SUE’S SUNDAY
SOJOURN: Each week Sue will showcase a particular artist or band during her
entire two hour set. Each week, prior to
the set, there will be a blog post where she will write about her memories,
favorite stories or share other interesting tidbits about the artist. The idea here is not to tell the story of the
band or play two hours of their greatest hits.
The idea behind Sue’s Sunday
Sojourn will be to spend time with Sue, down in her music vault. As she puts together the set, she will
reminisce and share special memories. “I
remember when this came out,” or, “I recall hearing this for the first time and
I thought…” She might share little known
facts, favorite memories, fun stories or maybe even some personal
experiences.
The sets will have
plenty of the big hits but be ready for a few obscure tunes that may be her
personal favorites. She will probably
include a few rarities or possibly unreleased material, along with other assorted
curios. So join her every Sunday night
from 7-9 PM SLT as she lets you into her world.
Bob Seger
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| The Bob Seger System (1969), Seger up front |
The summer of 1969 was a magic summer. In July, three men were heading to the moon
to make that historic first landing there.
While those men hurled towards the moon at 24,200 miles per hour (38,950
km/s), a U.S. Senator from my home state of Massachusetts was changing the
course of that history on a bridge at an obscure place called “Chappaquiddick.” (I was living only 35 miles away when that
happened.) There are few that doubt that
Ted Kennedy would have been President if it weren’t for that black mark on his
record. It was the same week that people
were flocking to see a newly released movie about two men, Wyatt and Billy
(Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper), who rode their Harley Panheads across the
country in what would be the third highest grossing film of 1969, Easy Rider.
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| From left, clockwise: Front Page Boston Globe with both Chappaquiddick and the Moon Landing making news. Senator Kennedy's Car in the water. Billy & Wyatt ride in Easy Rider. Click to enlarge. |
If guys walking on the moon and riding choppers across
America wasn’t magic enough, the following month a crowd of 450,000 “hippies”
gathered in upstate New York for Woodstock, three days of Peace, Love and
Music. When the event went off without a
hitch, despite overcrowding and lack of services and facilities, the world saw
that our generation really was capable of the “love thy neighbor” philosophy
that we were all embracing. It was the
perfect ending to the magic summer of 1969.
None of this was as magic as having my brother home with
us in Massachusetts for a couple of weeks.
In 1966, my oldest brother had a falling out with our father and went to
live on the opposite coast with our grandmother. He would come home each summer
for a couple of weeks and I looked forward to these times very much. Despite a seven year age gap, we were quite
close and I’d say he was closer to me than anyone else in the family. Back in 1967, he began recording tapes to me
instead of writing letters. It was my
duty to inform the family, usually over dinner, about how my brother was doing
and what he was up to. Of course there
were portions I had to omit and I was somewhat proud that he trusted me with
this. I will go into these tapes in more
detail in an upcoming Sojourn.
So, how does Bob Seger work into all of this?
On this trip, my brother came into my room to visit and
catch up, which we both loved doing. We
shared a great love of music so of course he was curious and picked up a couple
of LP records sitting on my desk. One
caught his eye especially, my copy of a newly released album by the Bob Seger
System, Ramblin' Gamblin' Man. His attention piqued my curiosity because
this was not one that I expected to interest him. There were a lot of bands that we shared a
great love for including the Jefferson Airplane, Cream and the Peanut Butter
Conspiracy. By 1969, his tastes were leaning
more towards the acoustic guitar performance of war protesters like Bob Dylan,
Joan Baez and Phil Ochs. I like those
artists too but my tastes were now also including the likes of Steppenwolf,
Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple. The Bob
Seger System was not one of these softer, acoustic artists nor were they a Bay
Area group and they definitely were one of my harder rock bands.
I took the record from him and I placed it on my record
player and set the needle down on the first song of side A. The drums started and I began to dance,
flipping my hair around. Then, when the
lyrics began, I sang along at the top of my voice.
“Yeah, I'm gonna
tell my tale come on, come on, give a listen.
“Cause I was born
lonely down by the riverside,
Learned to spin fortune
wheels, and throw dice,
And I was just
thirteen when I had to leave home.
Knew I couldn't
stick around, I had to roam.
Ain’t good looking,
but you know I ain't shy,
Ain't afraid to
look it girl, hear me out.
So if you need some
lovin’ and you need it right away,
Take a little time
out, and maybe I'll stay.
