1986: Visiting relatives in Lexington Kentucky

Pack up the station wagon!

It's time to go to Kentucky. I have relatives in Lexington, Kentucky. We normally visited them around 4th of July. This was a big deal for my dad because he owned a business and rarely got time off. When he did get time off, it was spent up north in WI. Coming from a small city in WI, driving south was an adventure. People had a southern accent. I didn't really see the Kentucky blue grass though... it was green.

Jack and Charlene Parker had two houses. Charlene's family farm (miles outside of Lexington) had tobacco and Limousin cattle... a competitor breed to Angus beef. The stairs up to the bedrooms in this old house were so steep, it was difficult to climb, and easy to fall down if you went downstairs too fast. When I was at the farm, I got to drive this gigantic tractor, and made a sword out of a tobacco stick. Apparently, tobacco sticks were used in barns to hang tobacco.

My dad would spend half the week at the farm and help Jack, while my mom, brothers, sister and I spent the week shopping with Charlene and stayed at the house in Lexington. Lexington had great shopping mall... and other relatives owned a cool antique store.

Jack also owned and ran a barbershop down the street from the University of Kentucky.CHEVY Barber shop I used to go there to receive a "flat top"... complete with a bottle of Vavoom! hair gel. My dad used to admire the thought of owning a barbershop... "you can work in cash, and everyone's hair that you cut you would do business with... your stockbroker, your mechanic, your doctor, you'd cut all their hair." It made sense that the people that gave you business you'd give business back to. After Jack passed away in early 2008, his daughter Leigh-Ann took over the family barbershop.

Brian Parker and Compact Discs

Brian Parker was very close in age to Tommy and Mike. His bedroom was in the basement. There was a living room down there, and billiard area that had a pool table different than any I've ever seen. I believe it was a bumper pool table. It was in Brian's bedroom where I saw the first compact discs. Smaller than records, and went into a home stereo component cd player. He had an entire wall of cds... seemingly enough be be a DJ.

When I recently asked about his cd collection, he said:
"My first CD player I bought was in 1984, it was a Magnavox (stylish and cost just over $400). My first CD's were Shiela E', Prince, Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, Psychedelic Furs (MTV had a huge impact on my musical taste, especially anything on 120 minutes because you weren't hearing that music on the radio in Kentucky- it was all top 40 crap.)"

Brian and I would play basketball on his hot blacktop driveway and he would do play by play as if we were each on the UK basketball team and the timer was counting down to zero. My first ever ride in a convertible was in his 1968 VW Karmann Ghia convertible... WAY cooler than the station wagon!

I remember watching Mtv in the basement. We didn't have cable TV in Appleton, so it was a real technological experience with cable TV, CD's etc. SO MANY CHANNELS! Plus it was awesome to see all the creative music videos. I took a special liking to Genesis and Phil Collins for some reason. Listening to "Invisible Touch" takes me back to KY.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

It was from Leigh-Ann the I learned the clever art of talk-back and mockery. I didn't realize that's what it was at the time, but it was hilarious. She sat us down and put in the VHS tape of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Little did I know there is an "audience participation" aspect of this movie... there's only so much you can understand as a six yearold. But I do remember the part when they got married at the beginning. There's a line when someone at the wedding says "I always cry at weddings." Charlene promptly responded "and laugh at funerals." At the time I thought this little wise crack was 100% original. I think I fell asleep after that. Now that the internet exists, I found a comprehensive list of all the talk-back moments in the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Dr. Ruth

When we weren't watching Mtv, or movies I do recall watching Dr. Ruth. This was a TV show about sex, and 100% of it went over my head (of course)... but I do remember it being on, and also "COOL" to watch. This old lady preaches about sex... watching it now is rather comical and I cannot believe this was so accepted in the conservative Reagan years of the 80's! Alas, if you were "in the know" in the 80's you watched Mtv, Saturday Night Live and Dr. Ruth! Here is an awesome video of Dr. Ruth with Ozzy Osbourne.

