I definitely got into music in the early fifties, but I couldn’t possibly recall how the magic happened to me. I was around for the transition from the 78 rpm to the 45 rpm, which gradually became the standard for the singles released with the music i was growing to love, because it was mine and not my parents. I think I even had a record player that had an adaptor you’d put on the spindle to accommodate these smaller records, with a much bigger hole in the middle than 78’s.

I guess my strongest recollection was the introduction of the transistor radio, allowing me to listen to all the hits on AM radio, while I went everywhere. The music was clearly split between White music, like How Much Is That Doggie in the Window, released in ’52 and music by African Americans that didn’t get much radio exposure at the time. It wasn’t until the mid-fifties that artists like Little Richard, singing Tutti Frutti, started getting air time. Songs by artists like Pat Boone and The Ames Brothers were ‘nice’ and kind of OK for a little kid or grown ups, who had no idea what was coming only a few years later.

It seemed like everything happened all at once. I remember listening to the Platters sing, “My Prayer” on my transistor and going with some friends to see Allan Freed’s Rock ’n Roll Christmas Show at the Brooklyn Paramount in ’56, with artists like Fats Domino. I had my first girl friend that year and I would go over to her house and into her basement. We would dance to slow songs like “The Treasure of Love” by Clyde McPhatter.

On September 9, 1956, my world changed forever when I saw Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show. One of the very best things about The King is that parents didn’t like him or his music. I went nuts. Kids like me started developing a sense of ownership with this new kind of music and that stayed with me into my teens and beyond. Elvis ruled the roost, but plenty of artists started keeping him company, like Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and the Everly Brothers. However, even around 1960, popular music was still straddling the old days of Pop and the new music was just finding its voice.

When I first started listening, it was all about hit singles. The LP changed music forever, allowing artists to release albums, which was just so perfectly suited for the times. The album covers were works of art, many of them playing off the growing psychedelic sub-culture. FM radio came into vogue and it provided stereo sound, which was unbelievable to hear. The world slowly started changing in the early Sixties and being young became incredibly cool. I entered college in ’62 and change was in the air and music was soundtrack.

I don’t know when music became so incredibly important, waiting for the latest release from artists like the Stones and Pink Floyd and so many other fantastic musicians. You waited for them and you knew they were coming and you talked about them once they were released. The craziness of the Sixties was epidemic and it was the music that linked young people together, keeping them from floating away in the craziness of the times.

I would have to say one of the musical highlights of my life was going to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965. From the time the Boys landed on the infield in their helicopter, it was impossible to hear any of the music. I distinctly remember understanding the unbelievable power of this music. I had never seen anything like it, before or since!

Unfortunately for me, I was every so slight old for the Sixties. When it really hit hard, I was already wearing a suit and carrying an attache case, working at NBC. It really got me when I was living in a high rise, luxury apartment on the east side of Manhattan, with my wife and a new born. Albie and Joann, friends from the Bronx, came over to visit after their time at Woodstock. They were hippies and I was not. Even in college, I did not get to experience the upheaval on campuses all over America. I was really torn between convention and conscience, even back then and some things don’t ever change.

Second only to the Beatle experience was standing stage side at the Concert for Bangladesh in ’71. My friend, Alan, worked at the Garden and got passes for us to witness one of the most phenomenal occurrences in all contemporary culture. I saw something so special and I knew it at the time. If you are remotely curious, check it out and try and imagine being witness to a bona fide happening.

I worked for many years in the broadcast advertising in NYC. I dealt with large advertising agencies and the television networks. As it turned out, NBC had something called a sky box. It was a decent sized room, one of many that ringed around the upper level of Madison Square Garden. It had its own bathroom and a bar, each more important than the other, depending upon the circumstance. I got to see so many major names, it doesn’t even matter to try and think of them. Usually, it was me and the kids of senior network executives and ask me if I gave a shit?

I wish I could remember the year, but the story is way better than the chronology. I had put some client’s advertising dollars in a British radio show that was distributed throughout the States, featuring their hit music. The Brit, who became a friend, claimed he had connections to the Beatles. I arranged for a meeting with a very high level person at the UN, to propose a Beatle reunion and benefit for UNICEF. The meeting went very well. We had a subsequent meeting with a legendary promoter by the name of Sid Bernstein, who had promoted those Beatle concerts. Unfortunately, my British friend was full of shit and I can chalk it up to one of my stories and that’s it.

John Lennon’s death in 1980 was huge for me, as it was for so many people. I was in therapy at the time, trying to come to terms with my thirties, my mother and, a disintegrated marriage and two boys I loved very much. The dream of eternal youth died that night and it was clear the only choice was to go forward into a strange world, the eternal stranger.