“But I got to
ramble ramblin' man.”
I had played that song enough, being my favorite on the
album, that I had no trouble with the words.
When my little performance was done, my brother chuckled, but not in a
mocking way. You could tell he enjoyed
it. He then went over to the record
player and turned the record over and placed the needle somewhere on the second
side.
With a grin on his face he told me, “Listen to these
words.”
It was then that I finally dawned on me; he knew this
album. The song began with just a bass
and I had heard it before, of course, but it was not one of the songs I had on
constant replay. It was called 2+2=? (pronounced “two plus two equals
what”), which I found to be a strange song title. I listened as Bob began singing with the
bass.
“Yes it's true I am
a young man
But I'm old enough
to kill.
I don't wanna kill
nobody
but I must if you
so will.
And if I raise my
hand in question,
You just say that
I'm a fool.
Cause I got the
gall to ask you,”
It was here that the fuzzed out psychedelic guitar
kicked.
“Can you maybe
change the rules?
Can you stand and
call me upstart?
Ask what answer can
I find,
I ain't sayin' I'm
a genius;
2+2 is on my mind.
As I listened to the words, I realized that I was
listening to a war protest song. That is
why my brother new it. He traveled in
the kind of circles where this song was probably played. The song finally ended…
“I'm no prophet;
I'm no rebel.
I'm just asking you
why.
I just want a
simple answer.
Why it is I’ve got to die?
I'm a simple minded
guy,
2+2 is on my mind.”
My brother was looking at me as those last lyrics were
sung. I think he was looking for my
reaction to the song but I recall that all I could think about was that one
line, “Why it is I’ve got to die?” My
brother was four months away from turning eighteen and having to register for
the draft. When he would get his letter,
he would need to report to a designated Military Entrance Processing Station
(MEPS). I didn’t want my brother to die;
especial in some rice paddy half way around the world, in a war we had no
business fighting.
But there was hope.
Richard Nixon had won the election for President and took office back in
January. He had won on the promise of
getting us out of Vietnam and ending the war.
We hadn’t heard anything on the particulars up until then but what we
didn’t know was that Nixon, behind the backs of Congress and the American
people, had escalated things and was conducting operations in Cambodia, a
country that we weren’t even at war with.
It seems that getting a bigger hammer and obliterating everything was
his answer to ending the war and bringing peace. Thinking back, I’m reminded of one of my
brother’s favorite singers of the time, Tom Paxton, and a line from one of his
protest songs, “to help save Vietnam from Vietnamese.”
For better or worse, that was how I got to know about Bob
Seger. He was an artist emerging from
the Detroit music scene with his new band, the Bob Seger System. Wow! Here was a rock guy who was not only a
singer, he was an entire system! I would
later learn that he had recorded a couple of singles with his previous band in
Detroit, Bob Seger and the Last Heard. I
always thought that was such a clever name.
I will include Heavy Music
(1967) by Bob Seger and the Last Heard in my set Sunday night, along with every
song mentioned so far.
The one thing I can say about Bob Seger is that he has
always been there for me from that magic summer of 1969 onwards. Morrison, Joplin, Hendrix and others are long
dead. The Beatles, the Doors, Led
Zeppelin, the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, all gone. Bob Seger is still active after all these
years and actually released his latest single this year, Glenn Song, a tribute to his good friend, Glenn Frey. This post is more about my own life, but you
will see that Bob Seger was always around.
That summer came to an end and the Bob Seger came out
with their next album, Noah, in the
fall. This one had a song, Death Row, which was notable because it
is considered one of the songs of the late 60’s that inspired and heralded in
the harder rock sound of the 70’s. This
album has never been legitimately been reissued but I’ll still play Death Row for you on Sunday.
Nixon would finally address the nation on how we would
get out of Vietnam in November and we began hearing a new term,
“Vietnamization.” It was a process by
which we would make Vietnam the problem of the Vietnamese and not ours. Despite
his promise to bring troops home, the draft continued, my brother tuned 18 and
eventually he had to report for his physical.
He failed it and was deemed unfit for military service so, much to my
family’s relief, he would not be going to Vietnam.
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| Counter culture icons go to war. Click to enlarge. |
The war was perverse in many ways, especially to my
pre-adolescent (and eventually teen-aged) mind.