1986: Lionel Ritchie - Dancing on the Ceiling

Saturday morning was usually cleaning time. I'd get up extra early to eat four bowls of cereal at the fireplace and watch cartoons in the family room. I always poured a ton of milk in the bowl, enough to cover all the cereal. Often, I'd leave the bowl on the fireplace, and after some time it would be stuck to the fireplace. For some reason, the "family room" was our main hang out spot in the house. The living room, in contrast, was only a "formal" room that we only used at Christmas time.
Cartoons were usually done with around 11 or 11:30am, and WWF Superstars was on after that. Usually by that time, my mom was planting the seed that cleaning would start taking place. I have vivid memories of cleaning the house and watching Spider Man.



"Dancing on the Ceiling" was one of the first songs I ever recorded on my "dual-cassette" boom box. It was all over the radio, so I just taped it off the radio. The song made my 6 year old self hyperactive. I remember having to clean my room, and after I was finished I would jump on the bed. I wonder where the parental control of not allowing kids to jump on the bed came about because my mom didn't seem to mind.

My sister had the room right next to mine, but around the corner. We had a clothes chute right in front of my door. The thing to yell was "bombs away" while dropping clothes down the shoot. The saying eventually evolved to "bombs your clothes."

Cleaning my room most always coincided with my sister cleaning hers as well. Her big collection at the time was Cabbage Patch Kids. They were all the rage in the 80's, and moms literally fought for them during Christmas shopping rushes. I don't remember how many she had, but it was enough to span at least one row of them across her full-sized bed. Amy would clean her room, and put all of her Cabbage Patch Kids in a row on her bed, and stop by my room. We would pretend she owned an orphanage, and I was a customer. So she would escort me into her room and introduce me to all the babies. I would get their names and how long they were in the orphanage. Based on all that criteria, I would pick one to keep. Looking back I'm not sure what I did with it after I chose one. If it went to my room, I can't image too much time passed before she took it back. Not "back to the orphanage," but back to her room (play concluded).

When we started to get older, it would be a little bit more devious. For example, Amy would design a menu for lunch. Lots of layout and design went into this sheet (she will grow up to become a graphic designer/photographer). I got to pick from four or five different sandwiches to eat for lunch. Keep in mind this was something like 1. jelly, 2. peanut butter, 3. peanut butter and jelly, etc. The very last time we played that game she spiked my sandwich with Mrs. Dash seasoning. I was pretty mad. Even when she made it over again, I had to check the sandwich by peeling apart the halves of bread.

1986: The Cutting Crew

My dad grew up with homing pigeons. In 1976, he moved my brothers an my mom out of Appleton, and built a house in the "sticks" of Darboy. In the back yard, he built a pigeon coop. There was a local pigeon racing club he became a part of. The pigeon club was pretty cool. They had a big party every year, with kids my age. They also had a spot in the newspaper to say who won the races.

Essentially you would drive your team of racing pigeons to a location on the map all at the same time, and a timer started. Once (and I'm not sure) the first or all of your pigeons make it back to your coop, time is compensated in some way... and it's scored. Winning such races brings money and your name in the local newspaper.

Mike worked at this huge bird store, and built a bird room in the basement, where he would attempt to breed finches and ring neck doves and all kinds of birds. The coolest one was a Blue front Amazon parrot named "Sonny." The parrot was cool because it could talk and repeat words. I got the biggest kick out of it. His white Moloucan Cockatoo named Princess. It ended up getting sick, losing all its feathers. Princess died of a disease that's like that bird's version of AIDS called "beak and feather syndrome." The bird caught it from temporarily living with a mate that Mike owned only briefly and sold off. We had a parakeet named Oscar that we kept in the dining room. My dad taught Oscar to say "bullshit" and "fuck you." My mom used to (in a small fit of rage) yell to God that she was "so sick and tired of that frickin' bird." As a kid, that brought quite a chuckle. We thought it was hilarious... any opportunity to laugh my butt off as a kid was taken full advantage of.

Both Tommy and Mike worked at my dad's dental lab. Sometimes I'd find myself there too, doing small stuff like taking out garbage. Mike would find plaster models of people's teeth, and taught me how to drill a hole through it so he could wire into the birdcages. I'm not sure if they scratched their claws on them or what. All I knew was that it was fun.



