Some songs identify with very specific times and places. And for that reason, when I hear Don McLean’s “American Pie” I’m reminded over driving over the bridge in Fall River, Massachusetts. I think I was going to work with my dad one day. Once you crossed the bridge into Fall River, Battleship Cove was off to…

I have a fondness for what I consider to be one of the worse Beatles songs of all time: “Hey Jude” which I believe was written by Paul McCartney. (Don’t bother telling me what a great song it really is, that it was written for Julian Lennon after his folks, split up, etc., etc. I…

Some songs become a kind of lifelong anthem, they just stick with you in inexplicable ways. In early 1983, Def Leppard released its third studio album, Pyromania. It became the first popular rock album of the 1980s that my brother and I actually owned–the ’33, of course, and we played that album endlessly. I can’t…

We moved to Warwick, Rhode Island in the fall of 1979. The day we moved in was particularly memorable. I got my bike out of the moving truck and proceeded to ride it around the street until I crashed mouth-first into a parked car. Off I went to the emergency room. It would not be…

Growing up in Somerset, New Jersey, I had a good friend who lived across the street from my house. We did a lot of stuff together. I’d go over to his house to play; he’d come over to my house. Beginning in kindergarten, we’d walk to school together. I can remember discussing astronomy with him…

Sometime in 1977, my parents took me and my brother to see Star Wars. We saw it at a drive-in theater the first time. I don’t remember a lot of the details. Later we saw it again in a regular theater and I remember it much better. One day, quite possibly in the summer of…

For nearly 30 years, my grandparents lived in the same apartment just off old Nyack Turnpike in Spring Valley, New York. They were among the first occupants to move in sometime in the early 1970s and my grandfather reluctantly moved out in 2000 after he’d had a triple bypass. That apartment and its surroundings are…

In August of 1977, my younger brother, Gregory, was born. I was five and my little brother, Doug, was 3. Gregory was born prematurely and he died 11 days later. I remember visiting him at the hospital. He was an an incubator and we could don special gear and touch him. He was very tiny.…

It was the 1970s. In our ranch-style house in Somerset, New Jersey, my parents had living room furniture that reflected the era: a velvet, maroon sofa with accompanying swivel chairs and a maroon tile-surfaced table. It was in that living room area that my Dad would read Dr. Seuss books to me. My mom would…

When we lived in New Jersey, we would often drive either to my grandpa’s gas station in the Bronx, or my grandparent’s house in Spring Valley, New York. In either case, the drive was about an hour from where we lived and while in the car, my parents would play the radio, so I got…

I don’t actually remember ever watching Welcome Back, Kotter, but I do remember demonstrating my impressions of the some of the characters on the show to various family members. I have no idea how or why I had the desire to mimic these characters. Apparently, however, I had some meager ability. I could do Arnold…

Do you remember your first 45? If you are older than I am, the answer is likely to be yes. But if you are even a few years younger than me, the answer is likely to be “Huh?” I don’t know where it came from, but the first musical (as opposed to story) 45 I…