The Bee Gees in my life

I liked their first incarnation. Their second round of success, the disco Bee Gees, not so much.

This reminds me of the days when KQV was the pop music station and you would hear a Bee Gee song, a Rolling Stone tune, followed by a Temptations song, then a Perry Como ballad. Now everyone lives in their own musical cul-de=sac and seldom hear music from other genres.  

Kevin, I agree with you on the Bee Gees. I grew up right up the hill from West View Park and we always heard KQV over the loudspeakers in the summer. KQV was actually the soundtrack to a large part of my childhood in the "60s.

Remember that the disk jockeys sat in a window in the Chamber of Commerce Building downtown?

I saw Nat King Cole being interviewed there. When asked about the Beatles phenomenon, he pointed to me outside the window and said that "That young man out there will probably find some other type of music to follow when he gets older."

Yeah, Scarlet, I remember dropping walking by the window and waving to Big Steve Risen, the afternoon DJ.

Kevin makes an excellent point about the radio back then.  All you have to do is look up a top 100 list from say, 1964 to see the variety of music then.  And you could hear all of them on one station, unlike the segregated, monochrome stuff available today.  In an hour you could hear the Beatles, Beach Boys, Martha and the Vandellas, the Temps, Smokey, Chuck Berry, Supremes, Stones, Beau Brummels, Junior Walker, Animals, Roger Miller, Dean Martin.....

My own closest brush with fame was once being hugged by Little Richard.

Speaking of the Bee Gees, ever notice how their falsetto sounds like porpoises singing?

And Stevie Nicks - the Welsh Witch - she sounds like a goat.

(My nephew said that when I sing that I sound like Swamp Thing. How would he know?)

I lived in Chicago when disco became popular and Steve Dahl, the WLUP disc jockey, organized the Insane Coho Lips Anti-Disco Army.  I was watching a White Sox double-header and fell asleep during the first game.  When I awoke the infamous Anti-disco Demolition Party was in full swing-- a dumpster packed with disco records was detonated on the field, fans (of rock) were throwing disco LP's like they were frisbees (very dangerous) and the Sox ended up having to forfeit the second game.  Steve Dahl was a cleaner funnier Howard Stern.  He used to call Iran during the hostage crisis and jerk the Iranians around. As much as I hated disco when it first appeared I ended up loving what the BeeGees did with it.  Reg, my three brushes with greatness:  Age seventeen, I shook hands with Bobby Kennedy at the Grand Rapids airport;  Age twenty-six, I met Muhammad Ali at the Chicago Board of Trade; Age fifty-eight, I met Lewis "Buddy" Nordan, author of Wolf Whistle, Sugar Among the Freaks, Music of the Swamp, and Lightning Song at the Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley.  I hope to add Rob Rogers to the list when he visits on the twelfth of December.

Kevin, your point about musical diversity is a good one.  I often wonder if we ever would have heard of Janis Joplin once the suits, MTV,  and ClearChannel got a stranglehold on the music biz.  WYEP here does a great job of mixing up it's playlist.

Ciejia, I took a writing class with Buddy Nordan at Pitt. He had to leave mid-term due to his son's suicide. He had a series of guest professors fill in for him, and we all assumed he would not return. The day he surprised us and returned our syllabus called for the class to discuss G. G. Marquez's short story "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." I will never forget the whole surreal scene-all of us holding our breath, him sitting down to his desk, looking at that syllabus, then just letting out a laugh that made us all laugh and cry.

I met a lot of athletes while working at Three Rivers Stadium, but the biggest brush with fame I had was when I was introduced to Art Rooney Sr. I also got to sit next to Chuck Noll during a dinner/ awards ceremony at the Allegheny Club. Very nice guy.    

I'm so glad you like KQV.  Rush Limbaugh was a DJ at that time.

Not in the 60's he wasn't.  Look it up.

Kevin, while Buddy transplanted himself from the south to the north, my husband and I did the reverse.  Two northerners, we ended up living in Virginia for twenty years.  Prior to settling here, my husband and I put all our stuff in storage and drove across the country.  On the way back we traveled about 150 miles out of our way in order to get a look at Buddy's hometown, Itta Bena MS.  We had been living in Sewickley for a few years when the Post-Gazette did a piece at the time of his retirement from Pitt.  I had no idea he and his wife were living just down the road!  I tried to write him a note telling him how much I admired his work, but as I later explained to him and his wife, it always ended up sounding sorta stalkerish.  They laughed and said they had gotten a few stalker notes over the years.  If you've seen the Cohen brothers film "Oh Brother" you know it references Itta Bena.  I asked if they had heard from the Cohen's but they hadn't.  Still I like to believe they are fans of his work too.

Co-orbiting with the rich and famous is funny like that ... in an earlier life I would sometimes go to the same parties as some guy from Australia who worked at the Post-Gazette. He claimed to be a friend of my (earlier) wife.

Of course, I didn't know he would become a superstar later. In fact, my general impression was that he was just a twit. While he was no more than 30 feet away, I rarely spoke to him.

William McCloskey, Regent Square

Dunno what it is we do here that so brings out the name-callers.  We hypocrites, fatheads, fools, idiots and twits need somewhere to go.  Don't we fellas?  You, too, Minxie.  

Actually, ciejai, Reg's blog  is more civilized than the others.  Maybe it's the best we can do.

Regis, Something tells me William is a fan of Reg's and may have the same wry wit.  Speaking of civilization, do you plan on seeing The Road?

ciejai--probably not.  I have seen On the Beach and a slew of other post-apocalyptic movies.  Lately I find I need cheering up mixed with a bit of nostalgia, so Pirate Radio fit the bill perfectly.  

regis,  I read The Road and kept thinking I would put it aside by hung in there to the end and am glad I did.  Like you, I need cheering up so thanks for the recommendation on Pirate Radio.  It sounds like my cup of tea.