The song"Just Died in your arms tonight" was a pretty big radio song. It was all over the radio, and more often then not, you'd hear it in the car. I think about riding in the station wagon with Mike and one particular story:

Mike was involved with my Dad's hobby a little bit. We all had responsibilities around the house, and one of Mike's, especially in high school, was feeding the pigeons, and exercising them. On this occasion, Mike drove the pigeons far away to have them fly back. We drove a few hours southwest of our house. I remember seeing a water tower with an indian head painted on it, which I now realize was Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

We were driving all over for some reason. I'm not sure if we were lost or what. almost ran out of gas looking for diesel. Mike was sort of freaking out. We'd pull into a gas station, they wouldn't have diesel, and we'd have to find a different gas station. When we let the birds out, Amy lost jelly shoe and we were driving back before she said anything... and we had to go back for it. I don't remember stopping at any exact place to let the birds out, so how we found the place again to look for her shoe was impossible in my young mind. I think we ended up finding the shoe, and it would have been way too long a drive home to not have found it.

1985 : Every Time You Go Away

Paul Young - Every Time You Go away


I always considered my family a singing family. I grew up thinking this was normal... breaking into song in the car, at the dinner table, whenever a song came on that we know. My mom encouraged it, when I think most others might have been annoyed. Until high school, I always had trouble hearing the actual lyrics. Many times I'd just make up what sounded good.

I spent many summers at a cottage in the Wisconsin Northwoods. We would pack up the wooden sided Oldsmobile diesel station wagon and spend weekends or even weeks at a time up north. At the age of 5 this was bliss. I brought clothes and some He-Man guys and I was set. He-Man got to fight Skeletor in all sorts of new places up there... on the dock, on a tree stump - sky was the limit.

The closest town that had good shopping was about 45 minutes away in a town called Rhinelander. I vividly remember hearing Paul Young's "Every Time You Go Away" while sitting in the station wagon going up the driveway. The end of the driveway went uphill a bit, where in the fall I could pick blackberries. When the song came on, we started singing, this was a song I could not decipher lyrics. My lyrics became singing, "You Take a Piece of meat with you."

To me, that was like "packing a lunch." The real words are "take a piece of ME with you." At the age of five, I'm not sure I would have understood that... sounds in a food perspective slightly cannibalistic! But the lyrics, to my mother, prompted a serious "birds and the bees for five year olds" pep talk. I seem to remember her talking about how fast I was growing up and how I would "someday meet a girl from up north yada yada."

Once we got to the store, I picked out some shoes that looked like a car from the side and bottom profile. I remember these shoes being expensive, and I could wear the tread off shoes in two weeks. My parents and siblings were always in awe of the sight of how fast I could wear out a pair of shoes. So from talking about growing up to picking out car-looking shoes, I still had a lot of growing up to do. My mom would be right about fourteen years later, I'd go on to meet a girl in college from WAY up north in Wisconsin, and ended up being the person I dated pretty much throughout college. Moms are always right, or they at least know what's going on.

Whenever I hear Every Time You Go Away... I think about putting meat in a ziplock bag, and riding in that station wagon up north with my car shoes on.

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.

1985: Money For Nothing... first "band" & my first sleep over

Dire Straits was a cassette my dad had in his truck. On our way up north, my grandpa, dad, and I would play both sides the entire two hour ride. I was too little to see over the hood, so I sat on this big fluffy pillow in between my grandpa and my dad. We wore Dire Straits tape out... his tape player in the truck might have eaten it, but I like to think we wore it out. Instead of simply replacing it, we mailed it to my brother Tommy when he went to college in Daytona to see if he could fix it. After highschool, Tommy went to American Motorcycle Institute (AMI) to get a certified Harley Mechanic degree.

I went to Holy Angels, which was a catholic school in Darboy Wisconsin. It was called Darboy USA, because Darboy (unincorporated) didn't show up on a Wisconsin state map. Ironically, it did show up on a map of the entire United States. Darboy was sort of an "in between" area in the midst of many cities. It's very near Appleton, Kimberly, Comined Locks, Kaukauna and Menasha. So other than "the boon docks," it was always hard to describe exactly where I went to school. Most people had never heard of it... unless of course they were an adult.

I don't remember if it was pre-school or kindergarten, but my first two friends in Holy Angels were Eric and Nick. Nick was somehow related to me through his mom and my grandma... so I was his fourth cousin or something. Eric's grandparents owned the "Dairyland's Best" local dairy: Lamers Dairy, which made the best milk (especially chocolate milk) around.

