KGB 101.5 FM

I remember my friend had the album Grand Illusion when I was around 17. I hadn't been a Styx fan before that. I heard that song and a few of the intros on the other songs. I thought, I gotta get that damn album. I got all my money together from the paper route I had off and on for years. It was my only source of income, since I was just finishing high school. I went to the store and bought it. I was excited. I ripped the plastic off, listened to one or two songs, and went out and did somethingI think mowed the lawn. Well, I left the record on the couch. My dad walked around with his crummy guitar, singing Roy Acuff songs. He sat down on the record and it cracked in half. I was so pissed. I had just gotten the thing. He said, "Who are they?" He didn't know anything about music unless it was country or Roy Acuff.

A few weeks later, I saved my money and bought the record again. I started to play "Come Sail Away," the slower hit, on my crappy little turntable on the floor beside the couch. My dad said, "This is why I don't listen to that hard-rock stuff."

My parents were divorced, and I was living with my dad in the Point Loma area. We had a cat that died, and my dad said instead of us just thinking about that cat, why not get another. We thought two kittens would be better, so they could play with each other when we weren't there. So we adopted two from a shelter.

One of them was chasing the other, and it jumped over the turntable. The other cat didn't clear the record and landed right on it. The spinning freaked it out, and it used its claws a bit as it got scared. The record got all scratched. I kid you not. Two albums of Styx, ruined, in two weeks. I just gave up.

And the first time my dad came to hang out when I was on the air, he said, "Why don't you play some Roy Acuff songs and enrich your classic-rock listeners?" He was dead serious.