Grandma's Been There

I’m a June baby, one of Cancer’s moon children born right after the longest day of the year. In other words, I’m lucky enough to be able to celebrate my birthday right as the summer begins. 

Before I even became a teenager, there were plenty of banned rock and roll records out there. Many of them were in my own record cabinet. 

When we were kids, the adults in our lives wanted to be sure we understood that honesty was always the best policy. But how was that concept supposed to sink in when they were constantly lying to us?

When I was a year old, I still hadn’t grown any hair. My mother Scotch taped a bow to the top of my bald head so I would look less like a little boy in girls’ clothing. As a teenager in high school, I loved my waist-length hair and couldn’t understand why my teachers hated it and wanted me to cut it off.

In March of 1968, Bill Graham opened The Fillmore East. Though it only lasted three years, it would be hailed by both musicians and concert goers  as the most unforgettable and  greatest rock venue of all time. This month marks the 58th anniversary of the first of countless visits I made to The Fillmore East. I was so incredibly lucky to experience that place, so this week I want to tell you a bit about the man who made it all happen and gave me some of the best memories of my young life. 

Brooklyn mothers like mine always found a way to make it all happen for their families. These women that grew up in the Great Depression and came of age during a world war were filled with resilience and ingenuity. The iconic “We can do it!” attitude of Rosie the Riveter endured in our mothers long after the war was over.

As a thirteen-year-old, I prayed for one Greenwich Village folksinger or one barefoot East Village poet to stray across the Manhattan Bridge and start an artistic community in my neighborhood. Everything worth seeing and hearing was in Manhattan. What was wrong with Brooklyn?

When I was a kid, there was one sure way to get under another kid’s skin. All you had to do was look at them and taunt, “I know something you don’t know.” It never failed. At first, they  tried to pretend they didn’t care, but they couldn’t keep it up for long. In two minutes or less, they’d spin around and snap, “So whadda you know??” As somebody born in the 1950s, I know things plenty of younger people don’t. Do you wanna know what they are?

On Christmas morning in 1967, I was kinda disappointed when the record I got wasn’t the one I had asked for. I didn’t think I wanted that album. Fortunately for me, my mother knew better.

In 1961, when someone from my school newspaper asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer turned a few heads. I was seven and it was the height of the baby boom. The world was bursting with opportunities.