Rod McBrien

Award-winning songwriter and music producer. He grew up on Long Island and served in the US Coast Guard during the Vietnam War. He was a member of The Goggles, a pop quartet created specifically for Super Plastic Elastic Goggles (1971), an episode of the NBC Children's Theatre (1963) television show that aired on Saturday, January 30, 1971. The group also included cult actress/singer Jessica Harper. As of 2022, the footage is owned by the Paley Center in New York. The band recorded the songs featured in the episode in late 1970 and the songs were released as an album in 1971 on Audio Fidelity Records. The episode and subsequent album contain the original version of "Don't Say You Don't Remember," a Billboard #15 hit in late 1971 for another actress/singer, Beverly Bremers. McBrien was a founding member of CitiHope, an organization that donates medicine, food and health care. He composed a song for CitiHope's mission in Belarus for the Children of Chernobyl, "We Can Turn the World Around," which was recorded by a Belarusian children's choir. He and his son Rod went to Minsk, arranged the song for the choir and orchestra, and participated in the recording. Afterwards, they took CitiHope's train-ride tour of the Chernobyl crescent, bringing music, food and medicine to victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. He created music for the Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl National NCAA Championship Half-Time specials, as well as radio and TV ads for Coca-Cola, Burger King, Campbell's Soup and Miller Beer. He received four Clio Awards and won twice at the American Song Festival. He wrote a children's musical, Adventures of Tails Island, which was performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and in a special command performance at The White House as requested by First Lady Nancy Reagan. He was a session musician in New York City and wrote commissioned works for the Vietnam Women's Memorial Dedication, the Commemoration of The US Air Force Fiftieth Anniversary, and The Women's Memorial Dedication.