Celebrate the right to read

Banned Books Week

Celebrating the Freedom to Read

Turn the radio on ...

I have been sorting through file drawers

pulling out folders of forgotten papers

and I came across an old article from the Los Angeles Times.
It's from 1996.

My son was 18 then, my daughter was 12.

Reading the article again, 

made a mother of teenagers remember being a teenager.

It was about ... the music.  The music that spoke to "us."

The music that now speaks to "them."

I wanted to post the article here,

but that is actually frowned upon.

Thanks to the Internet,

I did not have to cross that line.
The article lives on; its words still speak the truth.

Butt Out and Let the Kids Rock On

by Bob Baker

This is just a piece ...

   "I thought about what '64 was really like for teenagers,

   and it dawned on me that one of the most glorius things

   about it was cluelessness of the adut world.

   You had AM radio and - very rarely - 

   some information on the album liner notes,

   and that was it.

   Nobody wrote about it.

   You stumbled into other bands;

   you bought an album because of the way somebody

   on the cover looked.

   Each time you pulled a record out of its sleeve

   and put it on your turntable

   (and put a quarter on the record player's arm

   to compensate for having an old needle),

   you had a complete and total escape.

   You were safe,

   free to discover the music on you own terms."

 I remember holding the transistor radio that I received

when I graduated from grade school in my hand

as I walked the two or three blocks to the shopping center.

It was the beginning of my time

and I was finding the music that spoke to that time.

I remember one song vividly.

The song?  "Fingertips" by Little Stevie Wonder

Now, there is a YouTube video

And it was only the beginning ...

My transistor radio looked a lot like this.