and Words
I saw him dancing there by the record machine
I knew he must have been about seventeen
The beat was going strong
Playing my favorite song
And I could tell it wouldn’t be long till he was with me, yeah me
And I could tell it wouldn’t be long till he was with me, yeah me
Singing, I love rock and roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock and roll
So come and take your time and dance with me
Ow!
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
As I approached high school, I lived on the radio. I discovered reading science-fiction and fantasy novels, and they nurtured my imagination. However, music fed my soul. As a multilingual, multicultural person, I used both reading and music to learn the language and get my bearings. Naturally, I also had television, but that’s an entirely different beast.
My fascination with the radio started much earlier, when we drove around the beaches of San Juan during the afternoon siestas. We rode in my dad’s blue Chevy Nova with our faces out the windows. I imagine that I must’ve resembled a dog, but the warm breeze made me happy. This is where we first listened to the radio. Our parents eventually got each of us a promotional transistor radio shaped like a Pepsi can. They ran on a 9-volt battery, with the volume dial on one side and the station tuner on the other.
These goofy radios with tinny speakers started my love affair with music, one that persists today. While I believe that those radios survived our move to Fort Lauderdale, I’m not completely sure we really used them after that.
We spent the summer of 1979 in Hong Kong; my two sisters and I each got our own boombox since they were considerably cheaper there. These were our personal music machines for a while. We soon discovered they weren’t really portable, since D-cell batteries were prohibitively expensive. We moved from room to room while searching for an electrical outlet. Those boomboxes had three radio frequencies. They tuned to the most important frequency: FM (frequency modulation), where most music stations played.
Most of the time we listened to the radio while we rode around in the car. For weeks, one song dominated the airwaves. That song was Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock ‘n Roll’. I get it. The song has a certain rawness and power; I understood the appeal. It starts with the crisp drums and immediately moves to the guitar riffs. However, Joan Jett’s vocals gave the song mass appeal. Her voice had just the right touch of rebellion.
The sensation behind this song is extremely difficult to describe. Yes, it got substantial airplay, but that’s a gross understatement. During some rides, we surfed radio stations for precisely this song. My older sister managed the radio in the car, and it had half a dozen radio presets. As we drove, she switched radio stations to find this particular song. More often than not, this actually worked; at least one station played this song somewhere on the dial. Moreover, many others did the same.
This Joan Jett tune got disproportionately more airplay than other songs. Everyone within the range of the radio station could sing along to those words. In many ways, it became an anthem. We all collectively loved Rock ‘n Roll; who didn’t? On occasion, we’d even look at the car next to us and see all the passengers singing in unison to the same song. For weeks, this was how we listened to music.
This song was literally everywhere; we were only too happy to contribute to the madness. “I Love Rock ‘N Roll” topped of the charts for seven consecutive weeks. We couldn’t escape it, but we didn’t want to.
Subtly, it became too much. Muscle memory carried us for a bit; we just refused to do things differently. Sure, it all seemed like a good idea at first. Listening to this song was like eating KFC. We get through the first five pieces of fried chicken from the bucket and realize that we’re past the halfway point. A strange voice in our heads tells us to carry on even when our bodies resist.
We can’t stop listening to this song; don’t we love rock and roll? Did we stop scanning the radio stations for Joan Jett’s voice? Would we stop listening to it if it came on a particular radio station? For us to change our minds so abruptly meant we must’ve been wrong about it in the first place, and we know how we detest being wrong about anything. Isn’t this a form of betrayal?
For me, I think that was the simple, singular assertion that “I love Rock ‘N Roll”, and absolutely nothing else. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Rock music, but it’s not the single thought that runs in my head endlessly. Once I realized this, listening to this assertion over and over again was overkill. I figuratively had my oversized spoon and a quart of ice cream wearing a bib, and now quietly descended into diabetic shock.
This single tune became an embarrassment among some, much like the Disco era a few years before.
In the very early days, I listened to music through the radio. Before streaming music, I listened to cassette tapes, then audio CDs. My CD collection numbered close to 1000. I never got the tape or CD for Joan Jett. By the time I got a job and earned my own money, the entire obsession with “I Love Rock ‘N Roll” had burned itself out. As such, I don’t own any of her music.
I can’t tell you that I’ve heard this song play naturally on the radio for at least a decade. It’s not in any of my personal playlists, but I haven’t heard it play on any improvised playlist. Though in the exceedingly rare instances where it does play, I’ll let it play through. I may not be music I’d choose to listen to, but for the short (less than three-minute) duration of the song, I can attest that I indeed love rock and roll. Even if I’m mindlessly unable to assert anything else. 😉