(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 10, 2021)

 

I’ve never had the slightest inclination to write about newspapers.com, but this popped up one day when I was doing parental research:

 

It’s their engagement notice in our local paper, The Record, but if you wanted to see the whole thing, a newspapers.com subscription would be in order……………

or

……….perhaps you know someone who has a subscription who can get it for you.

I contacted my siblings and my sister Lorraine and her husband Scott subscribe, so……..

It’s a ghastly shot of Mom (unless it came off microfiche, their photo preservation process could use a little tweaking), but at least we now have something we didn’t have before.

Newspapers.com offers a one-week free trial and if you’d like to see where you’ve been been in newspapers over the course of your life, try it out and then quickly unsubscribe. Be sure to read reviews before you do anything.

I tried it a couple of years ago and found some things I didn’t know existed when I entered my name (which they shade in yellow and put an ill-fitting box around wherever it shows up). Turns out there were around 77 matches over the course of 54 years. As you’d expect, there’s some career stuff in there, but there are also other items worth finding.

Obviously, most of the matches came from NJ, but there are 8 other states that the site says picked up on stories:

 

Excluding a couple of matches, I think I’m just gonna present them sequentially.

Note: I’ve made some of them larger than usual so they can be read (if you so desire). When you see “Click to enlarge”, those will be the ones. Some marked images tell you to click twice for full enlargement. In all cases, use your back button to return to this page.

I’ll go further back later, but right now, I’m starting with 10-31-82.

Things really took off for me in 1983, so this was an ad in the paper during a slower time the year before:

 

On 8-8-84, The Herald-News paper (in the next county) did a story on The Uncle Floyd Show, which I was a part of:

 

Jumping ahead a decade, here are two out-of-state articles about my London auction at Bonhams, which had already been held on November 23, 1994:

Despite what Peter Watson in London wrote, it was not an auction of my archive and I did not walk away with millions of dollars. I still have the archive. But if you know anybody……….

 

I just found my auction catalog for sale online. Looking at the covers, you can see why the auction was called “From Led Zeppelin to Liberace”:

 

What was being sold at the auction were 200 individual slides. Since you can’t hang slides on a wall, they made displays with a 5×7 of each image on an 8×10 board and had me sign them.

They sent me the displays afterwards, so I had a gallery showing of them the following year:

Click to enlarge this one:

 

The Record newspaper had a weekly photo feature called Insight which featured readers’ photos and which I got in a couple of times. Here’s one published on 9-14-97 that newspapers.com made a little too contrasty. It shows the Great Falls in Paterson, NJ – the second-highest falls east of the Mississippi (and now a National Park that’s 10 miles from home):

 

2001 brought the possibility of dreaded cell antennas being attached to my building and very close to my apartment. Here’s the city’s initial rejection (click to enlarge):

 

The carrier – Nextel – appealed and won, prompting this Letter To The Editor from me in 2002:

 

Also in 2002, this article on family memorabilia may sound familiar to some of you:

 

The Record wanted to do a story on my cell antennas dilemma in 2003 and surprised the hell out of me when they put in on the main front page:

 

This story somehow did NOT show up amongst my newspapers.com matches, but – of course – I saved the paper (Click both images twice to fully enlarge):

Despite what it says, I have NEVER had a garden on my roof!

 

Also in 2003, The Record had done a story on songs about local places. I let them know they left out a couple:

 

I spent 5 years putting over 2,000 pictures and their stories together on my career site, bobleafe.com and launched it in 2004. The Record did a half-page story about it on 3-14-04 in their Sunday Entertainment section. Here’s the wide view:

 

And here’s the tighter view that includes the pictures they used (click twice to enlarge):

The Springsteen shot was a stroke-of-midnight-on-New-Year’s-Eve one, taken at a 1977-into-1978 show. It was “kiss my girlfriend or take this picture”. I made the right decision. Bruce was feeling no pain at that point and shook/shot champagne everywhere. That string of white dots is the previous shake/shoot. I see a video camera in the background. I’d love to see what they shot. Did they get me and Bruce and champagne everywhere?

In the upper right, Jon Bon Jovi is flying over the crowd at Madison Square Garden in 1987. You’ll have to go to bobleafe.com if you want to read that story.

The other picture is Joan Baez winking at me at the 2nd Annual MTV Awards in 1985.

 

Originally, I only found text of this Record story, which I’m including below (in case the newspaper shot is hard to read):

Rock photographer uploads his life’s work — It’s a pop culture archive, or maybe just a big magazine

JIM BECKERMAN

Date: 03-14-2004, Sunday

 

If you tried to put all of Bob Leafe’s photos in a coffee table book, it would probably break the coffee table.

That’s one of the reasons the Hackensack photographer decided to put 2,100 of his choicest photos of rock stars, notables, and landscapes on a Web site.

Visit bobleafe.com and you’ll see everyone Leafe has photographed in his 20-year career as a freelancer for the likes of Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone. The photos are arranged alphabetically, from Accept to ZZ Top.

