Musical Saturday Morning

On any given Saturday afternoon, while living in Germany, there was only one place I could be found - the roller skating rink.  I started skating when I was about 4 and remained active at it through age 19.

It was about 1967 and as we went out for our first skate, the dj announced a new song from America and played this one.  Everyone just stopped and listened.  It was a weird song, there really was nothing like it we had heard before.  Admittedly, most of our music to skate to was by British groups, but still this song was beyond odd.  And we loved it!

I think the dj got sick of all of the requests for a replay!  Yeah, it instantly went to number one, once all of us were home and calling the radio station at Kaiserslautern!

Mind you, none of us had a clue what the song was about, but the music was intriguing and for some reason made the girls all want to dance.  Yeah, well, okay ... :)

And this unknown, to us in NATO-landia, group from Boise, Idaho became the new king of rock...



Roll the clock ahead by seven years and I was to get to know Mark Lindsay very well.  He lived quite close to me and on Thursday nights I could hang with him and talk "old time" rock and roll.  First you have to understand that what was behind "Kicks" had badly damaged him, as it had Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, so he was struggling.  And I admired the man for not giving up and his daughter (?) for caring for him.  Been four decades ago now and I wished I had kept a journal of our talks, he was a cool guy and through him learned too much about the music industry and the personalities involved.

Paul Revere, I was to finally meet in the 1980's at the Raider's first reunion performance.  The group had lost its bass, taken over by Paul's son and of course Mark, whom was replaced by an almost photo replacement for Mark!  I had to actually touch his face to see what had been done to make him look so Mark-ish!  Wow!  Anyway, the kid did a great job as Mark and imitating something between Mark and David Lee Roth - and did he ever JUMP! er KICK!  It was quite the contrast - a Mark whom was age perfect of yesterday, surrounded by greying and wrinkled Raiders still rocking up a storm.  Well, except for Paul's son whom was twenty-ish.

So, it was an awesome birthday present and I still have my 8 by 10 of Paul Revere safely stored away.  And ever so often I dust off my Paul Revere Anthology and listen to their entire recording history from Boise to Lewiston, to the world stage.