One of the first guys I met when I started college in the fall of 1977 at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, was an upperclassman by the name of Duane Morrison. A bespectacled  Iowa farm boy, he was at an agriculture school to study . . . agriculture. Go figure.

Duane and his roommate, another upperclassman named Al Steinbach, lived right next door to me and my roommate Billy, in the dorms. A native New Yorker, Al apparently had decided to go to college in the heartland to study – best I could tell as a young, impressionable freshman – hillbillies. Since I lived right next door and appeared early on to be one of the new subjects of his study, he was in the right place.

The thing about Duane was that he had an advanced appreciation of music in 1977, especially vinyl. Duane and Al had the … Read more