My book “Regarding Charlottesville Music” is now preserved forever in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland – the Rock Hall of Fame Library & Archives – a literal repository of rock open to scholars and school kids alike for deep research to class field trips. My 50 year Cleveland journey in a sentence or four: I moved to Shaker Heights before 6th grade and remember two things consistently beaming out of the radio in my parents’ Pontiac station wagon – Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights” and promos for the World Series of Rock to be held at the old Municipal Stadium where the Browns played. It all sounded so glorious and so out of reach to a 10 year dreamer. I got to do a lot of cool things in music in my life since then – all over the country from Ybor City to Minneapolis, from the stage of Madison Square Garden in New York City to the DJ booth of KEXP in Seattle – and literally every day that I get to go to work in Charlottesville. This one though feels extra cool because I put a bunch of my friends that are in that book into the Rock Hall orbit with me where future lil’ Richie Hearts can pull it off the shelf, read, learn, get lost in the photographs and dream.
Rich Tarbell 