In 1987, I left NYC on a cross country ride to Santa Fe, NM, where I had bought a small adobe womb south of town. I was given a gift of a box of pre-recorded cassettes, yes cassettes. They replaced the LP years before, just the beginning of the revolution in music technology. I wore a NY Yankee baseball hat and got a set of earphones to fit over it. I had a ghetto blaster in the passenger seat, a dozen joints in a box and my journey was under way. Before I even hit Chicago, I had settled on Graceland by Paul Simon, Legends by Bob Marley and The Way it Is, by Bruce Hornsby and the Range. I had some kind of musical epiphany on this ride and music and I became one. All of a sudden and for no reason, I fell in love with all music, period.

All sorts of wonderfully serendipitous things happened to me in northern New Mexico, a place I was always meant to be. In the summer of ’89, I promoted a huge concert series on the side of a mountain, called Music in the Pines. It is without a doubt, hands down, one of the great experiences of my life. I worked closely with some wonderful people to make the side of a mountain come alive and look like it was always intended to be a concert venue. Every Sunday morning, we made magic. On the first Sunday, the Coors Beer truck burst into flames as soon as it got to the site, an omen of the challenges to come. I selected the artists and created an incredibly eclectic roster that would have worked in any major city, but not so well in a small community like Santa Fe. A few of the artists were Bonnie Raitt, Etta James, Bruce Hornsby and Waylon Jennings. What a time it was!

Kind of around that time, I became a member of the Turquoise Trail Volunteer Fire Department, which was an incredible experience, one of many I was blessed with out there. One of the guys had a friend with an English record label, called Run River Records. He was quite a character, who tried too hard to be larger than life, a recipe for tragedy. I spent several years working for him, sitting in a little out building next to my home, talking to the world. I actually got a deal for the label, a kind of miracle. In the contract, the better we did, the more money we owed and we don’t have time to make sense of it. I traveled to the UK to see many of the artists perform and it was a pure joy for me. After a few years and too much alcohol, the owner’s liver gave out and the label went silent.

When I left the City, I was determined never to have a conventional 9-5 job ever again. I did pretty well for a number of years. Of course, pride and one’s bank account can collide and the outcome is predictable. I took a job with KBAC-FM, Radio Free Sante Fe and helped create an incredibly successful and important radio station in this community I loved. Our format was something called Adult Alternative and we played a lot of music not being played on heavily formatted commercial stations at the time. Who the hell was playing Lyle Lovett? Even though I was the sales guy, I loved being around the music. One afternoon, Joan Baez stopped by and I just cried.

I moved on after the radio station, because it was being taken over by bean counters and that would never work for me. I did a million things in Santa Fe, but toward the end of my stay, I found myself in the Gospel music business. A wonderfully, colorful old friend and I came up with the idea of selling Gospel music videos on BET, Black Entertainment Television. When you watched our Gospel Collection on BET, you had the option of buying these videos. I want to say one quick thing about this industry, it was filled with wonderful people and brilliant musicians, who were all about Jesus first and the music second.

In 2003, my space ship landed on Kauai. At the time, I thought the income from the Gospel music video sales would carry me on to heaven, but that journey was short lived and I was now on my own, yet again.

I am not sure when I signed up for Pandora and picked the artists I wanted to listen to. Around Halloween, 2011, I decided to write my story for my grandson, “Halloween in Portland-Diary of a Mind”, a labor of love that took around a year and a half. I sat down most every afternoon for a couple of hours, smoked a joint or two, drank a glass of wine and turned on the music. In the midst of recounting my life for him, it was always the music that gracefully intruded into the monologue. I loved writing to him about the music I was listening to at the time, a way of sharing my love for it with him.

I can’t remember the last time I sat in silence, without my music to keep me company, making me feel that I would never be alone, as long there was music. I know I really haven’t done justice in trying to convey how important it has always been in my life. I think life would suffocate me without music to fill my lungs.

I have spent a life time listening and a little over a year ago, I actually took singing lessons. I had only one goal, which I achieved. I wanted to sing in front of one other person and to really and truly care how I sounded. I worked my ass off to sing, Fly Me To The Moon and worked on it for weeks. It was one of the most wonderful, fulfilling experiences of my life. I would sit at home and go to YouTube, waiting for my cue to try and emulate Sinatra, which was like worshipping at the Temple Mount of Music. I crossed that scary boundary and I loved it. I am so thrilled I took that chance.

These days, each morning, I sit on my stationary bike, ear buds secured and I accompany the most wonderful music I have ever heard. When my favorite music of all time comes on, Rhapsody in Blue with Leonard Bernstein, I close my eyes and conduct my orchestra.

I will love music until the day I die. i can’t imagine life without it.

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SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

My podcast, Mind and the Motorcycle will be available on most platforms, starting Thursday, September 17th at 6AM HST. Questions, email me at larry@mindandthemotorcycle.com

Here’s a taste: