Prisoners of Rock N Roll

by Rusty Philly…

I found this strange, dusty-old circular thingy in my dad’s garage the other day. At first I thought it was a Frisbee, but there was nowhere to grab hold of it. If you tried catching it, it might just slice your fingers off. Needless to say, it wasn’t a Frisbee.

“That’s a Record,” said my dad.

“A Record?” I said.

“Yes,” said my dad. “An Album. An LP. It plays music.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“It has music on it. See here? In the grooves.”

Poor dad. He’s seeing things again. My dad was getting old.

“They used to play these on radio stations, by people known as Disc Jockeys.”

Disk Jockeys? Now I knew he’d lost his mind.

“Songs used to be played over the air. For free. By one man who sat in a room full of records, sometimes called the Bullpen, or the Cage.”

“How many records?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a thousand. Maybe more.”

Now, I got it. It must have been some kind of state-sanctioned punishment. Back in the old days, prisons were busting at the seems. There were all types of pet programs designed to alleviate overcrowding. This must have been one of them.

Think about it: forced to sit in a room for who knows how long, having to work with these big, clumsy circular objects they called Records. Records. Get it? Moving them around like convicts used to move rocks? Confined in a small room they called a cage. Makes perfect sense.

Why music? To calm them down, of course. And with just a thousand songs to choose from, well, there was the punishment aspect of the program,

So how did my dad wind up with all these Records? I don’t know. Maybe he did time. Who knows what one’s parents were up to way back when. Whatever he might have done, by the size of the Record collection, I’d say he paid his debt to society. Watching him as he leafed through all his Records, I’d say he left a little bit of his mind back there as well.

“Come on dad,” I said, “let’s go get you something to eat.”

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Prisoners of Rock N Roll is the latest in the Flashbytes series from worst-selling author Philip Loyd. The title should say it all. Prisoners of Rock N Roll is of course the name of a Neil Young song, as well. This story is just another example how, rock and roll will never die.

Philly Loyd loves fat chicks and cheap beer, though not necessarily in that order. Loyd has worked for Forbes and McGraw Hill, each time running for his life as if waking up from a nightmare. He dreams of one day moving to Hollywood and winning a Razzie. Loyd lives in Dumbass, Texas.