As an adolescent, whenever something was bothering me or causing me anxiety, and as a teenager what didn’t, I would turn on the radio and keep it on all night, falling asleep to the music that the late night and overnight dee-jays played. It’s a coping mechanism I use to this day, although now I have playlists on my iPhone. One particular late night or rather early morning I had suddenly woken up. I did not know the source of my sleeplessness that spring night. Maybe it was school.

I tossed and turned all night, grateful for the radio as company. WNEW-FM in New York City was then a progressive rock radio station, adopting that format in the late 1960’s (The format changed again in the late 1990’s.) They were playing album sides of their featured record of the week, Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell, a kind of rock opera which was destined to become a classic; it was an album that had spawned a few great songs already in regular rotation on the iconic radio station. I had come to love radio because both my dad and mom are  lifelong music enthusiasts. There was always a variety of music playing  in our house whether it was on the radio or an album. My dad almost always had the radio tuned to the New York City  radio station.  I loved rock and roll music and listening to the deejays. They were intelligent, articulate and knew so much about the artists and the music they played. This inspired  a life long interest in rock  music and its history. 

So I was drawn to kids in school who shared the same love of rock music as me. It was the one thing that made me happy; no other subject in school came close. My friend Peggy, whom I had known since elementary school brought in the records she had to school to show them to me. One such record was A Night At The Opera by Queen. Peggy would read the lyrics from the liner notes out loud. She loved the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody. She thought they were the silliest and most brilliant lyrics she had ever heard.

Spacey loved to know who the band members were and more about them. Way back before the World Wide Web, there was Hit Parader magazine with stories and glossy photos of current bands and up and coming bands. One of those up and coming bands that she had read about in the magazine was Def Leppard. She predicted they were going to be big and successful. Spacey was right about their hit songs and albums. Although, she wouldn’t live to hear their first popular record in the United States, Pyromania.

I was in my punk rock phase in high school. The Ramones were my favorite band. The first album of theirs I had bought was End of the Century. Then , I bought their first four albums and caught them in concert a few times. Later, I started buying and collecting some of the New Wave of Heavy Metal bands’ records, too.

Music was threaded into Sweet Dreams not to be a soundtrack, although it could be. It was important to me and to the story to illustrate how music bonded our friendship and how it defined the times we were living in as teenagers. Rock music was a big part of our lives.

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In the early 1990’s Alternative rock was popularized by grunge bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. There are so many other great bands that defined Alt rock. I wonder what Peggy and Spacey would have thought of these bands.

in the late 1990’s WNEW-FM rock deejays signed off for the last time. Sadly, the format was changed to adult contemporary. Now, I stream some of my music. Rock music…or whatever moves me.