeit it won’t be a tenderloin, I will try to find some culinary space here just for you.

Are you looking forward to your new job?

Yes, I am. I think it will be fantastic.  It will have its challenges…what great endeavor doesn’t?  I was actually up at my new job this morning getting some technical stuff taken care of.  Email, computer, phone business.  It was standard stuff.  I had a great guy to help get me through it.  Then I went to my old school for a visit and look to help the new person if I could.  I also had a friend I was visiting up that way today.  He is an old school chum I have know all my life.  It was good to get caught up and hang out for a few hours.  I really cherish that time.  I have written about him here.  His name is Jerry Brown.

Speaking of work…my office has a grand view of Western sky.

This office is probably less than half the size of my office at Medora.  I am adjusting very well.  The biggest adjustment is what to do with all the stuff I had on the walls in my old office.

What do you want to write about…is there a subject you have not shared yet?

Well…two days ago I got really ticked off.  I was in a department store in New Albany.  I was looking at football cards.  I am appalled at the price of ball cards.  You old Uncle Dan can remember walking or riding his bike to the five and dime store on the main drag in Brownstown, Indiana and buying a pack of football cards for .20 cents.  This was 1976.  Lets say the price was .25 cents.  If it was, with the rate of inflation, the pack of cards would cost about $1.05.  Mind you there were only ten cards in the pack at the time.  Still..I looked at some cards at the store and found this:

$5.99 for a pack of 16 football cards?  No wonder kids aren’t playing football outside these days.  They can’t afford to emulate their heroes.  This really makes me want to puke.

I think I’ll stop asking you questions before you hit me.

I wouldn’t hit you.  You don’t sell football cards do you?

Speaking the Rights…

Danny Johnson

Be careful with your sparklers!

May God Bless America.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

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