Ralph Berrier

Riffs, the regional music scene as heard by The Roanoke Times reporter Ralph Berrier, will appear weekly on Sundays.

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Good Lord, it's been 30 years.

I thought just old-timers said that. "It's been 30 years since we had a snow that deep." "It's been 30 years since I shook President Truman's hand." "It's been 30 years since I got my head stuck in the pickle barrel at Chester McSnoot's General Store."

Now, I'm the one saying it. It's been 30 years since I became a pop music fanatic.

I remember the exact date -- Jan. 28, 1978. We were playing Nerf basketball in Todd Hill's basement. Todd was three years older than me and he knew all the right moves, like the one where he'd lower his shoulder into my chest as he shot, score the basket and somehow call a foul on me in the process.

Todd was about to turn 15, so he could get away with that stuff. He was much savvier than the rest of us -- me, my little brother Ricky and Todd's younger brother, Tim. He schooled us on the concrete jungle of his parents' basement. He was about to school me in pop music, too.

There we all were, Nerfing it up, when Todd suddenly screamed, "The Top 40's on!" and tore off up the stairs.

For a moment, I hesitated. "What's going on?" I wondered. "We were playing basketball. Why aren't we playing basketball?" Then, like the tag-along kid I was, I rushed up the stairs, too, with the little brothers right behind.

Todd had made tracks for the only radio in the house -- a clock radio in his parents' bedroom. The clock read 7 o'clock. "American Top 40" was coming on! With Casey Kasem! The top 40 what, I had no idea. Nor did I know Casey Kasem, although he sounded an awful lot like Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo."

For the next three hours, we listened to every song of that countdown. Todd wrote down each tune as Casey counted down to No. 1. So did I. Todd had his list from the previous week, so he tried to predict who'd get the top spot. Would this be the week for the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive"? The Brothers Gibb recently had a No. 1 with "How Deep is Your Love." Both songs, of course, were from "Saturday Night Fever," which had just begun a 24-week stay at No. 1 on the albums chart.

(Bonus 1970s fun fact: Between March 1977 and July 1978, only five albums made it to No. 1 on the Billboard chart -- "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac, "Hotel California" by the Eagles, "Simple Dreams" by Linda Ronstadt, "Saturday Night Fever" and the incomparable "Barry Manilow Live." Could any list scream "SEVENTIES" louder than that one?)

"Stayin' Alive" would have to wait another week. The No. 1 song on Jan. 28, 1978, was "Baby Come Back" by Player.

And that's how it happens. One minute, you're a little kid playing Nerf ball in the basement and the next minute you're listening to the type of music your dad wished you'd just turn off. I didn't miss "American Top 40" for almost two years. I was obsessed. If we visited another family on a Saturday night, I locked myself in a room with a radio, unless they had bad reception, then I just sat in the car and wrote down every song.

I listened during my dad's softball tournaments ("Shadow Dancing" was huge that summer) and at the kitchen table in the fall (I loved Nick Gilder's "Hot Child in the City"). I doodled in the margins and posted the date on every sheet. I have absolutely no idea what happened to any of those lists.

By 1980, my musical tastes had evolved to include classic rock, especially the Beatles -- who had existed just a decade previous, yet they were still "classic" (time moved slower in the '70s) -- and I shunned the top 40. Turned my back on Casey and disavowed all that schlock I had once loved.

I never listened to pop radio very much after that. I missed out on a lot of cheesy dance stuff in the '80s (except for what I heard at the Bus Stop in Radford). The music I preferred didn't stand much of a chance against Motley Crue, Van Hagar and Paula Abdul. For me, the top 40 became increasingly irrelevant. I checked out the Billboard Web site and discovered I couldn't hum a chorus of any song in the top 10.

That doesn't change the fact that "American Top 40" influenced me during an impressionable age. Right now, some kid is listening to every song in the top 10, downloading them to his computer rather than writing them down, and starting down a lifelong path of musical fanaticism. Sounds like another boy I knew a long time ago.

It's been 30 years. Good Lord.