One of the most memorable days of my brief tenure as a social-studies teacher started when one of my kids raised a hand in the middle of a lesson on the Populist Movement and asked, “Why do we have to learn this?” As a believer in the concept of the teachable moment (and with some wiggle room in the syllabus for the semester), I decided to toss the lesson plan for the day and turn the question around: “Why do you think we have to learn this?”

We ended up talking about whether human choices affect the course of history. Several of my students were convinced they do not. The students recognized that their choices had an impact on their lives, but they didn’t believe the same thing about the choices made by others—everyone else’s actions were fixed and immutable. History is a river and humanity is in a boat, but there’s no pilot—we’re just floating along with the current, and it takes us wherever it’s going to go.

(At one point, I asked them what would have happened if John Wilkes Booth had decided not to shoot Abraham Lincoln. In the front row, a hand flew up instantaneously. “If Booth hadn’t done it, somebody else would have, because Lincoln had to die.”)

I forgave my students their perspective, though. Not until one reaches geezerhood does one completely understand the potential impact of choices, even little ones. It doesn’t take a great deal of imaginative effort to visualize a whole range of other lives you might have led: if you hadn’t taken a particular job, gotten involved with a particular person, done something you did, left something else undone—if you’d only steered the boat on a slightly different heading. It’s not exactly making a map of the roads not taken—a map shows where you’ll end up, but with visions, how can you tell? Nevertheless, conjuring with what might have been is a pastime we can’t resist. And in October, a month when time runs in reverse, it’s a greater temptation than at any other time of the year.

But here’s the thing: Even if we’d sometimes like to be someone else somewhere else doing something else, that’s not the boat we’re in. And it’s not automatically a bad thing to simply float along for a while. If we work too hard at steering the boat, we’re going to miss the scenery. Or, as Mary Chapin Carpenter puts it:

No one knows where they belong
The search just goes on and on and on
For every choice that ends up wrong
Another one’s right
A change of scene would sure be great
The thought is nice to contemplate
But the question begs why would you wait
And be late for your life

Today at WNEW.com: False Legends, Volume II.

. . .  and I needed nearly all of them to coax autumn into my life. It finally came in on Monday, a windy, gray, chilly day, as I ran errands to the sound of Van Morrison’s Back on Top. It really is the best autumn album of all, and I should have known it would bring the season in.

If the album were by anybody else, I’d probably share a track here. But Morrison wants you to buy the record in order to hear it. That’s not a unreasonable request, but the paradigm for getting people to buy has changed in recent years. Internet publicity is a major component of promotion today—but Morrison didn’t get the memo. Early in 2008, he dispatched an outfit called Web Sheriff to Internet precincts near and far with orders to remove almost everything with his name on it—not merely posted tracks, but lyrics, video, and still pictures. Web Sheriff even went after sites that linked to such things without having posted them directly. And they’ve been on the case ever since. (I heard from them once, out here in this relatively quiet corner of the web, not with an official cease-and-desist, but with a “we appreciate your interest in Van Morrison” post that was undoubtedly intended to show that they were keeping an eye on me.)

So I was pleased to note last night that Van has started up an official YouTube channel with authorized video postings. Except every video includes a giant watermark that obscures the entire viewing window—which makes me wonder just what the hell’s the point.

As much as I love Van Morrison’s music, his attitude toward the Internet is silly, and ultimately bad for his career. Here’s why: There are lots of us on the Internet who respect and appreciate Morrison’s artistry, and whose interest in his music poses absolutely no financial threat to him—yet he treats us like we were breaking into his house to steal the flatware. His decision to shut down the fan site run by Michael Hayward at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver last year was as counterproductive a thing as I’ve ever witnessed—Hayward’s site was scholarly, he didn’t make a dime from it, and the articles and reviews on the site likely did more to promote Morrison’s back catalog than Morrison has done himself. Morrison should have been honored that Hayward was fan enough to create such a site without an economic incentive to do so. Instead, he had the place torched.

