Playing It Over and Over, by Herbert Reichert
I was born in Chicago in 1949. I was a skinny feminine nerdy kid that couldn’t sit still. I didn’t talk. I was a ‘rocker’. I called it “bouncing”. Whenever I sat in a chair, I rocked back-and-forth. My parents were embarrassed and none of the kids wanted to be near me. I felt like an alien. That is the bad news.
The good news is; by the time I was ten, the simple singular processes of enjoying music, of buying and playing records, and talking to people about my musical discoveries had made it possible for me to have a few cool friends. Sort of like Ghost World. Playing LPs helped me go from nobody to play with to hanging with the Marko brothers to traveling all over the world.
I bought my first record in 1957. It was an LP by Elvis, entitled, “Loving You”. I would sit in the dark in my living room and bounce on the sofa, dreaming of going to school with a skinny white belt and my collar up. When the teacher told me to stop rocking; I’d jump up, pull out my guitar and shout, “I’ll show you rocking!” Then I’d be Elvis.