I watched with deep-green envy as those lucky girls stroked their soft, pink rabbit-hair rings with delicate fingers that had never touched dishwater. Once, during a particularly mind numbing film strip on the formation of Western Pennsylvania’s rich coal beds, Miss E.C. performed a sacred ritual rarely witnessed by those of us outside the secret society of pom-pom-and-baton sisters: she removed the worn, water-damaged fur from her ring – exposing its naked copper-plated body for all to see – and lovingly rewrapped it to full-fluff perfection! The process was done with such care and precision. Why, it was almost like watching a gifted surgeon graft skin.

Alas, I was to spend my middle school days with naked fingers, dreaming of the day my crush objects would know I existed. Dreaming of the day I’d be able to proudly scrawl D.S. + J.V. = Forever on the cover of my David Bowie notebook, instead of on the inside pages. I longed for the day when I, like the dating girls, would need to conceal my sucker-bites with Maybelline makeup.

Well, by my sophomore year, I decided that Dusty Springfield was right: You won’t get him, thinkin’ and a-prayin’, wishin’ and a-hopin. So, I decided to just give up. I vowed to heed the advice of the feminists – Eleanor Roosevelt, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan – and live my life as an independent lady. “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” the Australian writer/activist Irina Dunn once said. And, by golly, that would be my new slogan. But, no sooner had I decided to live a life of total self-reliance, then something very unusual happened: I met a boy who liked me. And my new I Am Woman lifestyle would be put on hold – at least for a few months.

In January of 1975, I went with some friends to a basketball game at a rival high school. As I sat in the bleachers, wearing my widest-leg jeans and my cherished white leather jacket with blue stitching, a tall, handsome boy with ebony eyes, sleek dark hair and perfect posture began to talk to me. Dave knew absolutely nothing about my low popularity rating, my average socio-economic background, my shaky scholastic standing, my klutziness in gym class, or my non-involvement in extra-curricular activities like drinking and getting high. All of the make-or-break factors that mattered so much in my high school didn’t mean diddly to Dave. He liked me just as I was.

Now, at the age of 15 – for the first time in my life – a boy was asking me for my phone number. And he put it to good use, calling me every night around 7 pm from the privacy of the phone booth on main street of his tiny one-traffic-light town. Each time the operator said, “please deposit another quarter,” I held my breath, wondering if Dave would be able to squeeze out another coin. And he always did. This was his cigarette money, mind you, but he managed to hold on to just enough chump change to make his nightly calls to me. Now, instead of quoting Dusty Springfield, I was quoting the Shangri-Las: When I say I’m in love, you best believe I’m in love, L.U.V.

My grandmother lived in the same town as my new beau, which made for one sweet deal. On Fridays after school I would board the blue and white bus (which I called The Magic Bus) for a 30 minute ride – across the steel-decked “singing” bridge that spanned the sulfur creek, past the identical gray shingled company houses of old coal towns with names like Josephine – arriving eventually in a quiet village named for a Greek poet. Dave and I would spend as much time together as we could, and at 9 pm he would escort me to my grandmother’s house.

We walked the wintry streets hand-in-hand, necked in the icy bleachers of the deserted “Home of the Wildcats” football field, and hung out in the big drugstore, where he showed me magazines with pictures of body builders he hoped to emulate. When I blanched at the vein-popping muscles of his heroes, he assured me that “they look just like normal guys when they’re wearing shirts.”

We had so much in common, Dave and I. When I told him I was taking French in school, he excitedly told me that he, too, was a French student. He said he was inspired to learn the language after seeing a nudie magazine titled Oui. Wow, brawn and brains!

In 1975, Valentine’s Day fell a Friday, which was, of course, Magic Bus day. As I stepped off the ‘ol blue-and-white, Dave quickly approached and handed me a flat brown paper bag. “I think you’ll like this,” he said with a smile. I peered inside the bag and pulled out a record album by a group I had never heard of: Jo Jo Gunne. “My buddy turned me on to this group,” he said. “They’re really different – not like Kiss and Grand Funk Railroad.” What an endorsement! I studied the monochromatic front cover – four long-haired guys sitting cross-legged and contemplative (or stoned) under a stylized neon-tube looking logo.

Just why did Dave buy me a record album as a Valentine’s Day gift? I never discussed my rock-n-roll mania with him; somehow it just didn’t seem feminine. Little did he know that records were my favorite gifts. So, the fact that he had taken the time to choose this rather obscure record just for me meant more than receiving any chintzy, soon-to-tarnish ring or pendant. He wanted to turn me on to a new sound! Now that’s what I call romantic.

