The excitement was palpable: my friend’s teenage brother had scored the deal of a lifetime. From the early fall heat he and his friends carried in the prize: a wood-paneled console stereo that must have been six feet long and could have held a small buffet and a sideboard of decanters on its immensity. My […]

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The word that comes to mind when I think of my first reaction to this song is: unearthly. Why? I’m not sure. I was in fifth grade. On first thought one could say, What would a fifth-grader know about unearthly? But it’s not like nine-year-olds never hear music. By that age I’d had a long […]

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