We would go visit friends up at UMass Amherst, and that's where I decided I wanted to go to school. In high school, two notable shows, I saw R.E.M open for the English Beat and Talking Heads on the tour that was filmed for Stop Making Sense. But I met some great kids who are still my dear friends today and a bunch of us started seeing punk and other shows in Boston and the colleges of New England - Flipper, Del Fuegos, Gun Club, the Neats, and a band called Last Stand. from Huntington, NY and I had to start all over, a painful process, from a huge town with a half dozen great record stores, beaches, excellent pizza, and most tragically, a band and people I had been friends with my whole life, to a tiny (population:10k) exurban one-stoplight town in the pines 35 miles out of Boston. At 16 the family had moved up to Medfield, Mass. In senior year of high school, I had friends a year ahead of me at UMass who I would visit there. I think I had all the Led Zeppelin records before I had four Beatles LPs. I did not go and get into the Beatles on a deep level until later. The Beatles were a given, but all this blues/folk/rock stuff intrigued me.
And the Stones and Dylan were the main two prongs. It was an incredible introduction and I have no idea where those records disappeared to. There were probably 100 of these records, all Sixties, about half British Invasion and half US folk rock, garage, and pop - Byrds Beau Brummels Paul Revere and the Raiders Motown etc. The other collection was a literal rope of 45s being tossed to the corner by our own next door neighbors, British folks who were moving back to Blighty. The Stones and Dylan in particular really compelled me and brought me into some dark shadows where I have largely remained.
One was my grandparents' next door neighbors, who gave me some great LPs when I was maybe 8 years old: the Stones' Out of Our Heads and Green Grass and High Tide Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and the Greatest Hits the Beach Boys Wild Honey Iron Butterfly Grand Funk Railroad Mamas and the Papas and the Young Rascals. But I had two key record haul inheritances.
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