Category Archives: rock

NEW YEAR’S EVE ALL RIGHT by Peter Nolan Smith

In the Spring of 1969 my teenage sweetheart’s mother was dating a Chilean pianist. One Friday evening the two adults left the brunette cheerleader in charge of the house and after she put her younger brother to bed, I came over for a study session. An hour at the books was our passport to a […]

Yo Da Man

“Hey you know something people I’m not black But there’s a whole lots a times I wish I could say I’m not white.” I have lived by these words from the Mothers of Invention’s FREAK OUT LP, which I stole that record from Zayre discount store in 1969. I was working at the same store. […]

AX IN HAND by Peter Nolan Smith

My mother had spent her honeymoon on Bermuda. Every winter my parents had vacationed in the Caribbean and each July my father rented a Harwichport cottage for a week. My mother loved the ocean. On summer weekends they loaded his six children into the Ford Station wagon for a drive to the beach. Massachusetts had […]

WCBS Labor Weekend Top Ten

WCBS listeners voted for their Top Ten Songs The list results came as no surprise as the station’s base is mostly older white men. 1.) BROWN EYED GIRL Van Morrison 2.) HOTEL CALIFORNIA The Eagles 3.) SHEREE The Four Seasons 4.) HEY JUDE The Beatles 5.) SWEET HOME ALABAMA Lynyrd Skynyrd 6.) YOUR SONG Elton […]

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

I’m not a church-goer and if I hear church music I turn off the station, but banning Sister Rosetta Tharpe from my ears would be a sacrilege. This guitar-playing churchlady was credited with the first rock song in 1942. She was ahead of her times and everyone else too. Sister Rosetta weren’t no beauty, but […]