My SkyFi wasn’t activated.<\/p>\n
Turns out the free sub on it only lasted a year.\u00c2\u00a0 And despite frantic e-mail with XM, I couldn’t make it live before our trip to Mammoth.\u00c2\u00a0 So, we went terrestrial.<\/p>\n
The Owens Valley is almost devoid of people.\u00c2\u00a0 And it turns out the days of ubiquitous AM signals must be over.\u00c2\u00a0 Because we couldn’t find a fucking thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Until we switched over to FM and found a AAA in Bishop.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is like finding a great wine and cheese shop in Bakersfield.\u00c2\u00a0 Where we found our next station, KRAJ.<\/p>\n
Actually, it wasn’t exactly Bakersfield.\u00c2\u00a0 They were broadcasting from JOHANNESBURG?\u00c2\u00a0 After making a joke about not realizing we’d driven THIS far, I settled in and sang along to the oldies.\u00c2\u00a0 Because that’s what you do.\u00c2\u00a0 You know every track.<\/p>\n
Used to be one of the thrills of long distance drives was flipping the stations on the in-dash radio.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d be cruising through Buttfuck, with one hand on the wheel and the other on the dial.\u00c2\u00a0 Just looking for something to entertain you.<\/p>\n
It was like a Rorschach test of America.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d find the most amazing things.\u00c2\u00a0 Country.\u00c2\u00a0 Talk.\u00c2\u00a0 Religion.\u00c2\u00a0 And Top Forty.<\/p>\n
Top Forty is not what it used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not a compendium of the best tracks in the land.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s ten or fifteen tracks of a specific genre, presently urban.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’ve got nothing against that, but I miss the Top Forty of old.\u00c2\u00a0 When we endured stuff like Louis Armstrong singing "Hello Dolly" fearful if we switched the station we’d miss the next British Invasion single.<\/p>\n
And let me tell you…\u00c2\u00a0 Louis Armstrong sounded SPECTACULAR on KRAJ Saturday night.\u00c2\u00a0 But what really moved me was the Searchers’ "Love Potion Number 9".<\/p>\n
"Love Potion Number 9" peaked at the end of the beginning of the revolution.\u00c2\u00a0 In December ’64, after we’d had a roller coaster ride with the Merseybeat.\u00c2\u00a0 It was not made for sun, "Love Potion Number 9" was a winter song, a song for darkness, a song for contemplation.<\/p>\n
And as the song emanated from the Lexus’ speakers, I flashed on my father.\u00c2\u00a0 That Christmas.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, the day after, driving back from Vermont after the skiing had been washed out in a torrential rainstorm.\u00c2\u00a0 We were somewhere in Massachusetts and he opened the door of the VistaCruiser and searched for the line in the middle of the road.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just that foggy.<\/p>\n
We’d spent the evening at Skylight Ski Lodge in Manchester.\u00c2\u00a0 The only other teenager in residence told me how he’d finally caved.\u00c2\u00a0 Purchased his first Beatle album, "Beatles ’65".\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t listen to that record without thinking of him, even though I never saw him again.<\/p>\n
This was back when the world was bigger.\u00c2\u00a0 When music could exist in a territory separate from television, from the evening news, from straight media.\u00c2\u00a0 Music was for us.<\/p>\n
We lived for Cousin Brucie.\u00c2\u00a0 And Scott Muni, "Number One In The Nation!" before he left WABC for FM years later.\u00c2\u00a0 And, of course, Murray the K and the BMR.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of iPods we got transistors.\u00c2\u00a0 We loaded them up with 9 volt batteries and put them on our desks to hear the countdown Tuesday nights as we did our homework.\u00c2\u00a0 We placed them under our pillows.\u00c2\u00a0 We were ADDICTED!<\/p>\n
And our parents had no idea of our disease.\u00c2\u00a0 The Beatles were just those longhairs the older generation made fun of.<\/p>\n
There was this army.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, not dissimilar to the one on MySpace (or now faceparty.com).\u00c2\u00a0 This land was for US!\u00c2\u00a0 Parents were out of it.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like my clueless peers think that MySpace is the land of sexual predators, and a place to break major label acts.<\/p>\n
It was a secret language.\u00c2\u00a0 Based in music.<\/p>\n
And that’s what we’ve lost.<\/p>\n
Oh, there was a further explosion on the aforementioned FM.\u00c2\u00a0 And then on MTV.\u00c2\u00a0 And almost twenty years later, on Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 But now there’s no pulse, music is just another sold-out corporate affair, purveyed by mercenary fucks who’ve drained all the soul from the songs in order to profit.<\/p>\n
