FTV: First Heard

From the Vaults:  First Heard

 

      In August of 2025, I was reading an interesting article by ‘Metal’ Tim Henderson.  He was interviewing Dave Meniketti from the band Y&T when the subject of Ozzy Osbourne’s last performance with Black Sabbath came up.  Meniketti told Henderson he missed the big show in Birmingham on July 5, 2025 because he was in Sweden playing at the Time to Rock Festival.  Henderson said, “When people ask me why I missed Ozzy’s last show, I will tell them I was doing the journalist’s thing by seeing Y&T in Sweden.”  From there, the discussion moved over to Dave’s first encounter with Black Sabbath’s music back in the day.

     Meniketti said that he discovered Black Sabbath when he was in high school.  He told Henderson it is a bit of a blur exactly when he first heard Sabbath because he was listening to a lot of heavy rock music at the time.  Because they were not allowed to leave campus over lunch, he and a friend would sneak out to the parking lot and listen to music in his buddy’s car.  Dave states that, “As soon as it came on the planet to my awareness, it was an immediate thing and, like every other guitar player, I would always play certain riffs of popular Black Sabbath songs.”   Meniketti pointed out that at the time, he never dreamed he would one day be opening for Ozzy on an entire European tour.

     Naturally, I went to the old memory files to recall the first time I heard Sabbath.  Before I heard them on the radio or record, I heard Paranoid in my basement soon after it was released in September of 1970.  A kid a couple years younger than Mike, Gene, and I asked if he could come over and ‘try out’ for our band.  The three of us had been jamming and playing informal gigs for a couple of years before that.  In the fall of 1970, we all joined the local musician’s union and began playing ‘paying gigs’ as The Twig.  We were a little surprised when he showed up toting his acoustic guitar and no amp.  He did have a pickup in the sound hole so we loaned him a chord and he plugged into Gene’s amp.  We ran through a couple of our songs with him and we told him we would think about it.

     He was okay on both guitar and vocals but apparently was not interested in upgrading to an electric guitar or amp yet.  The one thing he did that probably sealed the deal to not bring him into The Twig was to suggest that we needed to update our song list.  “What do you mean?” Mike asked him.  “You know, learn some songs that are on the radio now, like this,” he said as he showed us the chords for Paranoid.  He sang it and we played through it with him with no real idea of how it went as none of us had heard it yet.  I liked the song and became a Black Sabbath fan at that moment.  He was barely out the door before we said, “Nah, being a power trio is fine,” and we left it at that.  Even though I was introduced to Sabbath in 1970, I didn’t own any of their albums until I bought my buddy Mitch’s old 8-track player for my car.  It came with a copy of Sabbath’s 1973 release Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.  I added their double disk ‘best of’ album (We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll) and Technical Ecstasy when they came out in 1976.

     Naturally, this memory got the brain gears in motion so I started to dig back to when I heard certain songs or groups the first time.  Like a lot of people my age, The Beatles appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show is engrained in my past but I can’t lay a finger on when or where I may have first heard them on the radio.  Herman’s Hermits are another story.  I can pinpoint exactly where I was the first time I heard I’m Henry the VIII.  We were spending our normal two week vacation at The Swamp on Huron Bay.  On a trip to L’Anse to pick up groceries, we rounded the head of Keweenaw Bay to get an ice cream cone at the A&W Drive in Baraga.  The song started just as we crossed the Falls River bridge on US 41 and ended just as we pulled into the parking lot of the A&W.  The song had been released in June of 1965 and shot right to No. 1 on the charts so that certainly would not have been the last time I heard it that summer.

     Though it was released in June of 1968, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was another song that I did not cross paths with until I heard a band play it at a high school dance that fall.  One of the most popular bands in Marquette at that time was East of Orange.  The first time I heard them play it, they went full out and played the album length version and we all went, “Wow – what was that?”

The album was entrenched on my turntable and I had the drum solo down pat in no time.  I never played in a band that did the song, but you can bet I dropped a bit of Ron Bushy’s iconic drum solo into my own solo spot when we played either Led Zep’s Moby Dick or that perennial drummer’s work out, Wipe Out.  

