My formative years were in the 80s. MTV. Rick Dee’s Weekly Top 40. Casey Kasem telling me to “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.” Michael Jackson. The sequin glove and the red jacket with all those zippers. Culture Club. Neon. A-ha– the flashing man video. Flock Of Seagulls. The keytar. I ran across my living room thinking I was The Great American Hero. I jumped my bike over anthills thinking that I was conquering Hell Track like Cru Jones did in Rad. I loved it, every last bit of it. But as much as I loved it there was always something about the generation that came decades before I was born–- the generation when my parents were kids– that memorized me, that made me wish I could have been part of that time, that music, that era.

The seeds were probably planted by the movies that I watched. Back To The Future. La Bamba. American Graffiti. A few that I probably shouldn’t have been watching at the time. Stand By Me. Hollywood Knights. I was a lonely kid, one who spent more time daydreaming of being somewhere else than he did revel in the moment of wherever he was. The common thread was always the music. I was in love with oldies music. The singers were polished; the harmonies impeccable. The arrangements of the songs were grand. People sounded more sincere, more in love. Life sounded like it was fun. There were people clapping. Choruses you could sing along with. Beats that you could dance to without having to know how to dance. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to dance.

Sometime in my late twenties I was sitting in some hotel room in New Jersey one night and for the life of me I couldn’t sleep. I kept tossing and turning, propping my pillow at different angles, throwing the blankets aside before retrieving them. After everything I tried failed I turned on the television. Sitcoms and newscasts were over. I was left with twenty different channels of infomercials. Genetically defective-looking people selling everything from salad shooters, ab machines, and cooking grills to mops, computer training lessons, and drunk-girls-flashing-their boobs DVDs. I kept surfing channels hoping for something to provide enough white noise that I could ignore long enough to fall asleep. And then I heard Mark Dinning sing, “Teen Angel.” I stopped. I watched. And I listened. For sale was a collection of oldies music. In the dark I slapped around for a pen and the complimentary pad of paper a hotel leaves you. I wrote down the name of the collection, and almost immediately after that I fell asleep.

Months later I was sitting in another hotel room somewhere else in the country. I was bored. Boredom usually lead to Ebay and this night was no different. While looking at vintage baseball cards from the 1950’s I clicked a button that I didn’t mean to and I ended up viewing other items that someone had for sale. One of the things they were offering looked awfully familiar. After thinking about it for a minute it clicked: the oldies collection from that night in New Jersey when I couldn’t sleep. Without thinking about the financial repercussions I clicked the “Buy It Now” button. After I was congratulated on my purchase I was directed to the screen where I had to pay for it, and at last I saw the price. A hundred and fifteen dollars. Wow. For CDs? It took a second for the sticker shock to wear off but after I got to thinking about it more I didn’t care. When I got home from that trip collection there was a box waiting for me. I opened it up. Staring back at me was Malt Shop Memories. 270 songs from singers such as Buddy Holly, Neil Sedaka, and Ben E. King, and bands like Martha and the Vandellas, The Four Tops, and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. There were legends such as Elvis, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, and The Supremes. Eighteen discs in all. I tore the plastic off of each CD and one by one I popped them in my player.

It was fitting that the first voice I heard was that of The Everly Brothers singing, “All I Have To Do Is Dream.” I was right back in those dreams from childhood, remembering those movies: Marty McFly taking over the guitar as he rocked out “Johnny B. Goode” at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance in 1955 Hill Valley, Vern and Teddy singing along with “Lollipop” as they stroll along the train tracks with Gordie and Chris in search of Ray Brower’s dead body, Newbomb Turk, dressed up as Dudley Laywicker farting his rendition of “Volare” into the microphone in front of the packed pep rally. All were classic scenes, moments in my life that I’d bookmarked as if they were my own. All of those songs were there. And there were more. So many more.

Before long memory lane was leading me back to my own memories of one summer when I was thirteen or fourteen. That entire summer there was this running competition between a group of my friends and I. It was based around the local oldies radio station. Every night at 9 p.m. they would start with their “Love Request And Dedication” show. The premise was like any other radio call-in show of that format; you call the DJ with a song request, give a shout out to your loved one, and the DJ plays your song and request on the air for all of the free world—or at least those within listening distance—to hear. The only snafu in the equation was that my friends and I, none of us had boyfriends or girlfriends. Our “love” requests were anything but sincere. They were just the opposite. Essentially, what the game– I suppose ‘game’ is overstating things because we never kept any sort of tangible score– entailed was one of us thinking up the most repulsive person that was common to all of us, but not part of our group, and calling up the radio station requesting a song with one of your friend’s names to the completely undesirable hag. The point was that your friend didn’t know it was coming, and would be caught completely off guard. And I dare say the person on the other end of the joke– the joke that they weren’t in on– didn’t know either. An example scenario might have gone as follows:

Kid sitting on their bed with their radio beside them. The window is open and there’s a cool summer night breeze rustling up the curtain. The kid picks up the telephone and dials the radio station.

