Headset… I wasn't a ham radio enthusiast, but I was a 12 year old computer and music nerd, and I bought, with my own small allowance, a 1/4" to 1/8" adaptor, so I could use my Dad's headphones on my little one-speaker GE tape player.

Even when I was 17, I thought the teen sex comedy The Party Animal was pretty ridiculous. However, I couldn't get the opening/closing credits song out of my head, and that led to me squinting at my friend's bad VHS dub and first learning of The Buzzcocks, a band that wasn't exactly popular in central Michigan in the…