     During the spring of my sophomore year, we were killing time before a rehearsal of the school’s spring musical Bye, Bye Birdie.  We played a few snippets of songs to entertain ourselves waiting for everyone to arrive. The bass player broke into the In-A-Gadda riff and U joined in.  When he stopped, I couldn’t help but break into a bit of the solo . . . which lasted just long enough to annoy the play’s director.  She tried (unsuccessfully) to get us to stop noodling around before rehearsal (“You are being disruptive,” she said) so we just started coming earlier to noodle around before she got there.  All that noodling continued on after the play was over and led directly to the formation of The Twig but not with the orchestra pit bass player.

     The summer after eighth grade was a big one for the Marquette music crowd.  To attend the summer youth dances at the old Bishop Baraga High School, one had to be a freshman.  That first summer, I do not recall seeing any live bands as the dances were all hosted by local DJs playing records.  The second summer I could attend dances there, it was great to be able to see live bands and have the opportunity to learn from other drummers.   The very first band I got to see in the summer of 1968 were dressed in flower power garb I wouldn’t understand until I bought the debut album by Steppenwolf.  I had never seen Neru jackets or love beads until I saw this band (and no, I do not remember their name).  I do remember hearing Born To Be Wild there for the first time.  I went right out and bought the album and seeing John Kay and the band on the album cover explained what was happening in California that summer and why the band I had just seen was dressed the way they were.  Drummer Jerry Edmonton was a master of carrying the band with solid drum grooves and that was another great album to play along with when I was learning the drums.

     Gordon Lightfoot’s If You Could Read My Mind is another song I first heard live before hearing it on the radio.  During my first summer at the Huron Mountain Club (1971), a fellow Marquette Senior High band member named Tom Bailey was working as one of the kid’s program guides.  I knew Tom as a trombone player but soon found out he was also a guitar picker.  Tom favored finger picked acoustic guitar and would often spend off hours in the employee recreation room pickin’ and singin’.  The first time I heard him sing If You Could Read My Mind, I had him show me the chords.  He said, “When I pick it, I use some unusual shapes and I am not even sure if they are ‘correct’, but it is based on G-F-C with an Em and Am7 stuck in there.  I had my sister’s old Airline acoustic guitar at the club and was just learning the basics myself and he was kind enough to show me the unusual chord shapes he used to pick the song.

     There were two younger cousins working in the HMC kitchen with me that summer.  They were not very far ahead of me on the guitar playing learning curve, but they had an electric guitar and bass with them that they both plugged into the same amp.  They usually left their stuff in the employee rec room so one day when Tom was pickin’ and singin’, I picked up the bass guitar and plunked along with him on the Lightfoot tune.  “Hey, I didn’t know you played bass,” Tom said.  “Actually, I don’t,” I had to admit, “I am just learning guitar and all I am doing is following you and playing the root notes of the chords you showed me.”  “Really?  You could have fooled me when you did the little walk down on the second line of the lyrics,” he replied.  I improved some of my guitar skills that summer but my bass playing skills remained rudimentary.

     I credit the Huron Mountain Club kitchen pot washer from the summer of 1971 for introducing me to two albums that were not familiar to me.  One was the double live Johnny Winter And … Live album featuring guitarist Rick Derringer (who sadly passed away on May 26, 2025).  The second was The Moody Blues Days of Future Past, an experimental album they made that mixed their own songs with orchestral arrangements that tied them all together into what would become one of the first concept albums.  Nights In White Satin was one of the songs that particularly caught my attention.  I did not plan on joining a band for my freshman year at Northern Michigan University so I purchased a small used electronic organ and an amp to noodle around with at home.  It ended up paying big benefits in my guitar playing when I started remembering my third grade piano lessons.  The keyboard work helped me visualize how notes in guitar chords were constructed which helped me to figure out new songs on the organ and guitar faster.