Record labels and recording artists who don’t get the new way of doing business in the digital age are going to find themselves left out of it. By assuming everyone on the Internet is a pirate, Morrison has proven he doesn’t get it. (Hell, the Beatles and EMI didn’t go after everybody who posted tracks from the recent remasters, and they’ve got more to lose than Morrison does.) It’s a basic tenet of business that you’ve got to spend some money to make some money, and in the digital era, you’ve got to give away some music to sell some music—just like you had to get it played on the radio back in the day. This idiotic watermarking of his videos is only the latest manifestation of Van Morrison’s unwillingness to understand how things work now.

So if you’d like to hear a live performance of “When the Leaves Come Falling Down,” a track from Back on Top which might be the single most gorgeous thing the man’s done in his brilliant 40-year career, click here, but don’t bother trying to watch. He doesn’t really want you to anyhow.

Can you remember the first time you heard a CD? In my case, it was sometime in 1987. One of the guys from the radio station bought a player and invited a couple of us over to hear it. He chose a disc by the Tonight Show Band, stood us in front of the speakers, and cranked it up. I am by no means an audiophile, but even I could hear the astounding clarity of the sound, and was impressed by the way it rose up from dead silence between tracks. (No more crackle or rumble.) It must have been early in 1987, because if it had been after June, my friend, a certified Beatles fanatic, would certainly have chosen Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to demonstrate the player. Sgt. Pepper was released on CD on the 20th anniversary of its original release on vinyl, and when I finally got my own CD player in 1988, it was one of the first CDs I bought. (I bought the two Tonight Show Band CDs too, although I haven’t listened to either of them in years.)

In the intervening years, dozens of other bands famous and not famous have re- and re-re-released their catalogs in special editions, remastered editions, give-us-your-damn-money editions, etc. The Beatles have not—the CDs in the music-store racks are the same versions that have been there for 20 years. Until today. Starting today, the first-ever remasters of the Beatles catalog are available in stores. All of the individual albums are being rereleased; in addition, two separate box sets feature the stereo albums and the mono versions of each album. The extras included with each box are different. Allmusic.com says of the mono set:

[T]his also is arguably the better-sounding of the two sets, providing ample evidence that the Beatles did spend more time on mono mixes during much of their career. For generations of listeners raised on stereo mixes, there are plenty of surprises here, from the faster versions of “She’s Leaving Home” and “Don’t Pass Me By” to the numerous little differences that pop up on Pepper, The White Album, and Revolver, all adding up to dramatically different experiences. Sometimes, the density of mono just has more force —”Lady Madonna” rolls like a freight train, “I’m Down” hits to the gut—and sometimes the colors just seem more vibrant; in either case, there’s enough emotional difference to make this worthwhile for the dedicated, and depending on taste, it may even be preferable.

I’m guessing that the idea of mono being superior to stereo in some ways is going to be a bit of an education for some listeners. Not to anybody here, necessarily, where we believe that newer isn’t always better, but to some listeners.

If you’d like to compare a couple of the remastered tracks with the original masters, head for Viva la Mainstream.

(Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series are here and here and here.)

When I found my 1976 daybook again recently, I hoped it would be the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the mysteries of 1976, including the Big Why: why a part of me continues to live in that year despite all the other years that have passed since then.

The fact that it is no such thing is a great disappointment to me.

The daybook, 33 years on, feels like a piece of performance art for an audience of one. Back then, I fancied myself a master of trivia and a student of the arcane, and so I kept a daybook full of the sort of arcana that would impress someone like myself. I couldn’t repress entirely the more useful impulses I had, which accounts for the news headlines and family milestones, but I buried them under the trappings of the character I was trying to be. As a result, the 49-year-old me, who would like to see his former self clearly, is mighty frustrated with his former self.

But I’ve got to forgive him, too, because there’s a lot in him that’s admirable, and some in him that I wish I still had. I like. I used to say that I admired his confidence, but I don’t think you could rightly call what he had confidence. Rather, it was a willingness to accept who and what he was. He didn’t shop around for a personality like some 16-year-olds do. He wasn’t entirely satisfied with who he was—he hated being paralyzed in the presence of girls, and he wished he were a better athlete—but he knew there wasn’t much to be done about it, so he tried to proudly embrace his geekitude. He didn’t doubt that he had found his calling in life—radio—and he pursued it as best he could. His obsessions ran deep, but his interests were broad; he tried reading Milton and Proust, and he watched the news every night because he felt it was important to know what the world was about.

