The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep: By the Old School

In 1979, I had two ways of listening to music in my bedroom. One was a small plastic radio which had at one time occupied our kitchen counter. This was kept perpetually tuned to a Top 40 station out of Biloxi that no longer exists.

The other was a Panasonic cassette player/recorder, the kind with a handle at one end and the controls, cassette mechanism and speaker all on the top. My mother had used it for a while, recording taped correspondence with her grandmother, before allowing it to become (for all practical purposes) my sound system. I recorded tapes as well, recording over old "letters" from Grandma to create elaborately planned radio shows, which inevitably devolved into the sort of half-baked ramblings that would later typefy my attempts to be amusing on air in college.

But mostly I used it as my first attempt at having "my" music. We did have a stereo, in the family room, with a turntable, an FM receiver, my Dad's old reel-to-reel (never used at that point, although there was the constant threat of a Saturday morning performance of the orchestral score of Victory at Sea). My father's taste in popular music is defined by the life and works of John Phillips Sousa, and while my mother's is considerably more eclectic, this meant for all practical purposes, our record collection was more or less limited to J.S. Bach. Specifically, Bach as interpreted for enormous pipe organs by the masterful E. Power Biggs.

The addition of a cassette player in my room -- however tinny -- opened up limitless possibilities. I was, however, a complete neophyte when it came to anything from the world of rock. It would be a year or so before I would convince my parents to let me join 11-tapes-for-a-penny Columbia House, and a couple of more before I would get a cheap stereo of my own for my room.

In the meantime, I had a single tape, copied from an LP owned by parents of a friend who were much cooler than I. I played part of this tape every morning upon rising, as a way of gathering strength and energy before sallying out into the world.

Good morning
Good morning
Good!

That's right. On the eve of my teenage years, by the time punk was already old news, I was seriously into Sgt. Pepper. Specifically "Lovely Rita," "Good Morning," and "A Day in the Life," songs which I didn't think I understood but which I felt were the key to some more magical self I would one day become. Even "Lovely Rita," which I knew was nonsense, struck me as beautiful nonsense, that opening piano theme somehow ringing and resonating in me in a fashion wholly out of keeping with the lyrics, which were preposterous even from my unschooled perspective -- though the sexual sophistication behind them added a layer of mystery that also tantalized.

I loved the whole record (with the exception of "Within You Without You", which I found creepy). But those three songs were my secret drug, my morning coffee.

What was yours when you were twelve?

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I always loved music, but for some reason I didn't understand until I was twelve that it was something I could seek.

When I was twelve I became obsessed with the American Top 40. I listened and wrote it down every week, and I was genuinely excited by the progress of records on the charts (and terribly disillusioned years later when I discovered how artificially the charts were manufactured). A year or two later I became obsessed enough to go to the library and write down all the Billboard top 40 charts from 1955 on. Really! And asked my parents about the early stuff. At the library I met a kid named Terry Draper who was some relative of Neil Sedaka's and was obsessed with charting Sedaka's career, so we were going over the same magazines.

So when I was twelve, my grail was the top 40 music of 1976, the stuff I liked, anyway. Al Stewart, Peter Frampton, KC & the Sunshine Band, Rufus. And I hated stuff then with a passion greater than I can summon anymore: Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night" was a stain upon civilization that I believe made me physically unhappy to endure (as I had to for its seven (I think) week run atop the chart.

Posted by: Scraps | March 15, 2006 11:58 AM

I had a similar tape recorder, on which I composed and sang a musical about Frankenstein. I also remember holding the microphone up to a radio to tape songs off America's Top 40. The only song I remember off this my first mixed tape was I Want You To Want Me by Cheap Trick, which would be summer of 1979, I think.

(In finding a date for the song, I read that "Zander sings with the accurate energy of a heat-seeking missile." Being in Cheap Trick sounds even more dangerous than hunting with Dick Cheney.)

Much later in life, while coordinating the Great American Meatout (March 20, kids!), I got a moderately intense scolding from Casey Kasem, which goes down as one of the more surreal phone calls of my life.

(The scolding was moderately deserved, for the record.)

Posted by: herbivorous | March 17, 2006 01:46 PM

Herbivorous, we are keen to know more about the Kasem down-dressing.

Posted by: BT | March 19, 2006 08:38 PM

Casey was a spokesperson for the Meatout, and did a fair number of radio and TV interviews in support of the event. There was a miscommunication on one of them about who was to call whom, and as a result, Casey missed the interview. The radio people had called me trying to find him, and I was like, I dunno. I didn't feel like I could just phone him up and say OK, Mr. K, you're late for your 10am. Casey was annoyed that I hadn't phoned him right up on his priority line and told him to get busy with the interview -- he's very serious about meeting his obligations, and keeping his good name. It wasn't undeserved -- just surreal.

Posted by: herbivorous | March 20, 2006 09:59 AM

"At the Edge of the Universe" by the Bee Gees (I figured it was about astronomy, and so Carl Sagan would like it, and he was my boyfriend then, you see.)

Also, yes, I was that girl who loved loved loved Sean Cassidy, too. But in my own defense I did not care for his remake of "Da Doo Run Run"... I just liked his hair.

Oh, and of course, "I Am Woman Hear Me Roar", by Helen Reddy.

Posted by: bootsy3000 | March 26, 2006 07:41 AM

The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

The Wombat File is a Delaying Tactic that May Save Your Life

By the Old School

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