The name of the album was “Bite Down Hard,” released in 1973 by a band that chose its name from the title of a 1958 Chuck Berry song: “Joe Joe Gun.” (Rockers are always stealing from Chuck.) Serious music fans will appreciate the fact that the two founding members of Jo Jo Gunne — singer, guitarist, keyboardist Jay Ferguson, and bassist Mark Andes — were once part of an interesting late ’60s band called Spirit. They’re best known for releasing “The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus,” a well-regarded LP that blended rock, jazz and psychedelia. The album’s single, “Mr. Skin,” is an FM radio staple.

Unfortunately, my new Jo Jo Gunne LP was not held in such high esteem by critics. One reviewer said “‘Bite Down Hard'” doesn’t.” But what did it matter? Beauty is in the ear of the listener, and to my ears it was magnificent. From the hard rock opening song, “Reddy Freddy,” to the prog-rock closer, “Rhoda,” I loved them all. And I still play them all.

In the end, of course, the vinyl outlived the relationship. Four months later, on June 4th, Dave decided he could no longer abide by my wishes to remain chaste, and wandered off to seek such services elsewhere. My heart was broken. Now, instead of singing Dusty Springfield or Shangi-La songs, I was singing Peggy Lee’s classic Leiber-Stoller tune: Is that all there is, is that all there is? If that’s all there is to love, then let’s keep dancing.  

My first taste of teenage love and heartbreak taught me a valuable lesson: having a boyfriend wasn’t all it was cracked up to be (is anything, really?) I’d have to find other ways to feel a sense of self-worth. When I entered my junior year of high school – free from romantic distractions – I applied myself like never before. I was even chosen as editor of high school newspaper! And, for the first time ever, I took pride in my work. This fish didn’t need a bicycle. Sure, my heart would be broken a few more times. But I’d learned the value of self-reliance. And, as Peggy Lee advised, I kept on dancing – even when I had no partner.

Dave, if you’re out there somewhere reading this, I want you to know that I always give thanks to you on Valentine’s Day: for giving me my first kiss, for the cool album that no one else owns, and most of all, FOR DUMPING ME!!

Here’s a song from “Bite Down Hard,” titled “Take Me Down Easy.” Pretty prophetic, huh?

© Dana Spiardi, Feb 14, 2012

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Those of you who know of my aversion to spongy, sensible shoes will be surprised to learn that I actually did wear tennis shoes to the courts. And I carried my aluminum Sears racquet, with its white fake-leather cover. But that was as far as I went with the real gear. The rest of my getup consisted of tiny Levis cutoffs or long Faded Glory jeans, bare-midriff tops, and a puka shell necklace. Five dollars worth of Maybelline, half a can of AquaNet, a splash or two of Jovan musk oil…and voila! The package was complete. Ann, one year my junior, followed my lead and glammed it up too. We carried our thin wallets, hairbrushes, tiny mirrors, and touch-up face paint in our cheap chunky purses. As we were leaving Ann’s house one day her older sister Debbie remarked, “You girls look awfully dolled up to be playing tennis.”

What did she mean by playing tennis? We sat around on the bench and never once stepped foot on the court. First, we were too embarrassed for anyone to see us run around like the klutzes we were. Second, our shorts were too tight and we risked underwear exposure had we dared bend over to pick up a ball. Third, we couldn’t afford to break a sweat and get Alice Cooper eyes from mascara runs.

Alas, not much came of our tennis trolloping. Once or twice a guy friend would offer us a ride home, but it was never the guy we hoped for. Weren’t we pretty enough, clever enough, or popular enough? Such thoughts would consume our high school years.

I spent those slow small-town summer days of my youth dreaming, wishing, and waiting. An old Rolling Stones song sums up the mood of the time, and warns of the grown-up fears that would greet us down the road.

I am waiting, I am waiting.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Waiting for someone to come out of somewhere…
Stand up coming years,
And escalation fears.
Oh, yes you will find out.
Well, like a withered stone
Fears will pierce your bones.
You’ll find out.

Still, I have such bittersweet memories of those simple days — sitting in cool ’70s style on a peeling white bench, with my back to a chain-link fence, wondering if maybe this would be the day that someone would come out of somewhere…to make me feel special…to make me feel worthy…to make me feel that I had something to offer the world. It would take many years, lots of wasted wishing, and dozens of bottles of Jovan musk oil before I realized that soul singer Tyrone Davis was right: what I was out there trying to find…I had it all the time. ME.

