Today Is ...

November 27, 2024, at home

I loved playing the jukebox at The Pioneer dinner in West Islip, Long Island, New York, in the early 1970s, when my parents and I occasionally ate dinner there. Each table had it's individually jukebox terminal. I would always play the 45-rpm vinyl record of the Paul and Linda McCartney song "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," starting from its release on 1971, when I was ten years old. Could it be that they were using those large magnetic tape cartridges like the radio stations were using?

I also remember playing Side B of the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water," which was an alternate version to the radio version on Side A. That song was released in 1972.

I also remember playing the Eric Clapton song "Lay Down Sally" on many wintry Saturday mornings at a diner in nearby Bay Shore, while waiting for a bus to take my friends John and Tommy and I to go skiing in the "mountains" of New Jersey. That was when the song was released in 1977, when I was sixteen years old. Actually, we probably played it in 1978, because I was hospitalized with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in May 1977, so I likely didn't go skiing that winter.