1985: Music defined by radio and siblings

105.7 WAPL - The Rockin Apple

I grew up with nothing around my house but cornfields. This area of the boondocks was called Darboy USA, a "suburb" of the city of Appleton. Appleton was a city of 66,000 at the time. One thing I could see from my yard was the radio antenna for 105.7 WAPL, The Rockin' Apple. "The best classic rock, the best new rock." When you are a child, you see this long radio antenna with flashing red lights. Being on the gullible side, I didn't have a frame of reference for size... it could have been an antenna or a tower! I had just assumed that EVERY song on the radio was being played LIVE inside that tower somewhere, hence the flashing lights - that's where the bands play! I don't know if I imagined the radio antenna was like a big elevator shaft, with rooms to perform going all the way up or what.

For example, if "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith was playing on the radio, I assumed Aerosmith was in town playing it live inside that radio antenna. It's funny because I don't remember anyone ever telling me this... it was just one of those early creative theories I had as a five year old that couldn't be further from the truth.

As I grew up, 105.7 WAPL wasn't as cool as I thought it was. It was just the coolest available. My gripe is this... they played a TON of Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Beatles, Grateful Dead and The Eagles constantly. Nothing against these bands, but I grew an distaste to them over time. Tommy and Mike even helped coin a saying "if Bruce is 'the Boss,' then I QUIT." Haha.

Nowadays, the only one I can really stomach of the bands I mentioned above is the Rolling Stones and some Springsteen. This overplaying of music was the first sign that radio stations can RUIN good bands for you. In these days of the mid 80's, they wouldn't play "heavy" music, even if it was popular. They wouldn't play Metallica during the day. If you called in to request it, they wouldn't even take that as a request until after 10:00pm. It was considered way too heavy for daytime airplay. The heaviest you could get during the day was probably Hendrix. Thank God for Jimi. To their credit, they played a lot of other good stuff too. This is where my musical tastes started to develop.

I was just really lucky to have an older sister and two older brothers. Being the youngest came with all sorts of perks. I wasn't "up to me" to seek and find what was cool. I was able to soak up what my siblings liked and usually that's what I liked to. I had my own identity since all kids a certain age like certain things... like He-Man and Star Wars and such. But when I was little, my older brothers had a rock cover band when they were in HighSchool. It was called Defiance.

Defiance

Their shows were often really elaborate with lots of speakers, pro sound, and stage lights... just crazy. They practiced in my basement and my mom & dad would buy Darboy Fried Chicken (not to be confused with KFC) and they'd stay for dinner. My dad helped out with a Keyboard, PA and other essential equipment... and supported them with funds to get started. The next thing you know they are playing bars all over... even opened for Ratt and Lita Ford at Green Bay's Brown Country Arena! My oldest Brother Tommy wielded this white Gibson Explorer, while Mike did lead vocals and played keyboards. That's the music.. how about the dress? We are talking about leather pants, bandanas, 80's sunglasses... the works. They covered all sorts of Bon Jovi, Ozzy, Judas Priest, Van Halen, Rush, Loverboy, Prince, etc. A great party band indeed.

Their guitar player was this kid named Michael Boyle from Appleton. I looked up to Michael Boyle quite a bit... all of them really. But I always wanted to play the guitar. He was a flashy player... had really puffy hair, and my brothers would jokingly call him Buckwheat after the Little Rascals. So that's what Tommy and Mike called him all the time. After HS, Defiance fizzled out... and I wouldn't see Boyle again for about ten or so years. So let's fast forward to 1994. He was working at my favorite guitar store when I was a teenager, Henri's Music in Appleton. I recognized him and said "Buckwheat!" You should have seen the look on his face. Saying that meant I was old school, but I looked too young to know him from that time. I'm Tommy & Mike Bongers' little brother. Being known as one of my "siblings' little brother" was usually a good thing, so it never bothered me one bit.

Prince - Purple Rain

Movie soundtracks in the 80's all together were just so good. I would say my brother Mike was THE biggest Prince fan. (Although when you're only 5, you don't know that many people.) I distinctly remember his Purple Rain poster hanging up in his room. I saw this movie on VHS when I was a kid, but I had no understanding of it at all. As an initiation ritual... to "Purify your body in the waters of Lake Minnetonka" was just a hilarious practical joke.

