The End of the Dark Ages

Back in 1956, when it had been dark for over a thousand years, a primal scream to match the one that had been building in the breasts of white America since way before the Middle Ages pulsed out over local airwaves and touched like the outstretched finger of God the straining antennae of thousands of carfuls of yearning teenagers who were cruising the unending highways of darkness, searching for something in the cosmos to nourish their hungry hearts.

"YEEEAOOOHHHOHAHHOHAOUGGHH!!!!!!!!"

Across the benighted land, a million nimble teenage car radio operators' fingers tuned in to that miracle; they knew that scream: that was the scream so long pent up in their very own souls, the scream passed down unscreamed through silent generations gone before, a scream given voice at last by Screamin' Jay Hawkins as a favor to us all, and cast upon that evening's airwaves by the hand of the Hound, a late night deejay out of Buffalo (later pallidly imitated by Wolfman Jack); and lo, the million tuned-in fingers turned tens of thousands of car radio volume knobs as far to the right as they would go, filling the night air to overflowing at last, for all the silently hungry country, with the breathtakingly unrestrained tones of I Put a SSSpell on You, Becaaaauu-hauuusse You're Mi-hiiine!!!

Into tens of thousands of young hearts poured the true sound of illumination, pushing the soulpedal right to the floor; in less than four bars the Dark Ages were gone forever, and sky-high decibels of genuine righteousness went screaming down the highways of the world.