Life is good. I can walk without moaning on every step. My dogs have stopped cocking their heads and looking sympathetic when I moan. They ignore me again. The morning is lovely with not a single cloud and the deepest blue sky. The sun brightens every corner. Nothing is moving in the stillest air. We’ll get to 59° today. I have a concert this afternoon. The music is The Beach Boys, fun music or should I say Fun, Fun, Fun (No groaning. I’m injured).

The first album I ever bought was Peter, Paul and Mary. I found folk music before I found rock and roll. They are neck and neck but folk has a slight edge. I remember going to a coffee house. It was in Boston in basically a cellar. It was dark. People wore black so they sort of disappeared. I sat in the back. I don’t remember who sang. I do remember it was folk music. Joni, PP&M and Simon and Garfunkel made the trip to Ghana. I had to rewind the cassettes by hand because of the heat and the humidity. Bic pens were the perfect tools. CSN&N also came. One of my friends gave me the soundtrack to Easy Rider. His mother had sent it to him but he didn’t have a cassette player. Her lapse was my good fortune.

The only concerts I have attended have been mostly folk singers. I’ve seen Lightfoot, PP&M a few times, Judy Collins a couple of times, Nanci Griffith a couple of times just after I discovered Other Voices, Other Rooms, James Taylor, The Kingston Trio and Odetta. There are probably more, but it has been a while. I remember Roy Orbison and America. I can’t dredge any others, but I’m sure there are more rock concerts as well. I have a record player, a repro of an old one. I love playing my albums.

I remember my first transistor radio. It was a Christmas gift. The cover was brown leather with sound holes in the front. The radio was part of the cover. It wasn’t huge, but it was big. I was thrilled. AM radio stations were prime. WMEX was king. We all listened to Arnie Woo Woo Ginsburg’s Night Train Show. WCOP was the second station where we heard rock and roll. I used to sneak my radio under the covers so I could listen to music. One Christmas a few years later I got another radio, a small one you could hold in your hand. I remember the dial and the front of the radio. I had that radio for years.

I listen to mostly oldies, soft rock, stations in my car with the exception of WOMR in Provincetown, an eclectic station I really enjoy. Every now and then I drift over to an AM station for weather and traffic but mostly my dial stays on FM. My taste has expanded over time. I love Ghanaian High Life which was popular when I lived there. I have a few High Life albums.

Learning to play a musical instrument has been one of the high points of my life. Now I play concerts. Who would have thought?

This entry was posted on May 8, 2026 at 11:37 am and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.