     One of the first songs I learned in the fall was Nights In White Satin.  I was pretty proud that I was able to play the flute fills on the organ and chord accompaniment that went with it.  I became a big Moody Blues Fan and went out and bought the three albums they had released since Days of Future Past (which came out in1967 but was making a comeback when Nights started getting FM airplay).  I was happily writing out lyrics and chords for songs I liked from those three albums.  Then 1971’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor hit the record racks.  As soon as I heard Justin Hayward’s Story In Your Eyes, I doubled down learning the little guitar riff he tossed in before each verse.  

     My immersion into the Moody’s music had two interesting consequences.  The guitar riff mentioned above became my ‘go to’ warm up every time I picked up my guitar.  I did not realize how much I played it until John, my second year HMC roommate, said, “Why do you ALWAYS play that same line?  It is driving me nuts!”  Of course, I didn’t stop playing it but I did cut it down when he was in the room . . . unless I wanted to annoy him.  The second consequence of my Moody phase would not appear for a couple of years.  Playing as a fill in drummer for a couple of different groups, I got rave reviews on how I interpreted the drum part for Nights In White Satin.  Twice I heard, “Wow – you must have played that alot” to which I would confess, “Nope, never in one of my bands.  I learned it by just fooling around at home on my little keyboard.”

     Living on the corner of Norway Avenue and Center Street in Marquette, our house was only two blocks across an empty field from the National Guard Armory on Lincoln Avenue.  Before NMU expanded and built new dormitories there, we could always hear music wafting across the field when dances were held at the Armory.  I was between sixth and seventh grade the summer of 1965 when I heard a song drifting from the Armory that made me sit up and pay attention.  It was loud and rocking and even though I was ten months away from getting my own Ludwig drum kit, the drums really stood out.  When the band took a break, I went into the house and turned on the radio only to hear the same song blasting out of the speakers.  Once I heard the title and band, (You Really Got Me by the Kinks) I was an instant fan. 

    Years later I couldn’t help but chuckle the first time I saw a picture of The Kinks.  Drummer Mick Avory sat behind the exact same silver sparkle Ludwig drum kit I bought in April of 1967.  It is called the ‘Ludwig Classic’ set these days,  but back then informally known as ‘The Ringo Set’.  Ringo sold a lot of Ludwig drums simply by playing the same set in The Beatles (although his kit had an Oyster Shell Pearl finish).

     I have always had an affinity for the Armory because that is where I saw my first live band with a drummer playing a drum set.  I can’t tell you the name of one song they played, but I can tell you the drummer had a basic four piece kit (bass drum, snare,  mounted tom and a floor tom) with a gold (or perhaps champaigne) sparkle finish.  They were set up on a little bandstand in the Armoury’s garage area during the annual County Harvest Festival.  People would wander in and out between visiting the exhibits set up in the gymnasium next door.  I stood there transfixed until my folks took me by the arm and pulled me out the door.  I was already taking drum lessons for the school band and my folks had purchased me an inexpensive red plastic snare drum to practice on.  I am not sure they realized it, but at that moment, their drum crazy son’s future plans now included a full drum set.

     I often sat in front of the same stereo where I had first heard The Kinks as I tracked what new music charting.  One day I was shaken out of my stupor by the strum of a guitar and an almost marching like cadence on a snare drum.  It wasn’t the same as Mick Avery’s bashing on You Really Got Me, but it was still captivating.  Then the singer came in:  One pill makes you larger / And one pill makes you small / And the ones that mother gives you / Don’t do anything at all / Go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall.   Jefferson Airplane’s track Somebody To Love came on next,  so I got two new songs back to back in one evening.  These days, if  I hear either song, it reminds me of the other one.

     So what songs do you remember hearing for the first time?  If you would like to share your musical memories, drop me an email at kraisanen@oasd.k12.mi.us or a snail mail at WOAS-FM, 701 Parker Avenue, Ontonagon, MI  49953.  I would love to hear from you and if I get enough responses, maybe we will revisit the topic again in the future

 

Top Piece Video – Woodstock and this version of Somebody to Love was still in the future the first time I heard the song!