None of this is in the daybook. Traces of it are there amidst the fog, but I can barely see them. So I’m left to guess about 1976, like I’ve always done before. And here’s what I think I think:

When I got my driver’s license in the spring, I achieved freedom of mobility. Once you get that, you’ve crossed a bright line into fuller participation (and greater responsibility) in the wider world. But at the same time, I had yet to cut the cord that bound me to the childhood security that was the only life I could remember. So although I was out in the world more fully than before, that independence was measured in baby steps, and it came with a safety net. Also, what I remember of the ed psych I took tells me that adolescents often see themselves as players on a stage, and they believe the whole world is watching. They tend to dramatize themselves and their actions, and I was more self-dramatizing than most—everything seemed important because it was happening to me. And at the end of the year, I experienced the thrill of being chosen by a member of the opposite sex. Your family has to love you, or so you believe. But when another person chooses you? Mindblowing. So: I experienced 1976 as if the world were a giant stage I’d just stepped onto, with new roles to play. The audience was familiar—often it was only that perpetual audience of one—but the role-playing was exciting nevertheless.

As for the music of 1976, I can’t judge it apart from the experiences of the year. It’s not especially vivid because it’s empirically better than the music of any other year. It’s vivid because it’s the music I lived with 1976, and that makes all the difference.

I knew all of this before I found the daybook again. But absence of written evidence regarding the deeper meaning of 1976 might be evidence of something else. At our blog summit a few weeks back, whiteray said of his favorite years, “Some years are just magical.” So maybe I’ve been looking for something that’s not there—and doesn’t need to be.

That’s not a very satisfying ending. Believe me, I know.

From the WLS Big 89 of 1976:

2. “Silly Love Songs”/Paul McCartney and Wings
4. “If You Leave Me Now”/Chicago
21. “Shannon”/Henry Gross
38. “Love Rollercoaster”/Ohio Players (introduced by Wolfman Jack on The Midnight Special)
47. “Rubberband Man”/Spinners (also from The Midnight Special)

In 1976, I kept a daybook, recording various bits of trivia along the trip through the year I turned 16. When I found it recently, I hoped it would help me figure out just why that year, more than any other year of my growing up, is the one I’ve never moved completely beyond. Parts 1 and 2 of the exploration are here and here.

In memory, July 1976 builds to a peak on July 31, which seems now like the hinge on which my whole life turns. On that day, my favorite summer slowly begins giving way to what will be the single most memorable season of my life.

I couldn’t possibly have perceived it that way back then, although in the daybook, it surely looks as if life is intensifying—each day’s entry is crowded with more and more stuff, most of it trivial now. I spent a few days at my grandparents’ house toward the end of July, and a few more days at the county fair, which ended on August 1. But the intensity I remember is something I have grafted on since. There’s nothing in the daybook that supports it. July ends, August begins, life simply continues. August 9 through 11 I spent with my cousin, which means that I am wrong to remember that my last vacation spent with him here in Madison was in 1975. Thursday of that week (August 12), our family went to Chicago; Friday we went to the State Fair in Milwaukee. After that, only one full week of summer remained—my note on Wednesday, August 25 says “school starts.” I would be a junior.

That year dawned with a shocker. My high school’s football team, which had won one and lost eight in each of my first two years, won its first two games of the season. We wouldn’t win again until the last game of the season, but that’s getting ahead of the story.

October 1976 began on Friday the 1st with the football team getting killed on homecoming, 28-to-6. I noted that American Top 40 had a special countdown that weekend, but didn’t say what it was. (Turns out it was the 40 biggest hits of the Beatle years.) But the rest of the month is, yet again, maddeningly unspecific about my own life. On Monday the 11th, the family went out for dinner to celebrate my parents’ 18th wedding anniversary, and the football team kept losing, but there’s precious little else recorded. On Friday the 22nd, I wrote down only the football score, even though what happened later that night was far more memorable. And as October turned to November turned to December, the daybook almost completely fails to note what was really important to me: I was in love, and nothing greater had ever happened to me.

