Monday, May 30, 2011
Louie Go Home
Warm, clear early summer evening, not too humid. Quite pleasant when I was out & about just before & after sunset. A/C not in. Unfortunately, my window fan didn't make it through a noreastern last fall when I had it on exhaust blowing directly into the wind & the pressure snapped a blade off.
Oddly (maybe not so oddly, considering I found my way to WFMU), I recall buying the Midnight Ride album by Paul Revere & the Raiders at the Two Guys big box store on Memorial Day in 1966. The weather that day was much like today, I was probably bored out of my gourd, all my friends at backyard barbecues, my stuck up blond girlfriend & I had broken immediately after the prom - no surprise to anyone (unknown to me, a girl ten times better I was hardly aware of at school had noted the breakup, & was already plotting how we would "meet" through the friend of a friend of a friend small town social connections.* ). My parents were separated - we never had anything special going on holidays anymore. So I scraped together a few bucks, borrowed mom's car, & got the album with "Kicks," "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" (later recorded by The Monkees, an inferior version), & the great "Louie Go Home." PR & the Raiders wore silly costumes & appeared on the often wretched TV show, Where the Action Is, but at their best they were one kickass rock & roll band.
* You'd be casually introduced somewhere, the set-up, then later you heard she "likes you" from another girl. That was the tip-off phrase, perhaps tied to "She's in the phone book." Now it's probably the same but you begin by texting each other.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Oddly (maybe not so oddly, considering I found my way to WFMU), I recall buying the Midnight Ride album by Paul Revere & the Raiders at the Two Guys big box store on Memorial Day in 1966. The weather that day was much like today, I was probably bored out of my gourd, all my friends at backyard barbecues, my stuck up blond girlfriend & I had broken immediately after the prom - no surprise to anyone (unknown to me, a girl ten times better I was hardly aware of at school had noted the breakup, & was already plotting how we would "meet" through the friend of a friend of a friend small town social connections.* ). My parents were separated - we never had anything special going on holidays anymore. So I scraped together a few bucks, borrowed mom's car, & got the album with "Kicks," "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone" (later recorded by The Monkees, an inferior version), & the great "Louie Go Home." PR & the Raiders wore silly costumes & appeared on the often wretched TV show, Where the Action Is, but at their best they were one kickass rock & roll band.
* You'd be casually introduced somewhere, the set-up, then later you heard she "likes you" from another girl. That was the tip-off phrase, perhaps tied to "She's in the phone book." Now it's probably the same but you begin by texting each other.
Labels: growing up, music
