"What's In a Name?"

 

Well, hopefully the whole story. I grew up in the sixties. For my seventh birthday my parents presented me with a Sears AM Clock Radio. I think that my father thought that I was old enough to listen to WCBS News on my own and my mother thought that I was old enough to wake up without her shrugging me out of slumber. Much to their chagrin, neither happened and much to their dismay, I found Rock 'n' Roll on the AM dial. A whole new world opened to me and the genie was not going back in the bottle.

My parents had a big Grundig radio with buttons and dials and a speaker on a cord that could be moved away from the big piece of furniture for better enhancement. Because, it was, afterall, a HiFi. It had a record player built in. This piece of furniture rarely had the speaker for sound enhancement extended, it was not to be played without permission and never move the station. The record player was a whole other kettle of fish!

As one might imagine, the radio was set to what we would now be called "easy listening" and since the 1960 VW had no radio in it - the only songs we heard, were the ones that came out of our own mouths or from the big Grundig. And so when the driver of the big brown UPS truck came to the house and delivered the box with my name on it from Sears I was pretty excited.

It took very little time to find WABC and WNBC on the dial and I soon learned the voice of Cousin Brucie, Don Imus, and sports with Howard Cosell. The music was phenomenal. As quick as I learned the voices of the on-air jocks I also learned the sounds of the Beatles, LuLu, and The Box Tops. There would be more music to discover, but the first thing I learned was that the music from my radio was not to the liking of my parents.

It would be another few years before finding FM radio, but after finding it; there was no going back. We'll save that chapter of the saga for another post.

By now, gentle reader, you are probably wondering what is the purpose of this blog and website and my reasons for creating it.

Many of you may be regular listeners of my program on WPKN, 89.5 fm in Bridgeport, CT or online at wpkn.org and have heard the interviews and conversations with touring, emerging, and recording musicians. It is essentially a three hour program heard, more or less, twice a month. I try to keep the politics to a minimum, it shouldn't take but a few minutes to know where I sit on things. The focus has been on the music, the musicians, and the people that make it possible. Guests have included industry professionals, in-studio performances, and on-air interviews. Looking back on much of the radio I loved so much growing up, there was a disconnect between the artists and the listeners. "Music My Mother Would Not Like" has endeavored to bridge that gap. This blog and website will be employed to bring that gap, hopefully, even closer.

In the upcoming weeks, I hope to bring you visual interviews with artists, concert presenters, and industry professionals. I am also going to use this to present interviews conducted previously and in the near future to be able to broadcast concerts via my YouTube and FaceBook Pages. We are looking at partnerships with existing venues to help artists and venues bring in a little well needed income. I will also put up some fun concert pics from previous gigs.

So what can you do? Well, first of all thanks for continuing to read this letter and second of all you can invite your friends on social media to have a look and if so inclined, "like it". I am looking forward to some exciting announcements and partnerships that I think that you will be keen on knowing about.

Thanks,

Bruce

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