Thursday November 11th: “Got letter jacket and 1st copy of Stereo Review.” Friday November 19th: “Bought WEKZ privilege for $6.25.” (I was determined to get on the radio even if I had to pay for it.) With the coming of the basketball and wrestling seasons, most of my notes become sports scores again. But not all. On Tuesday December 14, along with the trivia (which seems not merely pointless but incredibly stupid after looking at more than 11 months of it) is the single word “WOW.” Chivalry requires, even at a distance of 33 years, that the precise reason for the “WOW” be left to your imagination. (It works for me.)

And over the last two weeks of December, the year just sort of peters out. On New Year’s Eve I wrote, “Top 89, 6-Midnight” and “‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ is #1.” I don’t remember where I listened to the countdown, but I know I did. And on Sunday January 2, 1977, I put the completed book aside. I had no such book for the new year that I can remember; if I ever did, it’s long gone.

Coming in the next installment: A favorite topic of mine, then and now: What It All Means.

From the WLS survey, October 23, 1976:

1. “Disco Duck”/Rick Dees (holding at 1) (the link is to a performance on The Midnight Special; how could we have believed this was funny?)
2. “Devil Woman”/Cliff Richard (holding at 2)
3. “I Only Want to Be With You”/Bay City Rollers (up from 4)
14. “Fernando”/ABBA (up from 15)
15. “Lowdown”/Boz Scaggs (down from 11) (the link is to a performance recorded on December 31, 1976)

In 1976, I kept a daybook, recording various bits of trivia during the year I turned 16. When I found it recently, I hoped it would help me figure out just why that year is the one I’ve never moved completely beyond. Part 1 of the excavation is here.

The majority of the notes in the book are the birthdays of famous people and weird holidays, which must have seemed important to me back then, although I can fathom no reason for them now except chronic geekitude. I occasionally took a break from the trivia to note the scores of games I was interested in, or involved in. I occasionally noted news items, the weather, days off from school for snow, or the word “HOT” in all caps (as on July 10, when it was 104 degrees in Madison). On July 17, I noted the start of the Summer Olympics in Montreal, and Nadia Comaneci’s perfect 10s in gymnastics on the 19th and the 21st. On the 20th, I noted the Viking I landing on Mars.

But details of my day-to-day life are maddeningly sketchy. On Thursday February 5, I wrote “Make yourself do it!,” which undoubtedly involved asking somebody for a date. (This I did not do. Suffering in unrequited silence was how I rolled back then.) On Sunday the 8th, we celebrated my paternal grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary with an open house in the church basement. Somewhere I have a photo of myself manning the guest book that afternoon, 70s resplendent in a loud plaid sport coat and bright red polyester pants. On March 1, the day after my 16th birthday, I stayed home from school with a cold.

On Thursday, March 4, I wrote, “lights out 11:30AM.” This was the beginning of the fabled ice storm of 1976, one of the most powerful winter storms ever to bash my part of Wisconsin. The electricity would stay out until Sunday March 7, when I wrote “lights on after 76:19 with none.” A note on the Saturday of that weekend says, “Appointment at WEKZ 8-830AM.” I presume I got there despite the weather—it was the first in the series of Saturday morning hang-outs at the station which I hoped would result in a job. On April 14 I would write, headline fashion, “WEKZ Wants Me During the Summer,” but it turned out that they didn’t. They never officially offered me a job, and when I stopped hanging out at the station for free, they decided I wasn’t interested anymore, which is crazy, because I was obsessed with radio. That’s why Monday, March 15, had been a noteworthy day: “CFL Switches to Easy Listening: Where Can We Go to Rock and Roll?” I was listening that afternoon during one of the most extraordinary radio format changes in history.

