Where were you when rock and roll first smacked you in the face?  My name is Rob and I’m a junkie.  I know I have a problem, hell, I was hooked from the first moment I discovered it.  Do you remember your first time?  I was eleven and stumbled across some older kids chasing their girlfriends around the local baseball diamond, “They don’t even have a baseball…” I thought to myself, “They’re just chasing a bunch of stupid girls.”  As I plopped dejectedly on the bleachers to wait for the rest of my pre-teen cohorts one of the older kids said, “Hey dweeb!  See if that tape is rewound yet, if it is, hit play.”  I wandered over to what had to be the biggest boom box in the history of Sanyo and eventually found the play button.  What emanated from those D-Cell powered speakers set the course for the rest of my life. 

Do you remember your first rock and roll song?  Not the top 40, AM radio background music.  I’m talking three chords, Marshall amp, hairs standing up on the back of your neck rock and roll.  “Rock And Roll Damnation” off of AC/DC’s Powerage album was mine.  In three minutes and thirty-five seconds I understood why those guys were chasing the girls around the ball diamond, I understood why Angus Young had wires where his hands should be on the Powerage cover, I understood why I instantly wanted, nay, needed, long hair.  Rock and roll gave me an Andre The Giant-sized slap upside my head and shouted to me, “We’re gonna teach you about women, we’re gonna teach you about how to dress, about drugs, about booze, about living!” 

Middle America circa 1980 = might as well be Amish.  Growing up pre-internet and pre-MTV in small town Ohio you didn’t bother with trends.  By the time it reached television or radio in our area it had been homogenized, pasteurized and screened for any traces of Satan by local church groups.  You traded cassettes via postal service with relatives or strangers, you haunted garage sales, you pilfered from your older siblings records or hoped that an uncle or aunt felt they were too “old” for rock and roll and handed down their album collection.  It didn’t matter if it was brand new or ten years old, you were addicted and wanted to feel that same rush you felt the first time rock hooked you.  To hell with trends, to hell with fashion, a great record goes beyond the hoopla and buzz.  Play the first Ramones record to someone who has never heard it and chances are they will get just as excited about the cd as those who spun the vinyl in 1976.