It Was A Great Time To be A Kid

I was talking to one of our Drive listeners the other day who also happens to be a friend. Mike Kelly (no relation...and I think he's thankful!!). He mentioned that he had heard me say something on the air last week about the music I was playing that really hit home for him. It was a Stones song from the mid 60's I think and I mentioned, especially from a musical standpoint, what a great time to be alive that decade was. He heard me say that you were hearing all of this great music for the very first time. One after another; one from the Stones, then one from The Beatles & that would be followed by something from another great artist. As great as it is to be playing some of that music today on The Drive, being one of the lucky ones to be hearing that stuff for the very first time as a kid was a very special thing. Mike felt the same way. That got me to thinking about what kind of effect my favorite 60's group The Beatles had on not only my generation, but on a whole new generation 40 some odd years later. And though it really only scratches the surface of why that music is so strongly entrenched in our lifestyles even today, I took a look at some of the statistics concerning The Beatles music that has yet to be duplicated. Take for instance the fact that in the first week of April 1964, The Beatles held twelve positions on the record singles chart, including the top five positions. Neither feat has been matched by any other artist to date. Unless you include the first time their music was released on CD back in 1987. They held the top 5 chart positions again, but this time on the album charts. And now with the release of The Beatles Rock Band & the newly remastered Beatles catalog they are dominating the charts again for a third time. Four of those remastered albums made the top ten, with seven more in the top 40. They had 16 titles in the top 60, breaking a record set by Elvis Presley in 1977. As I mentioned earlier, all these numbers just scratch the surface. It's the reason for all those numbers that is the real story. And for that reason you just have to go back to the time I was a kid....that reason is quite simple: the music.