JOHNNY RABBITT

He's the main reason I wanted to live in the city. You see, growing up 75 miles from the big city, STL, I lost radio reception at night. Then I had to try to get WLS out of Chicago. Dick Biondi was the DJ I really liked. But he wasn't quite as good as KXOK's Johnny Rabbitt.

What made a good DJ then is not all that different from what makes one now. First of all, he needs to be identifiable but not full of himself. Second, he must not try to be funny, he just is. Third, he can't talk too much. And fourth, he must infuse new songs with the popular ones, the ones overplayed. That's about it. That's what Rabbitt and Biondi did.

Music when you're in junior high, high school, and college is vital. Whether you hear the songs that speak to you, or that bring back a memory (even if you're only 13, you have important memories), even a place where you heard the song. I still remember Dean Martin's, "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime," and reference it to my driver's ed behind-the-wheel class. My instructor loved the song, and there's where I categorize or pidgeon hole it in my memory bank. Not only that, but I can picture driving away from the curb on the corner of Sixth Street (ironically just outside the classroom window one story up where I spent 26 of my years teaching) with Deano crooning the lyrics.

"Michelle, my belle" always brings back rainy night memories driving around in a Volkswagen with buddy Gary Large. On this particular rainy night, I'm riding shotgun and at the corner of Jordan and 9th St. What does that mean? I have no idea, except we must have been looking for our Michelle that evening.

"Poppa uma mau mau, poppa uma mau mau," comes to mind and I recall basketball days on 20th Street at Bill Beck's house. We must have had a transistor radio (do they even exist anymore?) playing that song on KXOK while we were playing. Hey, we must have started that whole rock music entertaining while warming up or playing. Although I can't imagine we did that for very long. We wouldn't have wanted to run down our batteries. Even if we couldn't get much music from St. Louis after dark.

We must have found something, though, because I recall "Last night I had a wonderful dream about you," playing as I fell asleep. Hey it's better to go to sleep by that than "Poppa uma.."