Managing Editor
My wife and I recently watched the film “Mr. Holland’s Opus” which contained a scene in which actor Richard Dreyfuss mentions that when he first listened to an album by jazz legend John Coltrane, he hated it. Then he listened to it again, and again, and again, and found he couldn’t stop playing it.
In January 1980, a blizzard hit Washington D.C. and dumped quite a bit of snow on our nation’s capital. There was very little to do but bide my time in a barracks room at Fort Myer, Virginia and sit out the snowstorm one weekend while waiting to go to work at The Pentagon on Monday. I had planned on reading a Stephen King novel and watching the Virginia Cavaliers basketball team led by freshman Ralph Sampson take on the North Carolina Tarheels and their freshman star James Worthy.
Up until that weekend, I had only heard the song “Heart of Glass” performed by the band Blondie on the radio. I never paid much attention to them as I wasn’t much of a fan of what was known as “New Wave” music and I was more into more traditional rock n’ roll music such as Fleetwood Mac or the Rolling Stones.
Apparently, another Air Force sergeant in the room adjacent to mine had purchased the new Blondie album “Eat to the Beat” and picked that weekend to play it over, and over, and over again on his turntable in his barracks room. With the walls of the barracks being paper thin, I could hear everything he played, which usually consisted of older country songs such as “The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton or “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash. Therefore, it did come as a great surprise to me that this fellow had chosen a “New Wave” group to listen to non-stop that weekend.
At first, I became irritated and considered knocking on his door and asking him to turn down his music when he started playing the album early on that Saturday morning. I couldn’t imagine myself ever liking
“New Wave” music and then he played that Blondie album once, then twice and then a third time.
By the fourth time he played the album around noon, I found the first song on the “Eat to the Beat” album “Dreaming” to be catchy and started to enjoy the vocals of Blondie’s lead singer, Debbie Harry. Then the second song “The Hardest Part” came on and I found that was pretty good too. By the time the third song “Union City Blue” played, I discovered I liked that one as well.
The album must have played 10 or more times that Saturday and at least five times on Sunday and by the time that weekend was over, Virginia had beaten North Carolina, the snow had stopped falling, and I realized that I had become hooked and a fan of the band Blondie.
Several months later when I rented an apartment and moved out of the barracks, I purchased the “Eat to the Beat” album at the store and although I eventually got rid of my collection of vinyl record albums more than a decade later, I’m pretty sure that “Eat to the Beat” remains in a box of CDs stored in my basement right now, more than 43 years later. I also became a fan of more melodic “New Wave” bands such as Duran Duran, Nick Lowe, and Simple Minds.
Another performer that grew on me slowly through repetition was Marty Stuart. My brother, my father and I were driving from New Mexico to Florida in February 1991 and the only thing playing on the radio as we passed through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was country music. My brother drove during the daylight hours and my dad during the late afternoon, leaving me to take over driving that night. As I slowly scrolled up and down the radio dial searching for something to keep me awake, several Marty Stuart songs were broadcast over and over again. The first song was “Tempted” and the second one was “Little Things.” I also learned from a DJ introducing the “Tempted” tune that Stuart was a skilled guitarist who had played at one time in Johnny Cash’s band.
I had never heard of Marty Stuart before that trip and then after hearing the song “Tempted” at least six times that night, like Blondie and the “Eat to the Beat” album years before, when I finally did get my own apartment in Florida a few months later, I went out to the store and brought home my own copy of Stuart’s “Tempted” album. Even though I wasn’t a huge country music fan, there was something about Marty Stuart I liked and hearing his songs aired repeatedly on the radio that first night has made me follow his career closely ever since.
It’s funny how repetition can change the way we think about music and can leave us wanting to hear more. Has this ever happened to you? <
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