This is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm your host, Chloe Salmon.

When my dad was in engineering school in England, he supported himself by taking on DJing gigs.

He played weddings, events, parties, you name it. Over the years, he amassed a collection of

almost 7,000 records, his prize possessions. When he graduated and got a job in the U.S., he had to leave almost all of them behind.

But he started another collection that combined the few records he was able to bring with him

with ones he picked up in his new life.

Some nights, I'd be in my room and would suddenly hear music blasting from the record player in the basement.

That was the signal for all of us, myself, my brothers and my mom, to come running. And then, the dance party would begin.

On those nights, my dad was our DJ.

At the end of each tune, he'd stop dancing and pick the next one.

And somehow, it was always the perfect song.

In this episode, stories of music and how it moves us and grooves us through life.

Our first story comes from Alistair Bain, who told it at a story slam in Denver, where we partner with public radio station KUNC.

Here's Alistair, live at the mall.

So, like a little bit of a little bitistair, live at the mall. So like a lot of queer kids in the 80s, I ended up on my own pretty young, and there were

some harsh parts to that, but there were some awesome parts like that Wednesday when me and

my best friend Candy were in a dive bar in New York seeing

10 local bands for a dollar. Thanks to our new fake IDs. I was a little bit worried about

mine that said I was a 40-year-old white man named Norman Schwartz.

But this was a kind of bar where it was like, hey, we're all human.

When the fourth band came on, the singer was like the second coolest person in the world next to David Bowie.

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