It's April 1965 - You're Gonna Start A Band - People Laugh - You Don't.

November 1961 - Being Twelve - Looking For Work - Allergic To Elevator Music

If it wasn't for that radio . . .

Christmas was coming up, you had a girlfriend; first one and right in the middle of holiday season. You need to make an impression. You're broke - your dad won't up your allowance, you need a job - you need one now.

All the supermarket gigs are gone; your buddies and half the guys at school took them all. Fights break out in the parking lot for tips - bag boys with axes to grind and Christmas presents to buy. Everybody you know has a job - they come to school exhausted. You can't get arrested.

But your next door neighbor owns a beauty shop. Just your luck she asked your mom if you were interested; nothing complicated - sweep the floor, clean the sinks, put stuff away - keep the place neat - lift boxes, take out trash - clean the bathroom. Come in after school during the week. In the morning on Saturday - fifty cents an hour; cash.

Maybe save enough to buy a car - you're twelve, you can't drive yet - but there's that gift basket at May Company that would be perfect for your girlfriend. She's gorgeous - she's worth it - she's a great kisser.

First day on the job you're the maniac of tidy. The shop is an ocean of grey and a cloud of blue smoke. Average age of the customers is sixty - they smoke Camels, Pall Malls and Philip Morris Commanders - you know; the trashcan is overflowing with butts. The backroom is filled floor to ceiling with boxes of Aqua-net and hair dye - when the salon doesn't reek of smoke and hairspray it reeks of weird chemicals.

Your next door neighbor who is now your boss, explains the strange smell is Permanent Wave Solution. Permanents are big with the clientele - so is dyed hair - so is hairspray - so is smoking and loud talking.

A Military formation of hair-dryers lines one wall. The din is constant - the place is a factory of transformation - the beauty operators like you. They think you're cute - they rub your head - they have adopted you - with the exception of a strange one, you don't mind.

One thing - above the din of the hair dryers - the animated conversations - the sinks and shampoo; there's the radio.

Perched on the counter next to the cash register and always on, probably since time began, an enormous, ancient Philco radio blasts out a sort of rhythmic tapioca/elevator music that backgrounds everything in a soupy murk. Your boss says it calms people - you swear it drives people insane.

Just so happens - one of those Saturdays; a Saturday you have to be there before the shop opens, KFWB is running a contest: a hundred dollar gift certificate to May Company - forth caller to HOllywood one-nine-nine-one-one - sometime that hour, when you hear The Chipmunks Christmas Song.

Shop opens at nine - you're there at eight.

This is the holiday season - shop opens at eight. It's packed - you forgot. You have to get to the radio, change the station. Your life depends on it.

Nothing doing - the boss is at the counter, busy taking appointments - writing receipts - ringing up sales. You're desperate - your boss is perplexed.

You dive for the radio and switch the station - right at the exact second The Chipmunks Christmas Song comes on.

Without thinking for even a nanosecond you snatch the phone from your boss, hang up on whoever was on the other side - dial the station . . . and become caller Number Twenty.

Better luck next time - no consolation prize. Keep listening.

And no job - fired on the spot.

And that was your Christmas in 1961 - that was you - that was twelve - there were going to be others, almost but not quite like this one.

Your girlfriend met somebody on New Years eve - your neighbor only nods at you on Thursdays when you take the trash out to be picked up on Fridays.

You survived - but you still break into a cold sweat when you hear elevator music.

And here to test that theory is an hour's worth of KGBS (when it was a "beautiful Music" station) from the morning of November 27, 1961.