Buffalo, NY—This past week while engaging in the popular Facebook game of posting the ten albums that most influenced you, David Kaprosch (aka: Rolling Stone Dave) of Kaisertown, made the shocking revelation that his sixth-most import record growing up was the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. The post sent shock-waves through his rock-n-roll world with friends calling him out, saying he needed to return his replica Kieth Richards’ skull ring and no less than Geddy Lee of Rush (Exit Stage Left was #8 on his list) commenting with a laugh, “I always knew that hoser Dave was a fraud.”
However shocking Dave’s post was, it doesn’t tell the story behind the choice. And that story is one of a sad little boy who was shunned and rejected by the larger world because of his huge orbicular head. Growing up in Angola, New York he was unable to play youth football or baseball because no helmets were available to protect his over-sized cabbage like cranium. Often at the playground when it got too hot the moms would position Dave in such a way that his ginormous skull would block out the sun and provide shade for all the kids playing. At Halloween classmates would describe the size of their pumpkins by comparing them to Dave’s head.
As terrible as being left-out and the comparisons were for his self-image the thing that made these sad lonely days bearable was dancing—disco dancing to Saturday Night Fever. Brushing back a tear Dave says, “You don’t understand how I could just let go and be me when “Disco Inferno” started to kick. How I’d sashay and twirl and shake my bootie and just be free, as if things like not being able to play little league or kids comparing your head to a pumpkin, didn’t even exist. And how my self-esteem blossomed standing in front of the mirror in my tighty whiteys, brushing my hair imitating Travolta, who was thinking he was Al Pacino. Saturday Night Fever gave solace to a sad little boy who dreamed that one day he too could be on that dance floor and the glittering lights from a mirror ball would be all for him as he gyrated and pirouetted to “Staying Alive.”
As Dave entered high school his body matured and became more proportionate to his head size. Angola school officials still couldn’t secure gear for Dave to play baseball or football, but he did earn a spot on the soccer team where he excelled. His senior year he scored thirty-one goals—twenty-three of which were headers, of course. He was a first team Section VI All Star, but it was soccer and since soccer really isn’t a sport, no one gave much of a shit. But, for Dave, just like Saturday Night Fever and just like his head—it was huge.
With the success he experienced on the soccer field his confidence grew to where people now refer to him as Rolling Stone Dave and Geddy Lee calls him out like an old pal. In spite of his over-sized head, Dave wouldn’t have learned to cut a rug or become the confident man he is today without #6 on his all-time most influential albums Saturday Night Fever.