Later in March, my closest friend got his driver’s license, and we went “cruising” (our word) that night. On Tuesday April 6, I wrote: “Got class ring & report card (eesh),” which refers to a C+ in plane geometry and a D+ in chemistry. Bad grades didn’t get me grounded, however. That weekend, there was a basketball marathon at our high school—teams signed up to play for an hour at a time, and games ran from noon Friday through midnight Sunday. A bunch of us went to the local drive-in theater on Friday night and then played games at midnight and 5AM. I had never stayed up all night before.

The next week, on April 13th, 1976, I got my driver’s license. Then April rolled on and turned to May: Getting a copy of Monty Python’s Matching Tie and Handkerchief (April 17), my cousin’s confirmation (April 25), going to see The Exorcist at the drive-in (May 2). I was equipment manager of my high-school baseball team that spring; the season ended on Tuesday May 25, the same day I bought a compilation album called Silver Bullets. On May 29, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, I wrote, “Bought ‘72 Hornet.” I didn’t actually buy it—my parents did—but it was going to be mine. I have always remembered the car as a ‘74. Did I get it wrong there, or have I had it wrong ever since?

In June, more stuff starts showing up that I cannot explain—cryptic combinations of letters, BB, DKI/P, TE/SE, and so on. There was method to what I was doing, but what it was precisely, I can no longer remember. And that’s actually the entire problem with this daybook.

In the next installment: The height of summer comes—and goes, without actually achieving any height.

From the WLS survey, April 10, 1976:

1. “Bohemian Rhapsody”/Queen (holding at 1)
5. “December 1963 (Oh What a Night)”/Four Seasons (down from 4)
6. “Disco Lady”/Johnnie Taylor (up from 10)
9. “Right Back Where We Started From”/Maxine Nightingale (up from 18)
15. “Money Honey”/Bay City Rollers (down from 13)

(If you missed this blog’s fifth-anniversary post over the weekend, check it here. Now, our regularly scheduled program.)

A couple of years ago, The Mrs. and I were hanging out on the Memorial Union Terrace here in Madison when we met a couple I’ll call Rex and Ellen. Rex was an elderly gent; Ellen was younger by a few years—she had almost certainly been a natural beauty when she was young, didn’t have to work much to preserve it as she aged, and will likely remain stunning for years to come. As it turned out, they had been married just a year or two, and they had met on the Internet. The course of their love had not run smooth, however. When it was time for them to meet in the real world, Rex had to admit to Ellen that he was not 72 years old, as he’d said—he was really 82.

I hope that when I’m 82, I’ll be the kind of person who lies about his age while trolling for babes on the Internet.

The point is this: Despite the Craigslist killer and the MySpace mom, Internet relationships can work out fine in the real world. I know this because one of mine crossed over this past weekend. On a trip to Minnesota, The Mrs. and I met whiteray of Echoes in the Wind and his Mrs., the Texas Gal.

Before the event, I christened it the First Annual Minnesota/Wisconsin Blog Summit and Beer Spree. Since then, it’s been pointed out to whiteray and me that we’re a bit pretentious calling it that, like an American sports league calling its champion the “world champs.” My response is that we had to call it something, and “Two Balding Writerly Music Fans Bonding Over Microbrew While Their Wives in the Next Room Marvel at the Depth of Their Geekitude” doesn’t sound as good, even if it’s true. I can’t top whiteray’s description of the evening, or even add much to it. I’ll only echo (insert rimshot here) his point about the way his blog and mine deal with music as memoir.

In the very first post on this blog, I wrote about how the record charts are the calendar of my life—name me a song out of the 70s, 80s, or the first third of the 90s, and and I’ll tell you where I was, how I heard it, and what it means to me now. Although I have stopped living and breathing the charts every day, I didn’t leave that music, or radio, the medium that brought it to me, behind. When this blog began, I was surprised to find that there were kindred spirits out there, people who “got it” the same way I do, and this past weekend, one day shy of this blog’s fifth birthday, it was a positive joy to meet one of them in the real world.

One thing, though: whiteray served me my beers in a Minnesota Vikings mug. But that’s OK. Take a guess what he’ll be drinking out of when we meet down here.

