Update 7/7/26: A very kind reader comment gave me the idea of looking up the song again just now, and giving it a listen. Wow. Even after 54 years, at that first guitar line some fine thread of perception woke right up and recognized it. I’d forgotten the fancy syncopated drum drive, that hammering honky tonk keyboard, and of course the closing whoop. Those lads had a fine day at the studio. No wonder it got attention on our street. Thank you, Reader!

Down at the Rice Family home, son Barry bought a new long-playing (LP) phonograph record.

Back then, that always meant that the buyer’s family was going to get really used to that record. So was the whole street. A young fan enjoying an album for the 12,000th time was open season for any relative or friend or passerby to toss in their opinion and even make fun of the song, or its lyrics, or the picture of the band on the cover. Did the public communal nature of music have any improving influence over record purchases or listening habits? Could be.

The ruckus on our street (cars, push lawn mowers, transistor radios, airplanes, sirens, dogs, ice cream truck bells) often muffled out the music coming from a house. But on Barry Rice’s new album, one song had a hook — a long high brassy tone that floated up and over all other interference. Every time, I used to stop and listen for that high note repeating now and then until the song was over.

Over the next few days, snatches of the rest of the song and album drifted out the windows. The song with the high note had driving percussion and mood shifts and singing with a low growling vocal fry. The short two-line refrain had one long bended note falling in pitch; but then that bugle touch kicked in with its sharp sustained high note, a contrasting tone of citrus brightness. It sounded like a pained faltering horse recovering its stride in a heroic galvanized leap. It also brought to mind the dawning of a whole new youthful question: how do musicians build up all the layers in a piece of music anyway, and get good at it? How do they just know to throw in the one unique unexpected salt shake that seasons a whole song?

So one June day around summer solstice time, when the windows were open and there was music all over the street, I knocked on the Rices’ door. That was normal manners back there and back then, with neighbors stopping by each other’s houses for every kind of reason. The unusual part was that this time I asked to speak to Barry. That was our first and last conversation, because once the boys got to be teenagers they really didn’t have a reason to talk to younger girls, or be seen around them. But with that music question in mind I knocked anyway.

   “Come in, Hon,” Dad Rice called through the screen door, looking up from the Sunday funny paper comics. “Barry? He’s in his room. As you can tell from all his din. BARRY. Company!”

There was the faintest swoop noise of a lifted music needle. Barry peered out of his bedroom.

   “I hear you talking when I’m on the street,” I said to Barry. “What is that?”

   “You what?” Barry blinked.

   “No no, it’s the first line of a song on that album. What’s the title?”

   “Name of the… song?” If he were playing it for just the other fellas, he might have answered without another thought. But with me and with Dad there reading the funnies, Barry shrugged. “Oh, who knows.”

   “Who knows?” Dad Rice looked over his glasses. “YOU should. You play it enough.”

   “Whatever. I don’t think it has a name, Pop,” his son shrugged.

   “Those jokers make the big bucks playing the guitar and trying to sing,” said Dad. “Didn’t bother to name their own songs?”

   “Oh never mind, it’s ok,” I told them. “I just like the bugle part.”

   “Bugle?” Barry furrowed his brow. “Record doesn’t have a bugle.”

   “Did you leave your manners in the barn?” Dad Rice asked him. “Mary took an interest. Just show her the album!”

Barry didn’t bring the album out to us. Instead he propped open his door, waved me in to his room, and handed it to me in there.

It was easy to see why he didn’t put it out on the coffee table with Mom Rice’s Infant of Prague statue on a crochet doily. The cover art looked depressed or distressing somehow, like pictures from an old circus side show. The words on the sleeve didn’t make much sense, and if they were any easier to hear and understand the adults would have shut that record down pretty fast. The titles didn’t make sense either (but the songs did all have one). I puzzled over it for a bit, and handed it back. “Thank you. Can I hear that trumpety part close up?”

Barry opened a box with a little currycomb, but instead of bristles it had a side of green velvet. He brushed the velvet in a circle around the record surface. He turned over the record on the turntable holding just the very edges with his palms. He lifted the arm lever, and lowered the needle.

I got on the floor next to the speaker box, and put my ear against the scratchy gold fabric. Wow. Now those brass-shaped vibrations were playing right inside my head! I said “Gee, that’s really interesting all right.” Then I got out of Barry’s way and gave him back his room. He was doing me a big favor letting me see his album, and even speaking to me at all. That honor made the June day feel important.

Another June, another solstice time last year, I was strolling in the park. Then through the trees there was a long faint distant rising cry. “AaaaaAAA!” I stopped short, on full alert. Somebody needs help! But where? In the trees, everything was quiet. But a minute or two later there it was again, loud and far away. “AaaaaAAA!” There as a pattern, over and over; first stillness, then that howling cry. I followed the sound out of the park, to the nearby neighborhood with pleasant gardens and stately homes.

Finally, way up the road, I figured out that the cries came from a man facing the other way. He was kneeling on the ground with incoherent yells and some ranting mumble in between. Couples with kids in strollers, dog owners with their pets, everyone enjoyed their solstice afternoon, giving him a brief look and then strolling right by. I couldn’t believe it. Will no one stop and help? What is this country coming to?

Gradually I deciphered the ranting too. “No more!” the man pleaded. “AaaaaAAA!” He seemed to be fumbling for something on the ground. “Pain! No more! AaaaaAAA!” And still the neighbors sauntered past with their ice cream cones and chat while this elderly man raved on. “Can’t even feel the pain no more! AaaaAAA!” At last I rushed to his side, catching my breath.

Wellsir. This is no elder who has fallen and he can’t get up. This Boomer looks strong as a rock pillar with his muscled shoulders and barrel chest. He’s in a grand mood, with a pleased grin, kneeling on a cushion and setting out flats of petunias — pink, white, red-striped, purple star-splotch; colors in rich soil, nurtured in strong deft hands. And with no sense of melody, at the top of his powerful siren lungs, he keeps belting out his jolly petunia planting song:

Kick me like you did before! I can’t even feel the pain no more. AaaaaAAA!

Wait, what? Those words! I’ve read them, I’ve held them in my hands. But where? When? My brain is spinning tumblers of a rusted padlock of memory. Then, the lock springs open. Eureka! This man in his tuneless blathering way is tossing off random lyrics from 50-plus years ago. He’s even imitating the horn section for the wee buglelets blooming at his feet.

All I can do is laugh. For a moment, it’s 1972 again. At the Rice home, Mom and Dad are still alive and well. Barry is a courteous teenager who saved his paper route money for a new record. He’s being thoughtful to a younger girl who shows admiring interest in his music. For her, he replays that one bright high metallic hook.

It’s the Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street. Placing the needle in just the right groove, he advises “There. Just forget about the words.”