My first ever sleep over was at Nick's house. Eric and I went over there with our sleeping bags. We were read a story by Nick's cousin Sara I think... who would end up being a summer park leader in coming years. Other than that I remember Nick had the biggest toy rooms I'd ever seen. It was like an empty bedroom just FULL of toys. I couldn't believe it.

The next morning, we went outside on his porch. Eric and Nick had a couple toys that made noise... I think one of them was a He-Man vehicle that rattled when it moved. They started "practicing" between each other. I asked "what are you guys doing?" They said they were practicing their song. They had a band. All excited, I wanted to be in the band. They responded "you probably don't know the song we do." So they started playing it... and it was Money For Nothing by Dire Straits! I was through the roof at that point. "I know that song! Can I be in the band?" Between all three of us, none of us knew the entire song. We were pretty much just singing the chorus and making noise with toys. The band didn't even have a name. But for those 5 minutes... we were the coolest band ever.

Money For Nothing had an awesome video too. Lots of animation, seemed like it was made with kids in mind. I do remember the words a little differently. The current radio version is edited! There was a politically incorrect line in the song about "that little faggot, he's a millionaire." In the early to mid-80's, it was very common in our town for teens to make fun of somebody by calling them a faggot or queer. Today however, that's not the case. The song on the radio and video has been edited and the offensive language removed.

The next morning, we went to this two-story Burger King on College Avenue in Appleton to get kids meals. The "kid's cup" was a He-Man cup with a comic printed around the outside. I still have it.

Eric lived much closer to me. I remember he was over and we were outside on my swingset. We were talking about best friends and who they were. I had never really thought about "best" friend much, but I said a little too quickly that Nick was my best friend. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because we were related in some small way, or that we had the same name, maybe cause of his room full of toys... who knows? I knew right away that it was the wrong answer. Who was I on my swingset with? Eric said his best friend was ME. The right answer. And I thought that was the coolest thing anyone ever said to me. I'm not sure if he remembers this, but my answer to the "best friend" question was one of the first things I ever said that I totally regretted and never verbally took back. As time progressed, thankfully, it was as if I had never said that.

We were not the 3 amigos forever. Nick would end up going to a different grade school. In fact, that sleep over I think was the only time I really hung out with Nick outside of school. Eric, on the other hand, would stay my best friend. We both went to the same school until 1998 when we left for different colleges. In time, Eric would end up being the first phone number I memorized, the first kid's house I ever biked to, and the only kid I ever biked to school with. I can guarantee you'll see Eric's name throughout my autobiography. Good friends, especially ones you can say you've had since 1985, are pretty rare.

Women that rock II - Lita Ford

Lita Ford - Dancin' on the Edge

British born Lita Ford staked her claim in glam rock with her looks and guitar shredding capabilities. Not only could Lita rock vocally, her guitar playing skills were advanced to put it lightly. Many critics claimed she had a male lead guitarist, but this chick could wail!



My brothers would have much more input than me on this artist. Their paths have crossed in the past. In Green Bay WI, the big arena was called the Brown County Arena. That's where all the big bands play. Ratt and Lita Ford were going to play there, and their opening act couldn't make it. So word came to the manager of Defiance (my brothers' band). They were offered to open up. Tommy, in a stroke of bad luck was sick. The band was told if they could do the gig, all they'd have to bring is their guitars. They said yes and headed up to Green Bay, which was about a 20 minute drive.

Defiance had their own dressing room, with their name on a star on the door. When they got there, the entire band got giddy jumping up and down like a bunch of little girls. They got to meet Lita Ford, who both acted and appeared to be on drugs. For the show, Michael Boyle got to plug his guitar into what was described to me as "a wall of Marshall amps."

Stories like this didn't happen that much when I was a teenager, or in college for that matter. The 80's was just sort of cool because things like this happened. With the internet the way it is, and cell phones able to reach anyone, the way Defiance was offered a gig seemed a lot more pure that how it would go down these days. Modern technology like cell phones and computers make it easier to expose a band to the public, but bigger bands will also have an easier time finding lots of acts to play... making the chances of your phone ringing a rarity.

Lita Ford and (previously mentioned)Pat Benatar are only two of the female acts in rock. There are lots of others including Vixen, Heart, The Bangles, Joan Jett, and more! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. More to come. LONG live the women of rock!