Recommended Reading: Last week at WNEW.com, I broke down CCR’s glory years by the numbers and examined the mysteries surrounding the deaths of Brian Jones and Jim Morrison. This morning, the Vinyl District is featuring Charlie’s “Killer Cut,” one band’s recipe for getting your record on the radio. Snag it now while you can.

I’ve been reading John Irving lately, and I just finished The Cider House Rules for the third time the other night. Irving’s work keeps me humble: He’s writing, and I’m just typing. He’s creating art, and I’m just killing time.

Toward the end of The Cider House Rules, one character is describing the ocean to another who’s never seen it. Irving comments: “How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.” That would make a fine statement of purpose for this blog. My hope is that if you don’t already, you will grow to love some of the things I write about here. And as of today, I’ve been trying to achieve that purpose for exactly five years. If you just tuned in, here’s some of what you missed—the best posts from July ‘08 through June ‘09.

Although I call this a music blog, it’s never been entirely about music. Sometimes it’s about what happens on the radio behind the scenes (1, 2) and sometimes it’s about what happens on the radio way behind the scenes (1, 2, 3). Sometimes it’s about competitors who aren’t paying attention and listeners who are. Occasionally it’s about our love affair with radio, and sometimes it’s about death: of formats and of performers.

And when we aren’t talking about the radio (or on the radio), sometimes the radio talks to us. This year, we also watched a movie about radio, and a TV show about a TV show.

A year ago this week, we were in California, firmly resolved not to write while we were gone, but that didn’t stop a whole series from percolating while we were away (1, 2, 3). At various points across the year, we looked inward at ourselves until you got a headache, on going home and whether you can, on Saturday afternoons 40 years ago, and on an atheist’s Christmas carol.

But this is still a music blog, mostly. And so we wrote about a handful of unknown bands of the late 70s and early 80s, about the TV series The Midnight Special, and about the other “Seasons in the Sun.”

We wrote about a friend of the Beatles even they couldn’t make into a star, about a band that was rumored to be the Beatles but was not, and about a band that has harnessed the power of Memphis soul for the new millennium.

We wrote about seeing Emerson Lake and Palmer in concert, and about spending Christmas with Elton John. We also remained completely geeky on the subject of 45 mixes versus album versions, had a beer with Sonny and Cher, and listened to some jazz fusion.

We met Mister Zero of the Kings (“This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide”) via e-mail and did a four-part interview (1, 2, 3, 4). We’d love to interview Tommy James, but until he answers our e-mails, we’ll have to settle for just writing about him (1, 2, 3).

We dug some garage bands from Michigan, we invited a guest blogger to tell us about the night John Lennon died, and we pointed and laughed at some of the nominees and winners of the Album of the Year Grammy.

And once again, we grossly overused the royal “we.”

The music links at all of the posts mentioned above are most likely dead. If there’s a song that you just have to hear, get in touch via e-mail and I’ll see if I can hook you up. Find my e-mail address at the “Contact Me” link above, or look me up on Facebook.

To see links to the best of our previous four years, click here. And as always, my thanks to all readers everywhere.

The fall of 1977 was one of those seasons when the radio was talking to me constantly. When the chatter got too much, I’d put an album on the record player, and in that season, it was usually Emerson Lake & Palmer’s Works Volume 1.

Works Volume 1 was the first new studio recording from ELP since Brain Salad Surgery nearly four years before. It was also was the band’s White Album, a double-disc set that gave one side to each member and brought them together on the fourth side. Keith Emerson’s side featured a straight classical piano concerto that I may have listened to twice. Carl Palmer’s side didn’t excite me much, either, although it sounded more like the ELP of old than the rest of the album. The group side, featuring a lengthy adaptation of “Fanfare for the Common Man” and a 14-minute epic called “Pirates,” was the sort of thing I wanted to hear from ELP, and I dug it.

