Who remembers where they were in September 1965?
I’m thinking....
I was starting fifth grade, my last year in a run-down city school.
I had gotten a transistor radio for my birthday two months before, and my ear was glued to it all the time. It was like the internet, for me back then.
Starting 10th grade. I was not a music person, but even I remember allvthose songs.
Starting college (BSEE).
I remember, quite vividly,
September 1965. A young lad
of ten years old. Life then
was carefree, nothing but
baseball, swimming in the
river, fishing, and spying
on the topless coeds sun
bathing at Sonoma State.
Fond memories.
Great music list, and I
remember every single one.
I was 8 years old, living in Bladensburg, Maryland.
I was in Darmstadt, Germany, where my father was a teacher for the Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DODDS). I was attending Darmstadt American School, and he was my vocal music teacher.
We listened to the American military radio station, Armed Forces Network (AFN) out of Frankfurt. They did not broadcast any Top 40 music--the playlist was strictly Adult Contemporary, so you would have heard songs like "Moon Over Naples" by Bert Kaempfert or "Ain't it True?" by Andy Williams, and you would never hear "Heart Full of Soul" by the Yardbirds, "Liar, Liar" by the Castaways, and most certainly not "Eve of Destruction" on a station run by the US Military.
Nonetheless, someone brought a disc of "Eve of Destruction" to my music class, taught by my dad, and we listened to it. But neither I nor my dad liked it.
We also got the hear some Top 40 tunes at a snack bar across the street from the school, where they kept the juke box up to date, and also in the juke box at the cafeteria at the US Army barracks.
And we also listened to some of the German stations. Nini Rosso's Il Silenzio was a monster hit in Europe at the time, but it went nowhere in the US.
When I got back to the US in 1966, the first thing I did was turn my radio dial to Boss Radio 93 KHJ, my favorite Top 40 blaster.