“I wanted to get this all out there for everyone to see, and what better way?” says Leafe, who launched his site three weeks ago. “This is like the world’s biggest rock magazine.”

They’re all there: Aerosmith, Anthrax, Ginger Baker, Paul Butterfield, Johnny Cash, Madonna, Elvis Costello, Fleetwood Mac, Gloria Estefan, Alice Cooper, Paul McCartney, Joan Baez, the B-52s, and on and on.

And with them are stories. Leafe, 56, happens to be a good raconteur with a more-than-good memory. In many cases he recounts, on his site, the tales behind the photos.

For instance, how Chuck Berry was more interested in chasing down a teenager (“she couldn’t have been over sweet little you-know-what,” he writes on the Web site) than getting his picture taken.

Or how strong-arm guards nearly prevented Leafe from taking a shot of Bon Jovi in midair at a 1987 Madison Square Garden concert.

Or how Leafe had to choose between kissing his girlfriend at midnight on New Year’s Eve and getting a great shot of Bruce Springsteen, onstage, popping a champagne cork. You can see what he chose on the Web site. “I know I made the right decision,” he says.

Why rock stars? It was something Leafe, a Teaneck native, just fell into, he says. “I was born and raised on rock-and-roll,” he says. “I was home sick one day in the 1950s and I turned on the radio, and I haven’t turned it off since.”

But he didn’t seriously think of becoming a rock photographer until later in life. A graduate of Bergen Catholic High School, Leafe has a chemistry degree from Ramapo College and was a faculty member at Bergen Community College when he landed four tickets, fourth row center, to a 1973 Led Zeppelin show – coincidentally one that was featured in the film “The Song Remains the Same.”

“I borrowed a camera because I thought I would never get that close again,” he says. “That was the first time I ever shot a concert. From then on I was hooked. … I dumped the degree and went with my heart.”

Since then, he and his trusty Minolta have been seen in all kinds of places: backstage and front stage, from mosh pits to stars’ dressing rooms. His portfolio of star shots swelled when he became staff photographer for TV’s “Uncle Floyd Show” from 1979 to 1984. As Floyd’s fans know, many a rock star and rock-star-to-be appeared on the show. “It got me a unique opportunity to shoot music stars in a setting different than a regular concert situation that every other photographer has,” he says. “Everybody has the Ramones onstage, but not everyone has them on the Uncle Floyd Show.”

His Web site also includes other kinds of photos: views of Hackensack and Teaneck, Fourth of July fireworks over the Manhattan skyline. There also are shots of non-music celebrities: Walter Cronkite, Rodney Dangerfield, Muhammad Ali.

“Sometimes you take a photo and you get a chill of excitement because you’ve really captured something unique,” he says. “It’s so great to be able to make a living doing what you really love. Everybody I guess wants to be a rock star at some point in their lives. I get to be anonymous and still have all the fun.”

Leafe is hoping for buyers as well as browsers: The photos on his site sell for $99 to $149 depending on size.

“People have always asked me for photos; now they can get them,” he says.

 

Eleven days later, I was included in a story about local light pollution – a problem I’ve always had to deal with concerning 2nd-floor, downward-pointing light installations that shine brightly in my 7th-floor apartment:

I don’t know where the rest of that article is………..I may have just kept the page I’m on.

 

Three days after that, I’m sounding off about the same issue in a Letter To The Editor:

 

On December 4, 2004, I’m included (so is Mom) in a Road Warrior article about cheap Teaneck (click to enlarge):

 

In 2006, The Record’s Hackensack offshoot – The Chronicle – did a story on me:

 

In 2007, I weighed in on a subject I knew little about…………sounded good, I guess (I didn’t write the headline, so maybe the editor agreed with me):

 

I made it to Insight again on 9-30-07:

 

I turned Green with another Letter To The Editor on 12-17-07:

Over 13 years later, nothing’s changed.

 

June 22, 2008 was my last Insight appearance:

It’s not a feature in the paper anymore.

 

The Hackensack Chronicle corrects an error on 1-23-09 and I’m not saying any more about it:

 

This 2009 article was about Woodstock’s 40th anniversary. I never said “See? Here is the mud”………..that sounds like a Dick & Jane book:

 

The Record’s Road Warrior was taking questions on 4-7-10, so I asked one:

 

In what I think is the last Letter To The Editor I wrote (8-12-13), I got to correct a columnist AND announce my birthday in a novel fashion:

 

 

WELL, that just about does it for the newspapers.com matches I found for me………..oh, wait………….I just found something from SIXTY years ago. I’m thinking there might have been some parental coercion involved in these newspaper “Wanted” ads:

But I fooled them – NOBODY hired me!

 

OK? You happy? I can’t POSSIBLY top that!

 

Or can I?

 

You tell me. This is from two years before the last one:

 

I have to tell you………..I was shocked to find this. I absolutely do not recall this at all!

 

Whaddaya think, Ed?