But it was side two, Greg Lake’s side, that I listened to the most, and four songs in particular: “Lend Your Love to Me Tonight,” “C’est la Vie,” “Nobody Loves You Like I Do,” and “Closer to Believing.” None of them sound much like ELP apart from containing Lake’s voice; they’re all backed by an orchestra. But I liked them then because they contained lots of lyrics that a love-struck teenage rock fan of literary bent would find profound. From “Lend Your Love to Me Tonight”:

Just lend your love to me once more
Don’t ask me what I came back for
Just watch the moonlight cross the floor
And as your blood begins to roar
You’ll feel your senses spin and soar
You will become my meteor
Divine and universal whore
Complete me

“Divine and universal whore?”

If there had been a video for the song, it would have featured Lake standing on a high cliff somewhere, shot all in blue with swirling mist, declaiming into the wind as a storm approached. If Lake was going for Big Drama, he got it.

From “Nobody Loves You Like I Do”:

You can rent your blues and photograph your soul
You can even dig some diamonds out of rock and roll.
You can change the world
But if you lose your control
They will take away your T-shirt

Those first two lines sound great, even if they don’t mean anything. But “they will take away your T-shirt”? Given that the line doesn’t have to rhyme with anything, that’s lameness of Fogelbergian dimensions.

From “Closer to Believing”:

But of course you know I love you
Or what else am I here for
Only you not face to face
But side by side forevermore
And I need to be here with you
For without you what am I
Just another fool out searching
For some heaven in the sky

Given that my love life was shot through with hideous confusion at that particular moment, “Closer to Believing” found its way onto my turntable a lot. I wanted to believe that things were going to work out, even though I was at the mercy of the gods because I sure as hell didn’t know what to do.

So be closer to believing
Though your world is torn apart
For a moment changes all things
And to end is but to start
And if your journey’s unrewarded
May your God lift up your heart
You are windblown
But you are mine

Mark Fidrych died this week. Sports fans know his name, although memories have grown dim; non-fans may never have heard of him. He was a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers who came to the big leagues in 1976. He had an odd pitching motion, a mop of curly hair that stuck out from under his cap, and was nicknamed “the Bird.”  He had some strange habits on the pitcher’s mound, grooming it with his hands and talking to the baseball. He was clearly thrilled with being a major-leaguer, like a kid who had been plucked off a playground at random and put in uniform. And for the last four months of the baseball season that year, nobody in American popular culture was more famous.

The Fidrych legend grew to the proportions it achieved because there was relatively little coverage of baseball then compared to now. Readers of box scores knew he was something special, but you had to see him to fully appreciate him. That wasn’t as easy then as it is today, when every big-league game is on TV somewhere, and anything unusual that happens is on SportsCenter and YouTube within hours. In 1976, if you didn’t live in Detroit or another American League city, you probably weren’t going to see more than a few highlights of Fidrych in action. Baseball teams put some games on local TV or regional networks, but in 1976, there were only two nationally televised baseball games each week, and only one in prime-time. On June 28, 1976, ABC’s Monday Night Baseball was the focus of sports fans the country over as we watched Fidrych beat the New York Yankees 5-to-1. After the game, roaring Detroit fans refused to leave Tiger Stadium until he came out for a curtain call. In the middle of our Bicentennial summer, the Bird became more famous than any of the Founding Fathers. (The next spring, he made the cover of Rolling Stone, with a profile by rock journalist Dave Marsh.)

Just after Fidrych beat the Yankees, he was named starting pitcher for the American League in the All-Star Game. The Tigers won only 74 games all year; Fidrych won 19 of them. He would be named American League Rookie of the Year and finish second in the Cy Young award balloting for best pitcher in the AL. He led the majors in earned-run average. But he hurt his knee in spring training during 1977 and his arm shortly thereafter. His injury, a torn rotator cuff, would be routinely fixed today; in the 70s, it ended careers. Over the next four seasons, Fidrych would pitch in only 27 more games. His last big-league game was in 1980; his career record, 29-and-19.

I was sorry to hear of Fidrych’s accidental death on Monday at age 54 because we had something in common, the Bird and me—1976 was the best year he ever had, too.

I haven’t got an appropriate song to go with this post. “Hot Stuff” by the Stones comes to mind, since it was on the radio the week of that famous Monday night game, but it’s too easy. Any suggestions?