1973: KSHE in St Louis is the first radio station to play an REO Speedwagon song. Maybe it was “Ridin’ the Storm Out,” released the same year on the album of the same name.

The lyrics situate the singer in the Colorado mountains yearning for something left behind.

My wine bottle’s low
Watching for the snow
I’ve been thinking about what
I’ve been missing in the city

In 1973, we would have been living in Perrine, Florida. Far from the center of Miami, Perrine was pronounced P-rine. It was a blue collar neighborhood distinguishable by small homes and the early signs of urban expansion. Our working class status might have been marked by my mom’s Gremlin or my bedroom table made out of a door. Henry Perrine, who the city was named for, was murdered in 1840 by Seminole Indians in the Indian Key Massacre. I went to Perrine Elementary, which later was burned to the ground. The fort my dad built in the backyard has long been torn down.

The wind outside is frightening,
But it’s kinder than the lightning life in the city.
Its a hard life to live but it gives back what you give.

This photo might be 1974. This is a photo from our home in Perrine. There are paintings on the wall that now sit in a box in my basement. For whatever reason, in 1973 Kevin Cronin opted to leave REO Speedwagon for a solo career. As anyone familiar with the band knows, the departure was short-lived. Cronin was the face of the band’s sudden fame in 1980. Ridin’ The Storm Out is an odd disc in the REO history; Cronin is missing. The group’s third album comes out while I am three (I will turn four by the year’s end). What is missing, I ask, from this picture taken one year later? The glasses I will later wear (thick rimmed, black)? The temperament? Resemblance is not missing. My sister looks so much like Vered.

Like any temporal juxtaposition, or series of, what is missing is the least obvious. We could call that lack “fate” or “fortune” but I am more interested in “insight” or “heuristic.” That 35 years pass and I now live two hours from that first radio airplay fascinates me. The avant-garde may have called such realizations “accident” but I feel compelled to draw them out and compose with them. “I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been missing in the city.” Indeed, our current relationship to the city revolves around what we miss: better consumer options, better dining. We drive two hours to experience both. If my family had money in 1973, likely they would have done the same. They would have driven to Miami (or even Kendall) for better shopping. Now, we engage with consumption as a way to make living away from the city memorable. But this isn’t a lament, for most of the things we treat as special in the city are things I would not have paid much attention to when I lived in the city: Whole Foods. Asian food. Better beer. A book store. The everyday is not a special moment. It only becomes special when it is missing; “it’s a hard life to live but it gives back what you give.” What become special, for instance, are photographs, like the one I include here, for they, too, mark the everyday. Who would have made that one moment special? The photograph. Or me now composing this liner note to an REO Speedwagon album.