Welcome to The Club Spring 2024

This FREE magazine is distributed in most of Sarnia-Lambton.
It’s Only Rock and Roll, or is it?
by Mark Moran, Publisher
It’s no secret that we have far too much stuff these days. It controls us far more than
we control it and sometimes it’s all we can do just to get rid of it… to purge. We live in
a world where we can have a thousand TV channels to choose from and still can’t find
anything worth watching. Every song that’s been recorded since you were born can be
stored on a device smaller than your baby finger. It’s incredible, but do we really need
it? Are we happier? Is it more rewarding? Does it bring joy to our lives, or are we better
people because of this technology and all this stuff? Would we be happier if we had fewer
toys, and would we appreciate those ones more?
It’s hard to truly appreciate one or two things when we just have so many to choose
from. I’m yet to learn how to play the harmonica (the easiest of all instruments apparently)
but I own six of them. One would probably suffice, given my complete lack of ability or
practice time.
There’s a point to this story, which
is about my first radio. It was a GE or
Panasonic I think, and I bought it at
Consumers Distributing which was in
the Zellers Plaza on London Road in
Sarnia. I’m guessing that it was 1978
and that my mom encouraged me
to buy it because I needed an alarm
clock for high school. I don’t know
that I ever mastered the alarm clock option but that radio, and the cassette recorder
contained within, had an immeasurable impact on my life.
This was in Port Lambton... a very small town then, as it is now. I was a few years away
from getting a drivers license and the sense of independence it might bring, and it wasn’t
likely that I’d be seeing a rock concert anytime soon, but that radio took me to all points
of the globe, and especially on the stage with the bands of the day. Even backstage!
CKLW was about as cool as Canadian radio stations got to be in this neck of the woods,
but we were blessed with the proximity of Detroit, Rock City, Motown, and the FM signals
that emanated from there knew no borders, and they didn’t care that I was only 12 or 13.
WCSX, and WLLZ rocked my world, and I knew all the D.J’s names and their individual
voices like the back of my own hand, but nothing compared to WRIF and the voice of
one Arthur Penthalow. At that time, in that music city, he was the epitome of the rock
‘n’ roll disk jockey. School teachers taught me what they could about math and English
and the importance of remembering the combination to my lock, but the voices and the
songs in my radio taught me so much more about growing up, trying to be cool, and
being comfortable in my own skin.
You couldn’t live in Port Lambton without being a Stones and Bob Seger and Lynryd
Skynrd fan, but the radio opened my eyes to Van Halen and Journey and REO Speedwagon
and Pat Benatar and AC/DC and so many more. That was my golden era and it still is in
many ways. Like many of you I would wait by that $29 device with the record and play
buttons pushed down carefully into place and my finger on the pause button, holding
my breath in anticipation, waiting to release it and record the newest song by one of
those artists, or countless more. It was even more fun to make our own playlists by
choosing which songs we wanted to fill the cassette up with, and trying not to miss more
than the first few seconds of the starting. I eventually became a musician, and spent
countless hours rewinding those very cassette tapes bit by bit, again and again, in an
effort to learn the lyrics. It was years later before the internet came along and made all
the words to almost every song freely available, and I was able to look back and see how
embarrassingly wrong I’d been singing them for so long. It’s Tiny Dancer… not Tony
Danza! And that’s only one example. There are many more, though no one ever seemed
to notice.
In my own personal experience, that is nostalgia! It’s not just the radio/alarm clock/
cassette recorder and its eternally cool, panel brown appearance. It’s that this one device
(and I really can’t think of anything else that mattered at that point in my life) had
that much of an impact on me, then and well into the future. I’ve been a professional
musician for over 40 years. It began by watching my eight older sisters and brothers
embark on their own musical journeys, whether they were players or just listeners (and
singing in the church choir) but it’s that radio that took me to places I couldn’t otherwise
go. And no one else could really go with me on that experience. It was time I spent alone,
with all the disk jockeys and the rock stars of course.
The first cassette I ever bought was Queen’s “News of the World” at the Sears in
the Northgate plaza (near the escalator). I bought it to impress a girl (and because I’d
practically worn out the 8 track of their previous album “A Night at the Opera” in my
brother Dave’s car). It cost $9 and the guitar solo at the end of We Will Rock You is what
made me want to be a guitar player. Not a bad investment in hindsight. I still play songs,
a lot of songs to be truthful, that I first heard on that marvel of modern 1979 technology,
all those years ago.
Getting back to the question of too much stuff, I do love each of my nine guitars
and am always looking to add to the collection. But if you asked me if I would trade
that crappy old radio for the hundreds of channels and millions of songs that are at
my fingertips today… well, probably not... but I am glad that it’s all I had back then.I
wouldn’t trade that experience for the world, and having little more to my name than
that radio and those cassette tapes was an important part of the experience.
Welcome to...
Welcome to ...
THE
CLUB
Event Listings ................... 22-23
Discount List ............................. 26
Community Resources ....... 25
Giving List (Volunteering) ... 15
Snapshots .................................. 20
THE Club
The Club Features
Glen e C. Phillips, lips
,
Chris Treftlin, e i , #local, # o
a l,
Sipkens Nurseries,
N r s,
Kelly-Lynn y Musico, i o Ruth R t
Sharon, o , Mary M Lou Tasko, a k , Norma r a West
s t
Linder, d
e , Barry B Loxton, on, Susan Enders, r , Dave McIntosh, M h Daniel J.
J
Bellyk, Lou Parry, y
Sean e n Donnelly, l
ly
, Steve e e Arseneault, A s n Agnes
n s
Burroughs, B s
Billy ly
Armstrong, r
ro
Jayne y e Primeau, e u
Joan Pierson,
P s n
Glynn y n Leyshon, y n Lyn y
Tremblay, r
b
l y Susan a
Iedema, I ema,
Jeanette e n Paddon,
o ,
Jacoba b
Bos, Alice i e Gibb, b ,
Cherie h
DeBurger, D g r,
David i
J. Polley, e , Steve
e e
Loxton, on
, Laurissa sa
Ellsworth and d
all l the Recipe e contributors.
tors
rs.
Mark Moran - Publisher, Ad Sales
Carrie Ann Timm - Associate Publisher
Carla MacGregor - Advertising Sales
Rhonda Long - Advertising Sales
Angela Lyon - Graphics & Editing
Carla Mejia - Graphic Design
From the
publishers of
DAYTRIPPING
ING
MAGAZINE
VOLUME 4,
ISSUE 1
Spring 2024
YOUR CONTRIBUTORS
CLUB STAFF
Trivia ........................ 34
Recipes ............ 18, 38
Crossword ............. 17
Word Search ....... 39
Sudoku ................... 28
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