Here are the very young Rolling Stones, singing about my waiting days:

© Dana Spiardi, Sept 10, 2014

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The winter’s fury resulted in at least a dozen snow days that year. And I spent the time sheltered, sans-siblings, in the bedroom of our four-room apartment. With no actual school work, I was free to feed my head with all kinds creative matter. I was an unchained enfant mélancolie, wide-open to ponder the meaning of life — to dissect the mysterious beast of High School Land. It was one of the most beautifully sad, soul-expanding periods of my life.

My last year of school was marked by periods of great output and even greater input. Like many self-conscious teenage girls, I soaked up and stored into permanent memory the slights, innuendoes, snickers, eye rolls and sideway glances of those around me, to the extent that I still remember where I was – and, sometimes, what I was wearing – when those that’s it, my life is over feelings washed over me. (Years later I was heartened to read this passage from Jackie Kennedy’s diary: if school days are the happiest of your life, I’m hanging myself with my skip rope tonight.) I studied my peers with a Freudian frenzy, but I studied myself even more.

And I came to believe that Janis Ian, the misfit singer, had truly nailed it: I, too, learned the truth at seventeen. There would always be insiders and there would always be outsiders, and I would always be the latter. That sentiment was forever sealed within me, as I read and re-read J.D. Salinger and S.E. Hinton; watched and re-watched “Cool Hand Luke” and “Frankenstein”; listened to and re-listened to “I am a Rock” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

I was editor of my high school paper, wrote a school news column for the regional newspaper, and freelanced as a sports writer for the smaller hometown rag — covering high school basketball games for 5 cents a column-inch. It was all-consuming, as are most of my endeavors. Then, like now, my creative muse was a late night visitor, and I spent many a midnight hour beating the keys of my Sears-brand electric typewriter and repeating the Robert Frost mantra: and miles to go before I sleep. I was tired by day and prone to headaches. My spiritual health wasn’t much better: I was disillusioned by the cliquishness and conformity all around me. Those of us who didn’t drink and smoke dope were curiously called “rednecks.” Better dead, than red, my vapid peers used to say. Even the popular, letter-jacket crowd imbibed. Why, a member of our homecoming court actually upchucked (in the parlance of the day) all over her prom gown!

Oh, I knew the exact latitude and longitude of Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity,” alright: 40.4312° N, 79.2609° W.

I’ll admit that most of my high school experience was pleasant enough. But things started to go south in year 4, when I began speaking out about some of the ugly behavior I witnessed in our class of 160. I was put down for writing a school newspaper editorial that chastised the jock-bullies who picked on a lonely obese boy. I was snubbed by the small, but all-powerful group of privileged “social Darwinists” when I openly criticized them for instigating trouble and getting off, scot-free. I became, in effect, a snob in my own right. I was an anti-snob snob, and it cost me the happiness that I should have experienced in that oh-so-sacred of American epochs: The Senior Year. I fancied myself a suffering artist. Thoreau, with his different drummer manifesto, was my literary poster boy. Emily Dickinson, with verses like I’m nobody! Who are you?, was a sad, kindred spirit. Yes, I turned into one self-absorbed mess of a gal. A heaping tablespoon of self-righteousness, mixed with two cups of self-pity and a dash of disdain make for one cold, bitter stew. But how delicious it was, at the time.

And today? Well, as Bob Dylan once sang: But I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now. Nowadays I’m somewhat happy to say that my spiritual health has greatly improved. Wellness? Nothing to it. It only involved lots of expensive therapy; two stints in rehab; thousands of AA meetings; ongoing physical exercise; the discovery of writers named Tolle, Hay, Chopra, and Brown; the consumption of pricey oral supplements; classes in aromatherapy and gemstone healing; consultations with tarot readers, astrologers, hypnotherapists, chakra re-balancers and assorted soothsayers; the suspicion that nearly everyone else could be as screwed up and insecure as I am; and a general feeling of who gives a shit.

But back in 1977, I felt as old as Methuselah, and doubted I’d ever be satisfied. Alas, there was one thing that always kept me hanging on: music.

So, by now you’re probably dying to know just what kinds of records were spinning around on my cheap little “Silvertone” sound machine during that period of intense introspection. What? You’re not? Well, too bad, ’cause I’m gonna tell you anyway. Below is a round-up of the records that were in heaviest rotation during that scrumptiously wicked winter…the tunes that best represented my mood-spinning state of mind.

