ABOUT STAN

My name is Stanley Albert Beinstein.

Take away my first name and take away the B in my last and your left with Albert Einstein …but….alas… I am a lousy math student. My mother, may she rest in peace, said that she never realized it. The Albert was for my dad’s uncle.

I was born September 3, 1950. That means I am turning 70 this year. Having retired from radio advertising management over six years ago, I have eased into retirement activities like writing new songs and re-writing songs that I wrote 50 years ago. 

     Very often musician websites start with tales of hardscrabble days on the road playing in dumps. Well I have played in dumps and I did take a four month road trip in 1974 in search of self from New York to California and back across Canada. I came home because I wanted to see the fall colors of New York . In all honesty I stayed near musicians. I tried to help musicians, my career involved musicians but I never made a living as a musician 

      When I was in college 50 years ago, I sang in bands and played some harmonica and acoustic rhythm guitar. The guys I played with then are a part of this album. Jim Gleason, Neal Snyder, Guy Hamilton and Roger Barnes. We had a reunion project at Jim’s in Lexington Kentucky 2016 that turned into an EP titled Hearing Eye Dog. Two of the tracks on my Senior Moments disc are from that session.

     When I was 13 my dad bought Sheff’s Bakery on Jerome Ave. in the Bronx. So we moved from Brooklyn to The Bronx. They are only 15 miles apart but they are two separate worlds. I went to DeWitt Clinton High School class of 68 and the guys I went to Clinton with are still my best friends. A bunch of us went off to SUNY New Paltz and that’s when I knew that I would have to find my destiny in the music business… maybe not as a performer… but in that world. I got involved in the 1969 concert committee and we produced 7 concerts - from The Who to The Band, Laura Nyro Joe Cocker & Jefferson Airplane. I’ll save those stories for another post in my ‘Ramblings’ tab.

     After a couple of years on Madison Avenue, I returned to New Paltz in 1974. I got involved in band booking and promoting. In  1976 the late Larry Plover, partner in the Last Chance Saloon in Poughkeepsie NY, introduced me to Rob Dyson who was starting up an album rock radio station, WPDH. I thought I would be there for a year and I stayed for 25, followed by 10 years at Radio Woodstock/WDST. My radio advertising management career gave me the opportunity to meet hundreds of the musicians that I had admired and even got to know a few. I dare not even call myself a musician in front of them… but… I can deliver a simple tune and retirement has encouraged me to work at it .

    Senior Moments has dominated my activity for the past year.  First at Vito Petriccitto’s studio in Gardiner, NY last winter and spring. Then to Jim Gleason’s studio in Lexington, KY this past summer.  There would be no album without Vito and Jim.

    The paintings that grace this cd package are the work of my late wife Rosalie. We lost Ro to breast cancer in January 2002 at 49. Our daughter Sarah did the graphics on the album and designed this website. 

    I am remarried to Pam Spieler. She was widowed by cancer 26 years ago. She was 34 at the time with four children. I have dedicated two songs to my wives (read the song-by-song tabs in Senior Moments) 

  I find myself the paterfamilias of a sizable clan of six kids, spouses and grandkids . A total of 17 people who celebrate together as The Spiel-Steins. I will write more about them in my ‘Ramblings’ tab. Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening.