My Greatest Musical Moments (And Yours?)

ASTRONOMIE DOMINE

Do you have a greatest musical moment? A time when you put on an album, paused to listen to the radio or the lights went down at a concert and the world moved?

I’m going to cop out and say upfront that I have had many greatest musical moments over a life in which music has been a nearly constant companion, so these are but a few:

* Sitting thisclose to jazz piano great McCoy Tyner at the old Showboat, an intimate club on Lombard Street in Philadelphia, as he galloped through his "Atlantic" album.

* Hearing Martha Argerich demolish Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.

* Cresting the last hill on Interstate 80 on a beautiful August morning in the final day of a cross-country trip and seeing the fog-draped vistas of Oakland and San Francisco emerge as Seals & Crofts' "Summer Breeze" came on the radio.

* Levitating off my seat as Mahavishnu Orchestra, a jazz fusion band that I knew nothing about and was totally unprepared for, hit the first note of "Inner Mounting Flame" at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.

* Hearing The Supremes' "Baby, Baby (Where Did Our Love Go?)" for the first time on a tinny transistor radio during a game of pickup basketball outside a high school friend’s house.

* Feeling more than goosebumps as pre-"Dark Side of the Moon" Pink Floyd played "Astronomie Domine" at a mindblowing concert at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.

* Getting lost in downtown Rochester, New York, with my late friend Rochelle and finally walking into Memorial Hall as the Grateful Dead kicked off the second set by welcoming us with our Dead favorite song, "Eyes of the World."

* The Dead again: This time as I sat underneath the bleachers in the fieldhouse at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, comforting two friends overwhelmed by the crush of people as the band broke into "Weather Report Suite," which brought them out of their funk.

* Feeling the hair on my neck stand on end as an Army bagpipe band played "Amazing Grace" atop the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., during a Veteran's Day ceremony.

* Stretching out in the cool grass, a canopy of bright stars overhead, as Bela Fleck & The Flecktones jammed on "The Sinister Minister" at the Rhythm & Roots Festival in Ninigret Park, Rhode Island.

* Hearing Bob Marley's great anthem "Freedom Song" on my car radio and knowing immediately that the reggae legend had died.

All this by way of noting that WXPN-FM, the greatest progressive-alternative rock station in the universe, is in the midst of counting down its listeners' own "885 Most Memorable Musical Moments."

Drop in here and give them a listen, and while you're at it share your greatest musical moment.