We started seeing our anti-war counterculture icons like peace symbols
and sayings on our soldiers and their implements of war (see above). I recall watching on TV a bit about an
airplane that they nicknamed “Puff the Magic Dragon.” This was a transport in which several Gatling
type (rotating barrels) machineguns were mounted on one side. The plane was shown circling over the jungle
canopy and I began singing out loud as it rained death down to the Viet Cong
below at 10,000 rounds per second…
“Puff, the magic
dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist
In a land called Honnah Lee.”
And frolicked in the autumn mist
In a land called Honnah Lee.”
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| Artist rendition... Puff the Magic Dragon |
I was a freshman in High School when Bob Seger released
his seventh album, aptly named “Seven,” in March of 1974. Despite it being an amazing album, it never
charted and it remains out of print today.
My favorite song from this one is School
Teacher and I’ll play it for you on Sunday, along with other tunes from it. I must have played this one 100 times when I
first got it, before I finally put it away.
Bob was there at the beginning of my senior year when he
released what was his most successful album to date, Night Moves. I actually had
two copies of this album, one on LP record and one on 8-track tape. This one had so many great tunes.
I graduated high school and much to my parents’
disappointment, I did not plan on going to college. I wanted to be a radio DJ and I set my sights
towards that. I knew that the stations
were too big around my area for someone starting out, so I decided to relocate
to New England where I had both family and friends. Some of the smaller stations up there actual
were having trouble finding on-air personnel.
By December, I had earned my Third Class Radio Telephone License with an
FM Broadcast Endorsement from the FCC and I was working as a Radio DJ.
I started only as a fill-in, working odd shifts here and
there. In April, one of our regular
afternoon DJ’s got a job at a much larger station in Boston. Our late night DJ moved, took the afternoon
slot and I was offered the midnight shift, Monday thru Friday. Of course, I accepted it and I was now a
regular on-air personality.
I usually reported to the station around 8 PM, even
though my shifted didn’t start for a few hours.
We all had tasks assigned to us and I also would spend an hour in the
music room pulling records for my set.
It was before one of my very first sets that the Music Director came in
soon after I arrived and gave me a task.
I was to file several newly arrived albums in the “New” section for
airplay. I went through the albums and
came across brand new Bob Seger! I had
not seen nor heard this new one yet, Stranger
in Town. As I filed the others away,
I kept the new Seger LP and used it to begin my collection of records for my
upcoming show in a few hours.
I relieved the DJ who was finishing and soon I was alone
in the studio. The thing about the
midnight shift is that everyone goes home and the on-air DJ is all by
themselves for their show. I cued the
new Bob Seger record up and not knowing any of the tracks on it, I picked the
first song on the first side, Hollywood
Nights. I had never heard any of
these songs before and it was risky for a DJ to play a song they didn’t know,
but I took the chance. After I cued the
record to the first song, I placed the turntable in gear and set the
corresponding knob to about 8 or 9. I
set the lever back from cue to the upright position.
After the current song had ended, I pushed the lever
above the microphone knob to the right and the red “On the Air” light went on
over my head as I rotated the knob from 0 to about 8. It was just me, alone with an unknown number
of listeners, as I spoke to them into the microphone.
“I got an amazing treat for all of you… Brand new Bob
Seger with the Silver Bullet Band. It’s
so new that I haven’t even heard it yet.
Let us share it for the first time together.”
As I uttered the last sentence, I flipped the lever to
the right and the turntable started turning and the song began. The guitar and the drums kicked in and it was
amazing, like a musical orgasm. I had
most definitely but unknowingly picked a winner. When the song ended, I put the record aside
and, when I found a break during a longer song, I took the album to the other
studio and set it up to record onto a cassette tape.
The following Saturday afternoon, I lit a joint and
played the tape. The album was amazing
with such songs as Hollywood Nights, Still the Same, Old Time Rock and Roll, We’ve
Got Tonight, Feel Like a Number and others.
The album would be released the following month in May and would become
available in stores. Old Time Rock and Roll would be used in
the movie, Risky Business (1983),
featuring Tom Cruise. Stranger in Town would eventually sell
over 6 million copies becoming certified platinum six times! It climbed all the way to number 4 on the Billboard Charts.
His next album, which came out in 1980, would go all the
way to number 1. The title song, Against the Wind, was actually timely
with a major life change of mine. I had
been living a subsistence existence. I
wasn’t making enough money to get anywhere and the prospect for advancement was
not great.
