One of the things I'm most thankful for, from my two older sisters, is the comprehensive education in popular music I was forced to receive from under the mysterious doors of their respective rooms. Occasionally, I was allowed in, under one pretense or another, to view the scattered panties and other incomprehensible garments on the floor, and to HEAR! To hear some of the best music of our time! Lest this epidose sound overly cynical, remember if you like that I spent upwards of $20 for a hard-to-find (and GREAT!) Turtles album, on vinyl, just last year. [And then found it on CD 2 wks ago! "Battle of the Bands!!" - Sundazed Records! -s]

Lynda was of an age to be very much into the Beatles and their many clones. The Monkees (Davy was her fave), the Raiders (Mark Lindsay), Peter & Gordon (one of them), Simon & Garfunkel (who knows?), and countless others.

Many an hour was spent staring deeply into the eyes of a young skinny white rocker's photograph, while the records played and played and played.

We had seen the Turtles twice before, once at the County Fair in Jackson, another time at a Battle of the Bands in DC, sponsored by the local radio station, which the Fab 5 or 6 headlined and hosted.

The drummer! Johnny Barbata - total dreamboat! His acne-scarred face, which spoke mutely of a harder life! His pencil-thin neck! His skin-tight white pants and nehru jacket! His HAIR, all cute with the bangs almost covering his eyes!

My barely-pubescent sister was obsessed with this highly eligible young specimen. His foot hit the drum pedal, connected directly to her beating pulse. The high-hat fluttered in approximate time with her eyelids, and her tears dripped like taradiddles on a tabletop that barely resembled the skin of his snare drum.

He was SO underappreciated, an ARTIST at the drumkit, hidden behind Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (Later Flo and Eddie, with the Mothers...), two of the fattest singers in Rock'n'Roll since the Guess Who.

Indeed, she wrote the Turtles' manager, expressing her barely expressible feelings for the fellow. In return, she received a note from the manager, allowing backstage access, at the upcoming show, to the man of her dreams, accompanied by an eminently kissable portrait of Johnny, and special-for-her offers to purchase merchandise.

Backstage with the Turtles! I was somehow lucky enough to be the one who got to go to the show with her.

My friend Matthew gave me a whole list of things to ask the Turtles for, including a stuffed animal signed by each of them - he had an older sister, too, and had read too many 16 magazines, prolly.

The big night arrived. Mom drove us to Shady Grove Music Hall, where we had front row seats. Even *I* was wet with anticipation, as the opening band slogged thru a slew of three-chord odes to women of various names.

The Turtles hit the stage. They crooned and gurgled out all the faves. My poor sister was petrified, sweating, and wiping her nose on her sleeve in anticipation of the great moment when she and Johnny would come face to face. It would be Love. He would kiss her, hard, toss an inky stuffed turtle at her pesky little brother, and take her away from all this!

I was wiping my nose on my sleeve too, but it didn't work, so I used my finger.

Howard Kaylan was a stocky guy, moustached, with a black hat, glittery nehru jacket, tight black bellbottom pants squeezing his tummy up to where it might be mistaken for pectorals by a very short and/or nearsighted person.

Mark Volman, now, HE was LARGE. The man had his own area code! He didn't have a waistline, he had an *equator*! He had his own magnetic field and GRAVITY! He was the stuff of parents' admonitions, useful for frightening small children into obedience! The stage, indeed, was concave where he stood. In addition, he had HUGE frizzy black hair surrounding, nearly overcoming his sweat-dotted pudgy face.

A moment came. My sister held the precious, revered, sacred note up towards the stage, in a hand that merely echoed the quivering of her entire body. The gargantuan amphibians managed to ignore her for quite some time, even while staring directly at the proferred piece of paper.

An eternity passed. My sister grew up, went to college, graduated, got married twice, had a kid, the kid grew up, and Linda was a grandma. I stayed ten, however .

Finally, heavy-lidded Howard spotted the white fragment waving in the air before him. As if on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, His hand reached out, and connected with the note with a bright flash of almost unendurable sunlight and/or an errant stage-hand's white spot. Lynda's beaming, shiny, upturned face was the very picture of transportation, as the holy missive left her sweaty little fist.

Howard didn't look at the note; perhaps dyslexic, he handed it to the unctuous yet fearsome Mr. Volman.

Mr. Volman, however, also did not look at the note; he crumbled it up, popped it in his mouth and chewed it, and spat it out on the stage, well out of our reach, should either of us wish to retrieve it.

Thus a young girl's dreams crashed in upon themselves, and a boy's entire concept of Rock'n'Roll changed. This was, for me, a Defining Moment, and I've understood Rock'n'Roll ever since as a place where depraved humor reigns.

DOES the note still exist, EVEN today, in some time-warped parallel universe where infinite Mark Volmans endlessly chew and spit, chew and spit? DOES it perhaps still lie, embedded in the stage of Shady Grove Music Hall, trod upon by the likes of Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond? HAVE its components reverted to their individuality, oxygen here, hydrogen there, the sodium from my sister's palm an invisible smudge on some sidewalk somewhere, some other minute portion still lodged in one of Mark Volman's back teeth?

I like to think so.