MORE PRANKS
Another antagonizing joke my brothers took from the movie was to drive away a little bit when someone riding along is trying to open the car door to get in. Prince did this to a girl with his motorcycle, and it was pretty funny. Unrelated to Prince, my brothers would beep the horn if you walked across the front of the car. I've gotten people with that joke, and it startles the living crap out of people. :)

IS PRINCE WEIRD?
Prince seemed like a weirdo, but he fit right in with other rockers like Kiss, Nugent, or Van Halen where they all put on some sort of "act." It's hard to explain unless you lived through it. The 80's seemed to be very accepting of musical artists that were "unique." In contrast, the 90's that followed were more about fitting specific mold. Prince was the embodiment of purple from then on. Guys and purple? Prince made it work. This was WAY before all the Prince drama. This was back when Prince was THE MAN. Women wanted to be with him and in effect guys wanted to BE him.

MOTORCYCLES
Despite Prince's superstar persona, there was only one thing about him that could have been cooler. Growing up, I noticed Prince drove a Kawasaki motorcycle. I grew up in a Harley family, and it seemed wrong that a big rock star would be on anything BUT a Harley. Kawasaki had this commercial with a theme song "Kawasaki - Let the good times roll" and my brothers (in Weird Al fashion) effectively changed the words to "Kawasaki makes the junkyards grow."

GUITARS & BASKETBALL
Prince is probably one of the most underrated guitarists of all time. The guy shreds. And according to Charlie Murphy (Eddie Murphy's brother) he's pretty good as basketball too. : )

In the mid-2000's, Eddie Murphy's brother was an actor/comedian on the Comedy Central's Chappelle Show. There was a really funny skit series they did called Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories... or something like that. Charlie Murphy would tell all these crazy stories about being in Eddie Murphy's entourage, and the friends / situations he got into. They were hilarious... almost too crazy to be true. But when you consider the people in these stories, they're probably not embellished at all. One of the funniest ones was his story about Prince.

Prince's 1999 Album

Prince's 1999 album was released in 1982.

In contrast to Tommy, my brother Mike was a huge fan of Prince. Don't get me wrong, everyone at the time loved Prince, but Mike was fanatic. He had the Purple Rain Poster on his wall, and had most all of his records. The year 1999 seemed like so far away when this album was written... almost as if it would never come. At least I couldn't imagine it. That's a little funny considering this is being written eleven years after 1999. I must say that how we pictured 1999 as a society in 1982 is vastly different than what it actually was. We never got our hovercrafts or George Jettson-like technologies. Did someone fail, or was the future over-projected? Popular Mechanics Magazine was one of the biggest offenders of this future projection. My dad got a subscription of it, and it really raised my standards of what I thought the future would be like. I also never did the math as a child that I'd be a college student in 1999.

FAST FOWARD... TO 1999

The song 1999 did have more relevance when I went to college. My freshman year spanned the Fall of 1998 through the Spring of 1999. I was single the entire time - which was rare for me. That New Year's Eve I went down to Milwaukee to party in a hotel room with my best friend from college, Matt. We became close during my freshman year at St. Norbert College playing football. Since he was a second year quarterback and I was a first year wide receiver, there was lots for me to learn about the offensive system. Our college playbook was like a phonebook, and I couldn't understand the lingo fast enough to have it ready for practice the next day. Matt really helped me out with getting the schemes down; and even helped me recognize who the QB looks at first on pass plays, how to read defenses, etc. We hit it off from there and are still good friends to this day. So when New Years came, he invited me to party with his friends in Milwaukee.

It was the first New Years holiday since early high-school I could remember not having a girlfriend. Matt had a tight-knit group from high school, and I thought it'd be cool to celebrate the new year in "the big city." We went to this fancy Italian family style restrauant called Bucca de Beppos. They knew someone who worked there, and they totally hooked us up. I was introduced at the time to deep fried calamari. Everything was on huge plates you just passed around. It was really good food, and fun to experience a place like that.

After dinner, we went back to a hotel near Matt's parents' house. There might have been two rooms. The one I stayed in seemed to be the party room. Friends came and left almost as fast as I was introduced. It was loads of fun. I ended up crashing in one of the two beds in that room, coincidentally in between two girls that were close to Matt's girlfriend at the time. After being single for months, waking up in between two cuddly girls was a great way to start a new year; even if nothing "happened." When you're 19 and a freshman in college, it's still a big confidence booster. I continued a friendship with one of them throughout college. New Years was the best day to party like it's 1999, because it WAS 1999.

I think Dick Clark's New Years program on TV featured Prince performing his song live. The song "1999" was all over the place. Meanwhile, Prince was, and still is today, one of the most underrated guitarists. This guy can really shred. I'd take the "Pepsi Challenge" with almost any other guitar player in terms of note definition, speed and clarity. Combine that with top notch song writing and I don't even care how weird the guy is...it's golden.

"I was dreaming when I wrote this." So sue me if it went astray.