Golden Summer of Love

Are you ready for the 50th Anniversary of 1967's "Summer of Love"?

If you feel ... "today's music ain't got the same soul ... I love that Old Time Rock & Roll!" and you flip back to 1967's "Summer of Love" when "Light My Fire" first time-warped your mind ... Welcome!

What the World Needs Now …
     is a "Golden Summer of Love"™ and an Oldies Rock & Roll Radio Ambassador™

Boomers, remember "cruisin’ the main drag" to the (now) Oldies in the 1950s through 1980s? Tongue in cheek, we told our parents we're headed to the library for an evening of studying … which translated to a night of beefed-up muscle cars, loud music, and an empty tank of gas by morning.

Whether your drag was Woodward Avenue in Detroit, listening to WJBK’s DJ extraordinaire, Bob Edgington, or Main Street any California town, with the salacious Wolfman Jack feeding you one-liners, it was certainly more exhilarating (and often more educational) than the library.

Cruisin' and playin' the radio … With no particular place to go (Chuck Berry summer 1964).

Fifty-plus years later, we may be different in our methods of cruising, but we’re still teenagers at heart (or at least, 39 and Holding), looking for adventure however and wherever we cruise.

These days the ocean is my Main Street drag. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to replace my ol' "green monster" ’58 Chevy for a sleek yacht, but I'm working on it. I can see it now ... my frosty drink is a spiked chocolate shake out on the deck – and my music is still Old Time Rock & Roll! ♪

Won’t ya let me take ya on a sea cruise? Ooooh weee, oooh weee, baby  ♪… (“Sea Cruise,” Frankie Ford, 1959!)

It’s been proven many times over that music and especially Rock & Roll is the great equalizer, uniting people around the world. Too bad we can't sell our politicians on that fact. We tried to fifty years ago ... and some of our generation even became politicians. Guess the heady advantages of corruption were too much for those soft souls of the "Summer of Love."

My “bucket list” holds just one desire – to travel as far as possible as an Oldies Rock & Roll Ambassador on my yacht, the Rockin’ Rochelle (or whatever means available), to spread joy and memories of the best music that ever brought people together. Golden Years of Rock & Roll Radio: 1954 – 1979 (with some dippin' into the '80s).

Wishing for a 2017 "Golden Summer of Love" and Hippie Happenings!™

There is great music before the mid-to-late 1950s, and measurably less good tunes after the 1970s, but it’s the musical magic of twenty-five special years that stands high above the rest.

Though much of the lyrics of the late 1960s through the 1970s embraced drugs and sex, for me, it’s the Rock & Roll melodies and intertwining descants that tweaked my psyche. With or without a few tokes or a bottle of Jimmy B, swaying came natural, to the mind-riffing guitar and keyboard solos.

As a young married with children, when music was my escape, I nearly entered an orgasmic trance the first time I heard Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” through quad headphones. What was your best moment in Old Rock & Roll?

Timeless is the music that pioneered the Rock & Roll Radio Revolution.

Do you remember blurry images on the boob tube, casting its spell on us in the mid-1950s? Radio’s bread-and-butter family hour shows found exciting new audiences on TV. Listeners dwindled. Until …

In 1954 Rock and Roll slipped out of hushed obscurity and shook the dial off the new transistor radios. Time stood still when Bill Haley & His Comets belted out, “Rock Around the Clock.”

We danced with our radios at a frenetic pace for the next few years. Elvis told his mama, “That’s All Right” (1954), and from there we just “Let the Good Times Roll” (Shirley & Lee 1956), on “Blueberry Hill” (Fats Domino 1956), and glimpsed what was to come with Jan and Dean’s “Baby Talk” (1959). Think flat top haircuts and white buckskin shoes. Cool, daddy-o!

While creating the Blast from Your Past book series about pioneering Rock & Roll Radio DJs, thoughts of selling a million books or even enough to pay for my time, has never been a focus. I simply want to document some of the wild-‘n’-crazy true tales of our favorite DJs behind the microphones of pioneering Rock & Roll Radio stations – before they disappear into the swirling airwaves of time.

Flowers, Music and Summer Magic

No matter how young you are, or how old you are, never let anyone tell you a dream can't come true. Though I'm still waiting for summer magic and a few miracles, I know reality often doesn't coincide with our dreams. That's OK. It's the path the dream takes us on that matters. We must have faith in ourselves first ... only then can we share ourselves with others.

So even if my yacht-dream (Plan A) falls short, and the “Plan B Dream” to create Rock & Roll events – Hippie Happenings – doesn't materialize, I'll still Rock through the "Golden Summer of Love."  

[Related article about dreams, goals, and reality.]

'Tis true ... many Classic Rock music artists who still sing their hearts out on tours, prove – we may be old, but we aren’t dead yet.

Janis Joplin, Big Bro & Holding Co. 1966-67

Let's party! After all, it’s the music and its unifying presence that matters most …

Have a question? Event suggestions? Memory to share? Let’s Rock & Roll!

Thank You! And remember … follow your dream until it catches you …

Rock On!