It was Ron Cey's birthday on February 15; I posted a birthday tribute to him last year (complete with grisly evidence of the Dodger third baseman's short-lived music career), but I couldn't let this week go by without posting this weirdly awesome pic of "The Penguin" in the Dodger Stadium with 70s rocker Moon Martin.
Not sure what the circumstances were surrounding this photo — maybe Martin was there to sing the National Anthem? Or maybe give Cey some musical advice (as in, "Don't quit yer day job")?
In any case, I'm guessing this was taken in 1979, when Martin's profile was at its highest; his song "Rolene" (which had also been covered by Mink DeVille, who also waxed a rendition of the Martin-penned "Cadillac Walk") hit the Top 30 that year, and Robert Palmer had an even bigger hit that year with a recording of "Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)".
With the exception of Davey Lopes' 28 homers and Rick Sutcliffe's Rookie of the Year performance (17-10, 3.46 ERA), '79 was a pretty grim year for the Dodgers; beset by injuries to their pitching staff, they finished third in the NL West at 79-83, the team's only sub-.500 record of the 1970s. So maybe Moon stopped by in an attempt to liven things up around Chavez Ravine — though from this pic, it looks like he caught a bit of the '79 Dodger malaise, as well.
In any case, "Rolene" is a track I remember fondly from the fall of 1979, a time when power pop — in the form of singles like Blondie's "Dreaming," Bram Tchaikovsky's "Girl of My Dreams" and The Knack's "Good Girls Don't" — was making a noticeable dent in disco's domination of AM radio. It may have only been a minor hit, but it's a skinny-tie classic, nonetheless...
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