My Rock 'n' Roll History

It's funny. To me, anyway. This is a short history of "My Life" as a rock 'n' roll fan ...

I was a Billy Joel fan in first grade. I think I may have been the only first grade Billy Joel fan in the world. I thought his song "My Life" was great. I had a 45 RPM version of it and the 52nd Street album. In first grade. I actually — this is no lie — went through three vinyl versions, bought a cassette version, and have two or three versions of the compact disc.

Also in first grade, I was a Foreigner fan. My neighbor who skateboarded on an awesome skateboard ramp all day, every day used to blast the song regularly. I wanted the song.

Mom took me to K–Mart, right next to Kresge's in Drayton Plains and we looked for the album with "Hot Blooded." We found an album by someone named Gene Simmons who was a member of a band called Kiss. His album had a song called "Burning Up With Fever," so that had to be the name of the song I was looking for — right? This introduced me to the band Kiss, who were huge at the time. But parents weren't supposed to let first graders listen to them, though, because the rumor was Kiss stood for "Knights in Satan's Service." This was before the Internet, before Snopes, and back in the seventies so there was no way to refute the rumor. Heck, my parents probably hadn't heard the rumor.

I've always been a music fan. I had eclectic taste, but some of my favorites from back then are still favorites today: Billy Joel, Foreigner, John Cougar (and John Cougar–Mellencamp, John Mellencamp, etc.), Jimmy Buffett, Kiss, Bob Seger … One of my all time favorites is Kid Rock. I have many CDs, have converted to buying from iTunes for a great deal of my music, and I also have way too many cassettes, some very cool vinyl ...

I love rock 'n' roll …