"When this single appeared it challenged every outsider notion of the American pre-punk scene. Could it really have been recorded in 1975! Jesus, what a sound." ( 100 Records that set the World on Fire, The Wire, Sept. 1998)

When my parents, Nancy and Mickey, first saw the tip of it protruding from beneath a corner of my bed blanket, they were frightened; it's not like they'd never seen one before, — my grandfather practically carried his around in his hand all day long for christssake — but an old man tuned to Cleveland Indians baseball on a lazy summer afternoon is not quite the same as their 13 year-old kid kept awake by Detroit rock 'n soul every midnight. At least this much seemed inevitable: my very own personal issue of one of the world's truly great but undervalued small appliances was about to go missing ... until rules for its engagement had been fully detailed and scribed into Mickey's law. Chief among them decreed that the hours for operation of my transistor radio were henceforth to be severely regulated. Indeed, a few long days and empty restless nights later, the palm-sized "Sunliner" (a postwar product of the vanquished yellow peril) was returned; provisos included the aforementioned stipulation limiting its use to daytime listening.

"Ugh, no way mom!" I challenged.

Thus began my soaking of the reasonable but effete parent, Nancy the Powerless, with a spray gun of mitigating factors. I knew the more salient elements of the argument would — after Mickey's ulcer'd been given due time to digest its dinner, of course — find their way up that one crucial link in the chain of command. Opening persuasively with a technical fact that CKLW's signal from Detroit/Windsor is better heard in Cleveland after 10 pm, and wrapping-up with an aesthetic plea that it's really the only station around playing alotta James Brown, King Curtis, and Marvellettes, I understood full well the risk I was taking. If details of my appeal should be turned back against me— used as fodder for the old man's cannon so to speak— I'll have, by my own hand, only made his victory that much sweeter. And speaking of bets lost, it was also during the same month that I — for the first and the last time — bought a chance on a brand new 1964 Pontiac Catalina in St. Philomena's parish raffle.

. . . See, the thing is my father's this extreeeeemely violent ex-Marine who'd practiced beating up Navy guys when he was in the Corps so that when he got out he'd be really good at beating up "niggers". So, Motown's not his favorite sound. Needless to say, R&B doesn't ring his bell either. (Oh, in case you forgot ... all this ado is about the radio under my pillow!). And Rock'n Roll? — forget about it —white guys playing black music is the dreaded big daddy of them all!

"What are you, some kind of fuckin' dinge lover?", he'll sometimes ask in an effort to win me over.

His point of view, he insists, is reasonable and not based on any racial considerations. After all, doesn't he give high marks to Nat King Cole? And what about that genuine soft spot he's got for a pleasant little Mills Brothers tune every now and again?

How anyone could possibly interpret the evidence as other than proof-positive of his basic broadmindedness amazes Mickey.