I’m riding to a wedding downstate when I find out about Tony. It’s about 80 degrees outside, and a Louis Jordan CD is on: “Caledonia! Caledonia! What makes your big head so hard?” My friend Dan is driving, and Tony is in the back. It’s pretty quiet in the car. I don’t know Tony that well, but I’ve heard he knows a lot about music, so I idly ask him if Martha and the Vandellas ever had a top-ten hit besides “Nowhere to Run.”
Tony, as it turns out, is known for two things: his ability to sleep sitting up in a chair with his shoes on for eight hours, and his ability to recite the number-one Billboard Hot 100 single for nearly any date since 1955. The first talent rose out of necessity–he doesn’t have his own place, and not all his friends have spare beds. The second started, more or less, with one 45, the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.”
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Tony is pretty egalitarian when it comes to genre, but he will admit preferences under pressure. “There’s a lot of stuff I hear nowadays when I turn on the radio that makes me feel really kind of maladjusted. For instance, there was this one song I heard by R. Kelly, ‘Feelin’ on Yo Booty.’ I’m like, OK, where’s the love at? It’s just–I don’t know, I need that element of real and warmth. When I hear Pet Sounds, I hear someone who wants to be loved. If I’m listening to a record, I like to feel like whoever’s giving me the music gives a fuck.” Then he apologizes for swearing.
