This is the third of my Friday Guest Blogger offerings for the XPN 885 Most Memorable Music Moments Blog. Don't forget to submit your own moments!
Of all the people who inspired and encouraged my love of rock music, Sid Mark should probably get most of the credit, followed in a close second by one Francis Albert Sinatra, (very) late of Hoboken, N.J.
See, I grew up in one of those massive old Manayunk rowhouses, er, Victorian townhomes -- three stories, five bedrooms, wide marble steps out front, the whole thing. We were lucky enough to be on the end of a row, "semi-detached," they call it, with an open alleyway between us and the neighbor on one side. In a practical sense, this meant we had something most of our neighbors didn't: windows not just in the front and back, but all along the open side of the house as well.
In reality, at least for me, what it meant is that there was no escape from Sid and Frank on weekend mornings. My Dad, being of the Big Band Generation, was -- and is -- a music lover and general radio-phile; he's pushing 80 now and still can't fall asleep without the radio playing softly in his ear. He says this is due to his years at Girard College, where he often ended the day listening to homesick newbies cry, or from his time in the Navy.
My theory? This is a guy who married and later had five daughters and only one son. I think he kept the radio on all the time to hear other male voices. But that's just me.
Anyway, back to Sid and Frank.
Because my bedroom was on the windowed side -- in the back of the house, above the kitchen -- and because those years at Girard and in the Navy had left ol' Dad an early riser, my weekend mornings began with two things: the Sounds of Sinatra and the smell of breakfast cooking. It's also the reason I wake up sometimes on Sunday morning singing "Stardust."
Obviously, for a teenager in the '80s, this was unacceptable. It was one thing when we were in the car with Dad and he'd patiently endure a few songs on the rock stations my brother and I would put on before flipping back to WPEN or WWDB. It was another thing to have it wafting up into my room like a whiff of frying scrapple.
It didn't take me long to figure out I needed to fight music with music, which is how I found Breakfast With The Beatles, for one thing. My efforts to block out Frank's dulcet tones meant greater exploration of music I did like; my (unsuccessful) efforts to convince my Dad that rock music wasn't all noise made me want to prove him wrong by seeking out the good stuff.
All these years later, I'm sorry to say he's still largely unconvinced, though he will listen to the Beatles and some Springsteen if he's riding in my car and I'm in charge of the radio. Myself, I came around years ago, realizing that the Glen Millers and Frank Sinatras of the world are probably as responsible for the creation and evolution of rock music as Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson.
