One of my fondest childhood memories was listening to the Top-40 am station in Milwaukee- WOKY on a little transister radio when I was a wee lad of 7. Boy did I love that pop coming from the UK...early Beatles, Hollies, Herman's Hermits, how about Do the Freddy and Catch us if You Can by the Dave Clark 5. Musically, I came of age in the roaring early and mid-70's. Informed more by crunching hard rock than by the hippy days. Since November '07 I've been hosting my RADIO BASE CAMP weekly on the greatest listener-supported radio station in the US of A: WPKN 89.5 FM in Bridgeport, CT and 88.7 WPKM in Montauk, NY. I own a trade magazine that has nothing to do with music...in fact it's in the golf business. But I am passionate about music, like all of us out here with stations. Support live music! I lived in NYC for many years...caught loads of live acts and spent a lot on vinyl, cassettes and then CD's. My musical eyes and ears over the years have been great radio stations like WPKN in Bridgeport, CT (great!)_, WFUV in NYC, KCRW in Santa Monica and press like the NME...CMJ, Blender, Time Out and others.... I used to DJ in D.C. during college during the Punk/New Wave/Ska era. Had loads of fun doing it. Worked at The Bayou which was a great venue to see bands coming through DC. Have fond memories of early 9:30 Club gigs there as well. So many great clubs over the years in NYC...and let's not forget Maxwells in Hoboken. One of my favorite venues is Club Helsinki in Great Barrington, MA.

A friend Eric Cocks writes me about The Summer of Love…and my note to him about listening to The Beatles’s song “All You Need is Love” on my little transistor radio as a small kid.

Eric wrote...."I still remember seeing The Beatles perform that live on "International TV". I think it was the first 'round the world live satellite broadcast of anything like that. Nobody had ever heard the song. There were all kinds of other performers throughout the show, but everybody I knew was tuning in to see The Beatles. They showed a segment on them creating the backing tracks. Quick glimpses of Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull in the audience. Lot's of people with "sandwich signs" proclaiming "love" in different languages.Then they started playing that song... and it was phenomenal right out of the box. They seemed so cool. John sitting on his stool chewing gum, looking so hip. Those incredible harmonies! And then John sticking in "She Loves You" near the end, sung way differently than he had just 3 or 4 years before, which seemed like another century for all the changes they (and we) had gone through. (btw, John was originally gonna sing some other beatles song in that section, but changed his mind at the last minute). Great, spectacular performance. Then it was over. Way too fast. No chance to yell "more" at the tv screen. But the song kept going through my head. Then in just a couple of days, it was out as a single! I was hearing it everywhere. Those harmonies, those changes, that message, that hipness! And the 5/4 groove with Lennon's brilliant but simple words tumbling out like they had been around forever. "Nothin' you can do that can't be done. Nothin' you can sing that can't be sung." What a time!!! I don't think any band will ever be able to achieve the unification The Beatles had in those days. The day that Pepper was released, it was everywhere. You could hear it coming through the windows of houses, stores, car radios... and it was like the world had changed. Everybody was into it. It was everywhere!"