From The Pen OfJoshua Lawrence Breslin-Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay,Circa 1958

CD Review

The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Follow-Up Hits, Ace Records, 2008

Peter Paul Markin and Frankie Riley had known each other from the days in the old North Adamsville neighborhood where they had met while hugging the walls at the old Sacred Heart (Roman Catholic) Church at the weekly (except Lent of course) “sock hop” held by the parish priest, Monsignor Lally to, well, “keep an eye on the younger portion of his flock,” as he expressed it each Sunday when making the announcement. The real reason, of course, was to keep said young sheep, away from too much heathen (read: Protestant) devils’ music; that rock and roll music that was just then epitomized by that hip-swaying Elvis Presley. And by all means to keep them, those with access to automobiles, from dark seawalls down at Adamsville Beach listening to fogged-up car radios and digging the beat while, well, just while or at the Strand Theater, the exclusive upstairs balcony section for the really young, the car-less young interested in s-x just in case the old bastard is still around.

Although they had known each other for some fifty years now, and were duly standing against the wall at Lucy’s at their fiftieth anniversary high school class reunion not far from the old high school they still remembered the first song that had heard upon meeting at that fateful junior high school sock hop, Danny and the Juniors’ At The Hop. And the reason they remembered that song so vividly was one Clara Murphy. See they both had rushed over to ask her to dance when that number was being played at that fateful dance. And Clara in her Solomonic wisdom turned them both down. Or maybe not so solomonic. Clara Murphy couldn’t, just that moment decide whether she liked Peter Paul or Frankie better and so gave in to her budding feminine wiles and turned them both down.

Naturally that denial enflamed the boyos. So for the next several weeks they
made every mad attempt attempt to win her favors. To no avail because, also exhibiting another aspect of her wiles, she took up with Bill Larkin, their friend and fellow classmate Kenny’s older brother (one year older). Reason: stated Clara reason. Bill had a head on his shoulders and, quote, was not so hung up on silly rock and roll that was just a passing thing, unquote. Both men laughed at the recollection, the bittersweet recollection, since later Clara married Bill, they had drifted west to the coast, formed and unformed a couple of rock and roll bands in the strobe light dreams 1960s, and a few years after that Bill had been killed, face-down killed, down in some dusty town in Mexico, Sonora, they thought, when a major drug deal went south on him. Clara was never heard from again.

Just then some oldies but goodies aficionado, or someone who had seriously misspent his or her youth, putRoll and Rock Is Here To Stay on, and for the life of the two boyos they couldn’t remember until later that Danny and the Juniors had recorded that song as well. They then raised a drink to Clara Murphy, Clara of the sparkling eyes and flaming red hair, and of their youth.