So I was about to go crank Little Feat, and I changed my mind and started playing the Who, who I just love. I’m a bit tuned up on scotch and mojitos, so just bear with me. I started playing Eminence Front, which always makes me think of growing up in Bethany, WV and the years I spent as a disc jockey. I remember getting my FCC license when I was 14, and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. I worked for the college radio station, and along with the shows I did on my own, I was the engineer for the three hour Ashbourne Hour, which was classic music with an English prof (John Taylor, who may have been my favorite person to ever live in Bethany), as well as a three hour Monday Night Oldies show wiuth John Graham, who was an icon on Pittsburgh radio during the hey-day of Jimmy Beaumont and the Skyliners. And I listened to them, and I learned tons.
But there were also random folks I learned from- our music director at WVBC at the time was a guy named Matt Mastrangelo. He was a fucking genius- I remember our playlists being the envy of everything in the tri-state area. I still laugh thinking about how the Red Hot Chilis and Julian Cope and the Cult all became smash hits.. after they had been on our playlists for a while. Mastrangelo was a fucking genius. Oh, and by the way, Matt Mastrangelo is now the publisher of Rolling Stone.
And then there was a guy from Wellsburg named Ric Smith. He was not affiliated with the college, but he loved music, so they always gave him a show. He loved the Who. I can honestly say he made me love the Who- between him and Timmy Graham, I bet I heard every Who and every Dire Straits album. All these guys were older than me, so you have to remember the kind of awe you held people who were 18-19 when you were 14. But at the same time, they treated me like an equal, because we loved music.
Ric Smith died about a decade ago from liver failure. Not because he was a drunk, but because he poisoned himself accidentally with tylenol. He was just sick as hell, and didn’t realize that tylenol was not safe. Fighting a fever killed him, basically.
So what was the point of this post? Well, nothing, I guess, other than that I doubt Ric, or Tim, or Matt, or any of the other people who helped to make me who I am musically had any idea the impact they were having on me. There is a good chance I would have loved music, but because of them, I love it more, know more, and it is part of who I am.
That’s the message. You’ll either understand it or you won’t. Play it forward.
Teenage Wasteland Baba O’Riley is playing now. Y’all are on your own.
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