September 05, 2002 | 11:14 AM

I listened to a lot of oldies radio as a kid. I forgot about how much that mattered to me until somebody reminded me of it in an email, and I�ve since been thinking about it all morning. I used to hole up in my room and listen to the oldies station for hours and hours, rocking back and forth on my bed

(this is a habit I still have, as a 25 year of age�listening to music while rocking back and forth on my bed. I probably spend a good two hours a day doing this. It is an addiction. If I can�t do it for whatever reason I start getting really antsy and unhappy and I actually find myself drinking more and being rude to people.)

And the oldies station was where I first truly fell in love with music. I was obsessed by bands and rockstars that nobody else my age had heard of, or if they had heard of them, were considered horribly uncool. I loved The Association and The Animals and The Troggs and Dusty Springfield and

When I was a kid I really loved the Zombies.

The band the Zombies�not actual Zombies for Chrissakes.

God I loved the fucking Zombies. I still don�t understand why they aren�t venerated by hipster kids the way The Beach Boys are now�(you know�the whole Pet Sounds revival, by which I am of course thrilled). The Zombies are stuck in that golden oldies category of music� you know, the bands that tour around State Fairs and are adored by nice overweight Catholic ladies who also like Kenny G. and Neil Diamond.

The Zombies� best known songs are �Time of the Season�, �Tell Her No�, and my personal favorite, �She�s Not There.�

One time, I called the oldies station like thirty times in one day to request �She�s Not There�. And I kept using different voices and accents so that the DJ would think I was all these different people�that there was a huge Zombies fan base in Rochester NY just waiting to be exploited. The DJ was not amused. He told me to stop calling.

So I called my Grandmother and told her to call the radio station a couple times and request the song.

The what? The Zombies? Is that what you said? What kind of name is that for a music group to have? Modern music�what crap.

Grandma, it�s not modern. It�s from the sixties.

Honey, anything after Elvis Prestley is modern to me. It�s all the same shit. What�s wrong with Benny Goodman? Hey, I�ll come pick you up and we can listen to One O� Clock Jump [I was also obsessed with swing music, but that�s a different diary entry] and I�ll buy you a soda.

I think I really have to buy a Zombies record tonight. I think I might have rediscovered that obsession, the way I became obsessed again with The Shangri Las a couple months ago and listened to nothing but their singles collection for days on end.

And by the way, Past, Present, and Future by The Shangri Las is quite possibly the greatest pop single of the 60�s. It straddles the border between high tragedy and camp expertly. It�s a work of sheer fucking genius and far far ahead of it�s time. It�s a pop single sampling Moonlight Sonata and it�s about of all things, Date Rape. And it came out in like, 1965. Fucking AMAZING.

So�to you, dland peeps, I say this. Go listen to the Zombies. Go listen to the Shangri las. Sit on your bed and rock back and forth.

But don�t make the same mistake I did yesterday which was drinking a few too many chocolate martinis while watching Monster�s Ball because you will probably want to jump out a window. Great movie. Great drink. Bad combination. The two together don�t mix so well.

Just like me and romance.