Music

Music has always been a big part of my life.  As a young child, I had some 45 RPM records that I used to play whenever I could.  My favorites at that time were "Searchin'", by the Coasters, and later "Battle of New Orleans", by Johnny Horton.  I remember a rather unique record player I had, which worked somewhat like a VCR or DVD player.  You slid the record in a slot in the front of the machine and it would play it and then eject it.  My Mom has told me that I had removed all of the labels from the records, but could still identify all of them.

Later I inherited my Dad's hi-fi system (not a stereo -- it had only one channel).  It included a turntable that was capable of playing 45 RPM records, but for some reason it played that at about 41 RPM, so everything was a bit slow.  There was also an AM-FM tuner.  I used to listen to WABC -- every evening "Cousin Brucie" Morrow would play the top 7 (not 10, because they were 770 on the dial) song countdown.  I was a big fan of The Four Seasons at that time, with my favorite song "Walk Like A Man".  In February of 1964 they played a new song by an unknown band that started out at number one -- that song was "I Want To Hold Your Hand", and the band was the Beatles.  They became my favorite band at that point, except for a brief period of time in 1965 when I thought they were over-hyped and over-exposed.

My Dad had a Gibson acoustic guitar that he used to play and sing along with, and he eventually taught me a few chords.  He and I started guitar lessons, and did that for a couple of years.  After attending an eighth grade party with a live band (that featured a classmate on lead vocals) I decided I wanted to start my own band.  In the summer of 1967 we got started.  I've created a separate page for the history of the various bands I played in at that time.

In the early 70s I commuted to Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ) from my home in Wayne, NJ.  The trip took anywhere from 40 minutes to 2 hours, so I made sure I had some music with me -- a cassette deck for my car.  It had a few technical problems -- like my old turntable, it played the tapes a bit slower than it should, and there was a high-pitched whine that apparently came from the car alternator.  But it did serve the purpose.

In 1974 I graduated college and moved to an apartment in Fishkill, NY, to start work at IBM.  I bought a small apartment-sized stereo and an acoustic guitar to play.  Eventually I was able to buy a house, and finally had room for my big stereo and guitar amp.  In the 1980s MTV came along, and music videos were a new form of entertainment.  I bought my first CD player in 1985, and started the process of replacing my old record albums with CDs.  I bought a Sony CD changer that held 200 discs, and later added a second (300-disc) changer.  But before I could fill up the second changer, technology passed it by, so I had to convert all of my CDs to MP3 format.  Now everything is on my computer, accessible via iTunes, and portable via the iPod.  I currently have almost 4500 songs in my iTunes library, although my usual playlist is just under 1500 songs.