About The Bopper and his music

Steve Begor is the Bopper

I am a "music junkie"." What is a music junkie", you ask? My definition, is someone who not only listens to music all the time (every day) but is constantly seeking that new sound, or new band, or LP or CD that just blows you away and before everybody else does.

I got hooked on music around the age of 13. I would get on my bike and go the Cross Country Shopping Center to Baker Music. The woman who was the manager, Carol, befriended me and I started to hang out and listen to music. In those days, albums were not shrink wrapped and you could take them into a listening booth. Although, I bought 45's of some of the hits of the era; my LP purchases were normally sound tracks and some jazz. Carol turned me on to lots of great jazz as that was her favorite type of music.

When I got to high school and started to get interested in girls, it all changed and I began to buy rock n' roll albums. I drove my family nuts with the door closed and the stereo turned up to the threshold of pain. During high school, I would listen to WLAC out of Nashville. They played R&B only and you could hear them on a clear night. This was my first taste of R&B. I first began the habits of a music junkie around junior year, I would go out to a Kmart type store (do not remember the name) and buy esoteric surfing music and such. The headquarters for the store must have been in California or somewhere out of the south as their selection was totally different from any other store in Columbus. My major discovery was the Astronauts, especially the Astronauts Live. They were a four piece band (2 guitars, bass, drums) and played cover versions of Johnny B. Good and the sorts - they were my vision of a perfect high school dance band.

During the summer before my Senior year, I went to Athens, GA to a Demolay state convention. They had a dance each night (Fri./sat) with this great band, Billy Long and the Kingbees. That fall I booked the King Bees to play for the fall Demolay dance. While listening to the Big Bam, WBAM out of Montgomery, AL, I heard a record called "Bango" by Billy Long and King Bees. Well, I went to the record store and ordered 5 copies. I then bought a bunch of postcards, had the Demolays fill out request cards and send in the local radio station, WDAK. Little did I know that I would later do this as a job, record promotion. Anyway, by the time of the dance, "Bango" was top 10 in Columbus.

Upon entering college, I was introduced to R&B big time. The fraternity juke box was full of Otis Redding, Bobby Bland, James Brown, etc. I soon became a huge fan of R&B and probably owned 75% of what Atlantic released and 90% of Stax. During, this time I started booking the bands for the fraternity, then the IFC and later Emory at large. Most of our bands were from the Walden Brothers in Macon, later the owners of Capricorn Records. Then spring quarter of my sophomore year, I began booking the bands out of North Carolina - Carolina Beach Music. (The Carolinas was also where the King Bees
were from.) During my senior year, I teamed up with Bunky Odom to start Norca Talent, I was the college rep for Georgia. (Norca was my first name making venture - Norca stood for North Carolina.) Senior year at Emory, I decided that I wanted to make the music business my career, I planned on booking bands.

When I graduated from Emory in 1968, Vietnam was going full blast and I knew my going in the Army was only a matter of time. I needed a job and so a friend of mine, James Waters (James worked at Clark Music where I bought all my records at Emory) got me a job at Southland Distributors as an inventory clerk. I began my career at Southland working for one of the top people in the business, Gwen Kesler.

After serving in the Army, I returned to Southland to officially begin my career in music. Now a career in music has one great perk for a music junkie, free records. So now my collection began to grow and my music junkie days were going full steam. I used to throw out more LP's than I kept. My tastes started to broaden into all sorts of music. Because now I could listen to anything - for free.

When I left the music business my record buying habits were fairly limited during the 80's as I just was not making the money to buy lots of records and had now had a family. However, during this time I became active in a grammar school
thespian group - The Field School V-Show, Rehearsals were every Sunday beginning in January with the show or play performance in the middle of March. Each night of the Show, (Thurs, Fri., Sat.) there would be a cast party at someone's home hosted by a group of playmakers for the entire cast. At my first cast planning session, I volunteered to do the music. Now, they were a little hesitant - because no one knew me and the music was important as people tended to dance all night (party would start around 10:00 and last until sometimes 5:00 am). Little did they know that I had 8,000 LP's at home. So I started making party tapes on my reel to reel and would mix oldies and currents, fast then slow for 4-6 hours of music.
The party was a huge success and I began my career as the party music man (I did the music for all the parties for the next 10 years), this meant different tapes for each night.

It was also during this same show, that I began to choreograph the songs that I was in. I remember having a bunch of guys singing "Sea Cruise" doing all the exact moves that the "Swinging Medallions" did to "Double Shot". You have to remember, I was now in the Midwest and no one but me had ever seen the Medallions. A few years later, I was asked by Jan Green to be the assistant choreographer and we did a fairly novel dance for couples (loosely based on Astair and Rogers). However, it was not until the next year when I was asked to choreograph, that I actually did a tap number. I did not know how to tap,
but I wanted to do a big tap number with lots of women. (there was traditionally a female tap number - it was normally the best dance technically, but never got an encore.) I got a video of Linda Lavin (Alice) teaching tap. I decided to do the dance to the song, "42nd Street". So I edited Linda dancing at full tempo to fit the music. Then I made a tape of Linda teaching the steps in the order that I had put them. The women (only2 had ever tapped before) learned the routine from the tape and they were sensational - even received an encore.

During the late 80's, as my finances became better and with the advent of CD, I began to buy records again. And my quest to become a music junkie was back in full swing. I loved having people over or on the v-show party tapes, introducing new music. I found that some people began calling to ask what should they buy. With the advent of CD, a magazine came out called "CD Review". It contained tons of CD reviews and I discovered that for the most part, my tastes were very similar to most of the reviewers.
So this was my vehicle for discovering music until it was bought and then ceased to exist.

In 1992, I realized one night while listening, that most adults do not have a clue as to what to buy - therefore, they quit buying. Radio was not geared to adults for new music, retail nor the labels did not market to adults. So here sits the biggest demographic with the most money and nobody seems to care that they are not active purchasers of music. So I came with up an idea how to tailor the marketing of music to adults. During the next several years, I pitched the idea to Blockbuster, Borders, and Starbucks. I could not convince anyone to bring me on to try this and I could not raise the money to attempt the concept on my own.

Around 1996, I began a website, musicnu.com. Not having the money, the site never had much market penetration and I gave it up after starting ID3. Now that ID3 is taking off and I have this need to share the music - the creation of the bopper.net.

Cat Memorial Plaque