Charms to Soothe the Savage Breast
** Shakespeare never did say 'to soothe the savage beast.'
Thanks to radio, Dick Clark, and 45s, we had music. Inventing the transistor had won a Nobel Prize, but someone's discovering how to mass-produce it cheaply was what benefited us. Portable radios became feasible.
The music we heard felt as young as we were. Listening to it, we forged a bond with the performers, and with each other. We didn't worry much about the songwriters and music publishers who kept the flow of new hits going. Again and again, new songs rose like the sun and brightened our days. Fan magazines posed ridiculous questions: Is Frankie Avalon sexier than Paul Anka? Is Connie Francis' heart really broken? If we look back now, we may shake our heads a little, but we were young, music gave us a social framework, and we liked things that way.
Gary Stevens had not yet arrived in 1964
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Music grew with us - or at least, it kept changing. By the end of high school, we would have rock in a variety of well-established forms, folk music, a Wall of Sound that had forever altered the soundtrack of Christmas, incredible surfer harmonies, and a tsunami of British music that spurred fans to shriek with delight.
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