Your first "favorite song"

I Want To Hold Your Hand.

That simple.

 

Obviously, that's my sweet spot because I love every one of them (except for "In the Ghetto," which I merely like).

Wish I could return to that planet.

 

Great, great instrumental. Before my time, but hearing it makes me think of outer space and old roller rinks.

 

"Telstar" in 1962 after "Runaway" in 1961 both had that eerie spacy synthy sound that just totally evoked the Space Age. Even as 3-4 year old kid I knew no musical instrument that "normal people" played could make those sounds.

"Billy, Don't Be A Hero," along with "The Night Chicago Died" almost the same time were among the last of the pseudo-historical story songs that were kinda big in the Sixties and Seventies. (Johnny Horton made a mini-career out of them, and of course the Royal Guardsmen had their own bizarre little mini-genre with the Snoopy songs.)

Chicago, the group, took a whack in the middle Seventies with "Old Days" and "Harry Truman," and that was about the last of them, until Billy Joel took a shot almost 20 years later with "We Didn't Start The Fire."

Funny, when Chicago came out with "Harry Truman," it was considered really ancient nostalgia stuff, songs about a bygone era. But when "Harry Truman" came out in 1975, it was only 23 years since Harry Truman had been president.

Even my parents, who were in their late 40s/early 50s, and had been in their twenties during that time, seemed to act like the Truman era was just ages and ages ago.

Now it's 2017, and in a couple of months it'll be 23 years since OJ went on his slow speed drive.

It happens with every generation, but I really think the arrival of teevee in the 1950s served as a kind of societal time warp. Before teevee, we had grainy film or BW photos that appeared weeks or months later; once video arrived, we actually had footage of stuff as it happened.

 

Seamlessly shifting from condescending to sociopathic with your comments. Impressive. Word is you are finally writing for an all around venerable pub, the Atlantic. Thanks for catching up. Your fork took longer

 

The very first that really stands out in my mind is "It's Magic," by Pilot. I was little - maybe six or seven, I think -- and remember a cross-country drive with my family (we made several such trips over the years after we were all born in New York but moved back of forth between there and California several times, thanks to my dad's work). All of us kids would be piled in the car, and, over the course of a week, every time that song came on the radio -- which was often -- we would all be singing it together at the top of our lungs:

"Oh, Oh, Oh...it's magic, you know..."

Never believe it's not so.

We loved it.

 

Chubby Checker's "The Twist" was probably my first. I remember my parents having me dance to amuse the relatives at Thanksgiving in 1962 (I also danced the Soupy shuffle quite well). After that I recall liking "She Loves You" early on during the Beatles craze and Roger Miller's "King of the Road" in 1965 when that was getting a lot of air play.

My first 45 was Clarence Carter's "Patches."

 

First 45 I bought was "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young;

but had been listening to AM Radio since I was 4 or so; I remember reading books while listening to our big AM Radio, old KYA in SF, probably hearing Hey Jude and Yellow Submarine mixed in with Going to a Go Go and Just My Imagination. Ah great times.

 

That's honestly a great topic for another thread, but I think anyone of a certain age fondly remembers whatever the No. 1 "top 40" AM station in town was at the time, and listening in the car or on a transistor radio.

I was fortunate to hear WQAM "Tiger Radio" in Miami and CKLW in Detroit/Windsor during their heydays. And with all due respect to qtlaw, KFRC came in much clearer in Contra Costa County than KYA, so my favorites were Doctor Don Rose, John-Mack Flanagan, Rick Shaw, Bobby Ocean and Marvelous Mark McKay on the Big 6-10. I called the 415-933-2121 request line on a whim once in college from Gainesville, Fla., and wound up talking to McKay (who worked at WGGG earlier in his career) for about an hour long-distance.

 

We had a great thread on that several years ago.

What radio stations did you listen to growing up?