Let’s start with a song from my daily diet of Cream – the British power trio, that is – a band of which guitarist Eric Clapton was a member. The first tune that always comes to mind when I reminisce about the storm of ’77 is “Passing The Time,” from the 1968 album “Wheels of Fire.” The slow, lullaby-like tempo of the song’s verse perfectly mirrored the drowsy, dreamy mood of my seclusion. It describes a woman who waits by the fire for “her traveler,” in the midst of a snowy winter. Oh, how I longed for a traveler to arrive at my door with all the answers.

Another song that conjures up memories of late-night contemplation is The Rolling Stones’ 1971 album cut, “Moonlight Mile,” with its exotic Asian vibe. Mmmm….I’m hidin’, baby, and I’m dreamin’.  When Mick Jagger sang about a head full of snow, I didn’t realize then that he was referring to cocaine. For years I misinterpreted the line, I am just livin’ to be lyin’ by your side, as dyin’ by your side.” Which I found wildly romantic. I wanted somebody to die beside.

One of my Christmas gifts in 1975 was “The Who By Numbers,” an album described by some as “Pete Townsend’s suicide note.” It was full of serious songs about fear, alienation, self-loathing, and self indulgence. Snap! The LP’s opener, “Slip Kid,” became my spirit of ’77 theme song, with its refrain: Slip kid, slip kid, second-generation, only half way up the tree…slip kid, slip kid, realization: there’s no easy way to be free. 

Moving right along with my U.K. collection of mood-tunes, I can’t leave out the songs of Faces, a band once fronted by Rod Stewart. Their 1971 LP, “A Nod is as Good as a Wink…To a Blind Horse,” featured a number that fit nicely with the other melancholy winter songs: “Debris,” written and sung by band co-founder Ronnie Lane. It’s a bittersweet love song to his father, set amid a blighted, post-war London marketplace.

Dreary Brits, step aside! The Yanks are coming – with their own brand of wistfulness. First, there’s Bruce Springsteen. He sure knows a thing or two about outsiders, galvanizing legions of outcasts with songs like “Born to Run,” “Jungleland” and “Backstreets.” But it was one of his lesser-known songs, “Meeting Across the River,” that moved me to my core. This musically-sparse tune – featuring nothing but piano, accented with haunting, jazz-club trumpet flourishes – tells the story of two last-chance Jersey losers hoping to score in the Big Apple. I’ve seen Bruce more than 20 times, but I’ve only ever heard him play this song live one time – in 1976.

And now we end (hold your applause, please) with The Maestro, Bob Dylan. Throughout my life, it was The Beatles who spoke to my heart, but it was Dylan who spoke to my soul. I discovered his masterpiece, “Highway 61 Revisited,” nearly ten years after its 1965 release. And my life would never be the same. This album, more than any other, was the soundtrack to my senior year (and remains the most important recording in my collection). Each song spoke to me in a very profound way. I related to every situation and character in Dylan’s desolation row of unfortunates: Miss Lonely and the Princess on the Steeple of “Like a Rolling Stone,” Sweet Melinda of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” the graveyard woman of “From a Buick 6,” the factory mama of “Tombstone Blues,” even Mr. Jones of “Ballad of a Thin Man.” When the phonograph needle hit the sweet spot on “Tom Thumb’s Blues,” and I heard Bob wail, everybody said they’d stand behind me when the game got rough / But the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to bluff,” I knew I was HOME. Listening to Highway 61 was a revelation: someone, somewhere, understood. The record hinted that others, too, were searching for answers. Was Dylan writing as a form of self-therapy or self-amusement, or was he bent on delivering a message to the disenfranchised masses, as Springsteen would do a decade later? It didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that I couldn’t, and never will, completely grasp the songs’ meanings. This record is art incarnate, and like all great works, it’s wide open to interpretation. It’s best left as enigma.

These records, and so many more, were a key part of my true “coming of age.” I listen to them now as often as I did during those bleak winter days 36 years ago. But now my moody, confused periods are far fewer. Hopefully, they’ll never vanish altogether. They are, after all, necessary. I still relish a good funk.

In the end, I managed to find my way, and partake of life’s rich banquet (okay, I know that’s a lame phrase, but I only used it so that I could point out that REM stole the line from Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther movie, “A Shot in the Dark.”)

