By Deborah Newell Tornello
aka litbrit
One early morning in 1981, I was on my way to the reliably decent waves of an inlet nicknamed "The Blowhole", speeding through the foggy plains of north Florida in an equally-foggy VW Minibus with a few surfer friends from my apartment complex. Suddenly a new and blistering version of The Kinks' You Really Got Me came shrieking out of the tinny old radio.
"Oh wow, turn this up!" I said.
These were the mellow stylings of a band called Van Halen, according to the DJ at WGVL "The Quadship" (or, as we dryly called it, the Quad-skip, given as it was to hiring DJ's who'd play obscure and scratchy old vinyl in the middle of the night and proceed to get too stoned to notice that they'd been broadcasting the same line, over and over, for the past half-hour).