Ironically, these same profiteers know every word, every lick of those Top Forty records of yore.\u00c2\u00a0 They remember when you had to rush home to play your favorite record.\u00c2\u00a0 When you lined up for tickets to the show.\u00c2\u00a0 When they were followers of a RELIGION!<\/p>\n
Felice and I grew up a country away.\u00c2\u00a0 But this we shared.\u00c2\u00a0 These tunes.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes I wasn’t sure whether it was the radio, or her, singing along.<\/p>\n
On the right the Sierras were getting shorter.\u00c2\u00a0 They were losing the scoop of ice cream crowning them.\u00c2\u00a0 The dried lake beds of the Owens Valley on the left were shrinking to nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, during a commercial, scanning the dial I found that we now had reception from L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 KRTH was coming in loud and clear.<\/p>\n
But K-EARTH was having a SEVENTIES weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 And everybody alive back then knew by that decade Top Forty was already dead.\u00c2\u00a0 That it was all happening on albums on FM.<\/p>\n
So we switched back to 100.9.\u00c2\u00a0 For more of those Bakersfield oldies.\u00c2\u00a0 From the decade when Top Forty ruled, the sixties.<\/p>\n
And that’s when I heard "Love Potion Number 9".\u00c2\u00a0 As the sun had finally descended behind the mountains.\u00c2\u00a0 As we were cruising on the two-lane just shy of Mojave.<\/p>\n
I took my troubles down to Madam Ruth I thought it was Madame RIOUX!\u00c2\u00a0 I thought she was Creole, from down Louisiana way.\u00c2\u00a0 The sound was so bad we could NEVER make out the words, and there was no Internet to straighten us out.<\/p>\n She’s got a pad down at Thirty Fourth and Vine Wow, is this L.A?<\/p>\n I told her that I was a flop with chicks Shit, I NEVER caught that line.\u00c2\u00a0 I use to "fmpff" it, as my dad used to say.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I’d sing along with "Nineteen Fifty Six", but I had no idea this was a song about some guy who needed help with the ladies.\u00c2\u00a0 I just thought he was waxing poetic about the effects of Love Potion Number 9!<\/p>\n She looked at my palm and she made a magic sign Now I heard THIS!\u00c2\u00a0 But what truly makes the record, is what comes thereafter.<\/p>\n She bent down and turned around and gave me a wink Oh, the conspiratorial eye contact!\u00c2\u00a0 And then the colloquial sink.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just between him and her.\u00c2\u00a0 But the concoction, it was illicit, it was scary, should he PARTAKE?<\/p>\n I knew what turpentine smelled like.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’d used India ink in art class.\u00c2\u00a0 (Wonder if they still do?)\u00c2\u00a0 But it was all just set-up.\u00c2\u00a0 For the LSD trip before most of us even knew what that drug WAS!<\/p>\n I didn’t know if it was day or night Oh, we were all in on it.\u00c2\u00a0 We were all addicted to the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Although we might have garbled the lyrics, we knew these tracks better than multiplication tables.\u00c2\u00a0 They played at school sock hops, Bar Mitzvah parties, hell that’s how I GOT my copy of this record.\u00c2\u00a0 No, that’s wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how I got the Animals’ "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place".\u00c2\u00a0 By winning the dance contest at that Bat Mitzvah at the Rodeph Sholom, with Nancy, who would never dance with me again.<\/p>\n Coming out of the speakers, broadcasting from the California dust bowl, was an elixir just as powerful as the one the protagonist was downing in the song.\u00c2\u00a0 These records…they took us away, they were the center of our lives.\u00c2\u00a0 Music just isn’t that important anymore.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My SkyFi wasn’t activated. Turns out the free sub on it only lasted a year.\u00c2\u00a0 And despite frantic e-mail with XM, I couldn’t make it live before our trip to Mammoth.\u00c2\u00a0 So, we went terrestrial. The Owens Valley is almost devoid of people.\u00c2\u00a0 And it turns out the days of ubiquitous AM signals must be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-6c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
You know, that gypsy with the gold capped tooth<\/em><\/p>\n
Sellin’ little bottles of Love Potion Number Nine<\/em><\/p>\n
I’ve been this way since Nineteen Fifty Six<\/em><\/p>\n
She said, ‘What you need is Love Potion Number Nine’<\/em><\/p>\n
She said, ‘I’m gonna make it up right here in the sink.’
It smelled like turpentine and looked like India ink
I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink<\/em><\/p>\n
I started kissin’ every thing in sight
But when I kissed a cop down at Thirty Fourth and Vine
He broke my little bottle of Love Potion Number Nine<\/em><\/p>\n