Anyway, Bruce sums it up best: My feet, they finally took root in the earth. But I got me a nice little place in the stars.

Now,here’s an empowerment song for all you angst-ridden, high school-hating teens! Play it LOUD and scream along.

By Dana Spiardi, Jan 27, 2013

Okay, I know that’s a stretch. Sure, you can drool over a concert program all you like, flip its pages till they fall out, and take it to bed and read it under the covers with a flashlight. But it will never sing to you. It won’t make your ears ring for hours on end. And it will never blind you with pyrotechnics.

Nevertheless, I experienced a true rock-shock when my friend Tony Vigliotti walked into sixth period French class and presented me with a souvenir concert program from the Queen show he’d seen the night before at Pittsburgh’s Stanley Theater. This was the concert I’d been dying to see. Or rather, this was The Freddie I’d been dying to see. Frontman Freddie Mercury had become my style icon — my Killer Queen, so to speak, with his shaggy long-cut black pageboy and his fairy-inspired frocks. I didn’t want to sleep with him, mind you. I wanted to BE him. Or at least go shopping with him.

Queen was in town to promote their fourth studio LP, “A Night at the Opera,” which featured their opera-palooza “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  I wouldn’t have even considered asking my strict parents if I could attend the show, had it not been for the fact that Tony V. was going.

I was 16, lived 35 miles east of Pittsburgh, couldn’t drive, and had never been to a rock concert. Surely my parents would trust Tony to take me! He was a year older and was held in high regard by my mom, who had known his family her entire life. Tony’s grandmother was my mom’s beloved comare – her godmother – a relationship of special importance in Italian families. Tony may have been the leader of Blairsville’s one and only rock band, Rampage, but he was no wild one. He was a good boy. A sensible, respectable boy.

But while my mom had no doubts about Tony’s superior character, she just wasn’t convinced that this Queen concert was a good idea. It was in the city, in a big stadium that was no doubt full of people on drugs. There would be big parking lots and possibly some nighttime outdoor walking involved. And, because it was February, there might be weather.

I accepted her decision, as I always did, without argument. But as much as I desired to see Queen in that career-defining zeitgeist, as much as I longed to see Freddie command the stage in the sartorial style I tried so hard to emulate, I quickly got over it. In fact, within a few months, I had gotten over the bulk of my Freddie obsession. (Teens, take my word: whatever IT is, you will get over it.)

Besides, why should I have sulked over missing that gig? I already had my tickets to see Bruce Springsteen play the nearby Cambria County War Memorial in two months. And there would be no worries about transportation: Mommy and Daddy would drop me and Barb L. off at the arena entrance and pick us up in the same spot afterwards. Despite the skepticism of my rock mentor (“I can’t believe you’re making your concert debut with Springsteen,” said Tony. “He’s all hype”) I would forever regard that April 12, 1976, show as the best concert of my life. (Okay, so Tony missed the mark…just that one time. I once predicted Madonna would fade away. Even rock aficionados are wrong sometimes).

But talk about a friend! Here was my Beatle-lovin’ brother…the guy I most enjoyed talking to in high school…the person who planted the seeds of my never-ending rock-n-roll education…the mate who understood, like no one else, how much I longed to see that Queen concert…the friend who thought enough to bring me a souvenir that I’ll prize forever.

I finally got to see Queen a few years later at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. And you know what? Receiving that program from 1976 is a much sweeter memory.

Thank you, “Tony Velot.”

Here’s Tony, at left, playing bass with his band Rampage in the summer of 1975 at the Eagles Club in Blairsville, PA. Jeff “Turtle” Baker is on lead guitar and Gary McCrady is on drums. Today, Tony Vigliotti is best known as Tony Michaels, General Manager of WHJB 107.1 FM in Greensburg, PA. He hosts Jukebox Saturday, a long-running classic hits request show that airs on Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm on three stations: WHJB, WDAD 1450 AM in Indiana, PA , and KOOL 103.3 FM in Punxsutawney.

“Sweet Lady” is my favorite song from “A Night at the Opera.” That album had the distinction of being the most expensive ever produced at the time of its release in 1975. I like this video because it shows a collage of clips featuring the Freddie I loved best, in the style that once made me swoon. But even after he cut his hair, grew the moustache, and swapped the white billowy caftans for hot pants, there would always be a special place in my heart for that “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy” of 1976. RIP, Freddie.

 Dana Spiardi, Feb 20, 2015