Radio, such as it was

Let me see, for our radio listening pleasure there was... hmmmm... WNOX. Oh, and WLIL. (Who could forget the Saturday morning replay of the football games?) For the life of me though, I can't remember the country station I listened to most. As FM was still largely "drug store" music, I seem to remember things were limited as far as listening to the radio went. I also remember at night turning the knob so painstakingly slow and picking up WSM from Nashville, WLS from Chicago, KMOS from St. Louis, and I've long since forgotten the stations I could sometimes get from Baltimore, Atlanta and Memphis.

Remember how the radio used to get drowned out when you drove under a powerline? Or how lightening would make it crackle? Or how the signal would sometimes fade in and out. I can remember moving the radio every so often to try and get just a few less pops and crackles. I actually miss it sometimes. You can't tune radios now like you could then. You can't move the dial as fine now as I used to be able to, and sometimes that's too bad

I think it was 1965 when I bought a 45 from Tic Toc's called Go Now by a group call The Moody Blues. At the time I thought they were a Beatles wannabe band. I still have it somewhere in a box. It was a good enough song that a few years later when I saw an album by the same group called Days of Future Past, I bought it and never looked at music the same way again. If you're not familiar with that one, it included the songs Nights in White Satin and Tuesday Afternoon. It was definitely not the music WNOX played. Not then anyway. They started playing more of it though, just in time for me to hear a song called Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf. Again, I liked it so much I bought the album. If you want to irritate your grandmother, try listening to an album that includes a song called The Pusher. If you're not familiar with it, it has a chorus of "I said God damn, God damn The Pusher man". A little tame compared to some of the stuff today, but in 1968 in Loudon, that one would get your butt kicked.

Anyway, I was on my way. Those albums joined others I had of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, and my collection has been varied ever since. About that same time I discovered Creedence Clearwater Revival and a folk singer from Canada called Gordon Lightfoot to broaden my collection even more. Now, whenever I hear an old favorite it makes me think of that staticy old AM radio and searching for something "good" to listen to. Music will never sound as good to me as it did then.