“Oldies, 97?

“Yeah, I’d like to make a love request dedication.”

“Ok, shoot.”

“Yeah, I’d like to request, “Baby Love” by The Supremes.”

“And who is that special person you’re sending that out to?”

“This goes out to my one and only love, the love of my life, Helga Anderson, from her baby love, James Johnson.”

“I’ll have that right up for you, James.”

The kid hangs up the phone, and laughs hysterically. He waits for “Baby I Need Your Loving” by The Four Tops to finish up, staring out on the star filled sky as laughter induced tears stain his cheeks. The song fades out and the DJ’s deep bass voice takes over. “Next up we have a very special request from a lover out there.”

The kid’s voice disguised as someone else comes out of the speakers.

“This goes out to my one and only love, the love of my life, Helga Anderson, from her baby love, James Johnson.”

“This one’s for you, Helga. “Baby Love” by The Supremes.”

You’d literally count on your fingers how many seconds it was before your phone rang. Whether it was your friend, James Johnson, or another one of your friends, it was always a matter of who had the fastest fingers. But by the time “Baby Love” ended all of them would call. If it was a non-targeted friend the comment would be something along the lines of, “That was f**king awesome, dude!” If it was James Johnson it might sound like, “You pigf**ker. This is war!” And like clockwork, twenty minutes later you’d hear his response, “Chapel Of Love” by The Dixie Cups in your name to someone way worse than Helga Anderson.

Considering the game went on for an entire summer all of us became quite adapt at throwing our voices; picking up a bad British accent long enough to log your fourth call of the night, sounding Valley Girl enough to be the dumb ugly blonde from the gym class we all shared. In that three-hour stretch each night the group of us more or less controlled the airwaves. Ridiculous dedications aside, the song you requested was one you genuinely wanted to hear. Sometimes, when all of us were in the same house together, in between disappearing into the bathroom long enough to log another call we’d sing along to the songs, smile on our faces, happy to be alive. And like most games it was all in good fun until someone got hurt.

One night late in July I was sitting on my bed, radio beside me, the phone in my hand, dailing the radio station’s number. As I hit the seventh number and listened to station phone ring the song playing on my radio beside me faded out and the deep bass of the DJ’s voice came across.

“We’ve got a very special request tonight to one of our regular listeners.”

A girl’s voice came on, a voice I recognized, one that participated nightly with us, a friend of ours.

“I’d like to send this one out to Justin. I didn’t know how else to say what I have to say to him other than in a song. And I know he’s listening. I love you, Justin.”

Her voice broke and the opening chords of “I Only Have Eyes For You” by The Flamingos came on my radio for the whole world to hear. And I heard the DJ’s voice in my ear. “Oldies, 97,” he said. “Go ahead with your request and dedication.” With the phone to my ear I sat, jaw ajar, for several seconds before finally saying, “F**k” and hanging up. Seven seconds later the phone started to ring. I picked it up. It was another friend. He managed to say, “Dude,” before breaking out in laughter. And one by one, each friend I hung up on was the same thing. Laughter. The joke was no longer on someone. It was on me. And it wasn’t funny. It was serious. She was serious. And phoning in a faux dedication to her wasn’t going to fix things. I couldn’t get her back. I was officially screwed.

As I scanned through the songs on the Malt Shop Memories collection I came across “I Only Have Eyes For You” by The Flamingos. That guitar strum to open the song still made me shudder. But for a minute I was thirteen or fourteen again, sitting on my bed with my radio beside me. It was late July, my window was open, and the summer breeze was rustling up my curtains. I couldn’t help but smile. I’d completely forgotten about that story—that summer—but all it took was two chords to bring it back to life, to bring me back to life.

I never got to physically live in the Malt Shop era when the songs that make up this collection were new. But at various points in my life they’ve been “new” to me. New like meeting someone you’ve never talked to before, but right off the bat it seems like you’ve been friends your entire life. New like that first kiss, or that heart-wrenching breakup. All of it is still comforting, even now after life has jaded me in so many different ways.

At the time I write this, I’m a single guy. And I’ve been single longer than I’ve ever been in my life. I’d like to think a big part of that comes down to choice, not wanting to compromise myself, or something sophisticated. Then again, maybe it boils down to karma. All of those empty love requests and dedications came back to bite me in the ass. But as I sit here, all of these years later, and think of it, and as I listen to the songs of Malt Shop Memories I’m thinking what I thought back then, if ever there is going to be someone who wanted to show their love and dedication to me, in a perfect world they’d do it with one of these songs. A song like ”Baby Love”. One like “Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)” by The Penguins or “Under The Boardwalk” by The Drifters. Or even “I Only Have Eyes For You. So long as it’s not from “her.”

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