“Never worried
about paying or even how much I owed.
Moving eight miles
a minute for months at a time,
Breaking all of the
rules that would bend.
I began to find myself searching;
Searching for
shelter again and again…
“Against the wind,
A little something
against the wind.
I found myself
seeking shelter against the wind.”
The lyrics said it all.
It was fun but I really had no future there. I finally caved in 1980 and allowed my
parents to pay for my college. I still
had dreams of radio but I would never realize them.
I graduated in 1985 with an engineering degree from a
university in Illinois. I realized that
I didn’t want to be an engineer and while I was finishing up my degree, I earned
my National Registry Emergency Medical Technician. I went home to New Jersey after graduation
and proceeded to piss off the parents once again and get a job in the Emergency
Medical Services. After using my EMT to
start working, I began to take classes to become a paramedic. I officially earned my MICU Paramedic (Mobil
Intensive Care Unit) in 1986. At about
this time, Bob Seger came out with his 13th studio album, Like a Rock. The title track would become a staple theme
for Chevy trucks beginning in 1991.
His career would seem to sync up with my life on more
occasions to come. In 1991, while Like a Rock was becoming a Chevy Truck
commercial, I lost my father and Bob came out with his 14th studio
album, the Fire Inside. I announced my retirement from EMS at the end
of 2005 and in 2006 Bob came out with his 16th studio album, Face the Promise. On the cover, Bob can be seen riding a Harley-Davidson
motorcycle.
This album (see below) came at a time that I was retiring
from a second career. My radio career of
a couple of years was rather short lived but my medic career had run a full 20
year course, including the tragedy of September 11, 2001. I left my house that fateful morning not to
return for five days with only the clothes on my back and a couple of personal
effects. I retired with eight citations,
including one for valor in 1991. My
father would live long enough to read about the incident in the paper but he
did not survive to see the medal ceremony.
I was embarking on a new chapter of my life and this new
Bob Seger album in many ways pointed the way.
Seeing him on the cover on his Harley invoked the image of my brother on
his. I began a mundane third career and
tried to cope with my PTSD, a parting gift for 20 years of service in “the
trenches.” When my father had retired,
he was given a gold watch. I was given a
substance abuse problem and nightmares.
Bob was quiet for twelve years as I coped and tried to
get by. In therapy, my therapist and I
decided that I’d get a motorcycle. This
would hopefully give me a means to cope.
All of my brothers had ridden and I had ridden on the back many times,
much to my mother’s chagrin. Why
shouldn’t I get one? In 2014, I took the
New Rider Course and got my license, setting the stage for the purchase of my
very own Harley-Davidson. That same
year, Bob finally released his next album, his 17th studio album,
aptly named from my perspective, Ride Out. This album has a motorcycle and open road
theme to it, its cover (seen below) showing a roadway reminiscent of Easy Rider (1969), mentioned above. In many ways, Bob and I had come full circle.
DJ Sue’s Vault…
Above is my copy of the record that started it all, Ramblin' Gamblin' Man. I look at the cover and I’m instantly
transported back to that magic day in 1969 were I belted out the title tune,
hair flying everywhere, for my brother.
Conclusion…
Bob has been there for me throughout my life, through my
high points and low points. Only
sometimes as it was happening did I realize this synchronicity. Usually, it only hit me during times of
contemplative retrospect. Bob and I have
been through a lot together and now I wonder how much more there is for us to
share. This year (2017) Bob released Glenn Song, a tribute to his good
friend, Glenn Frey, on the one year anniversary of his death.
I have never seen Bob in concert and maybe I should fix
this. Maybe I owe him that in thanks,
buy a ticket and thank him (from a distance) in person. Thanks Bob!
Join me Sunday night (AWT 7-9 PM slt) as I relive all of
these memories. Every song mentioned
above is on my set list. I’m sure,
whether you are a Bob Seger fan or not that you will enjoy this one. You will find yourself saying, “Hey, I know
this one,” often. Pretty much every tune
will be high energy and get you dancing in your seat.
Today I have let you into my life in a way I have never
before. I’ve known many of you for so
long that I wanted you to know what made me tick. Much of this many of you already knew. Now I have strung it together as a cohesive
whole. I love you all.
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| Recent picture of Bob Seger |
