I Like Most Styles Of Music, But...

There was a time during the early seventies when the singer-songwriter came into fashion. I'm not sure why. It may have had something to do with the doldrums the country was suffering from -- the  "misery begets misery" thing. "Everything sucks, so we may as well just wallow in it."

We had a string of hapless leaders. Gerald Ford never wanted to be president, but he assumed the office by default and tried to make the best of it. It didn't work. Ford will best be remembered for"WIN" buttons ~ Whip Inflation Now. Because pinning inane badges to our lapels would solve the country's problems.

He will also be remembered, thanks to Chevy Chase, for falling down a lot. He fell down the Air Force One steps. He bumped his head on doorways. He hit a golf ball into the visitors' gallery and bonked a spectator on the head. Gerald Ford carried a  look of perpetual confusion. He did not inspire confidence.

Worse was Jimmy Carter, the eternal scold. Jimmy did not hesitate to tell Americans that the country's problems were OUR fault. If we'd just buck up and live the straight and narrow, everything would be great. Never mind that I was already living the straight and narrow and nothing ever got better. All I got were stern lectures from Jimmy on TV about my "bad attitude". Interest rates were eighteen per cent, but dang, if I just atoned for my sins, HIS life would be so much easier. We all apparently worked for him. What Jimmy really needed was a button ~ "Repent Now".

 (Any man whose campaign button features Mr. Peanut is a guaranteed failure.) 

Amidst these doldrums, came along the singer-songwriter. James Taylor was the most notorious representative. James ascribed to the Jimmy Carter philosophy ~ if we'd just do our freakin' jobs, everything would be fine. "Just call out my name (you idiot) and I'll be there". 

 

Even at age sixteen I knew that was BS. I called out and nobody was ever "there". Maybe God, but I wasn't entirely sure about Him, either.

James was by far not the only offender. We had to contend with Bread and the precious Jackson Browne, and the even more precious Cat Stevens. Music essentially reeked. Worst of all was Crosby, Stills and Nash, who the pop culture mavens tried to convince us were musical geniuses, when what they really were were three-part harmony singers who needed much, much better songs.

(Yawn)

Granted, not all soft rock recordings were bad. 

But you get the picture.

The Eagles are classified as soft rock, but they weren't. They were country-rock. There's a huge difference. 

I would be remiss if I left the impression that soft rock singer-songwriters were the only artists played on Top Forty radio in the early-to-mid seventies. Thank the lord for Elton John. But I will say that early seventies music was for the most part tame. We were supposed to think about the songs and "absorb" them. 

F that. That's not what music is about; that's not what sears our souls.

There will always be a place for soft rock. The eighties gave us Air Supply. The nineties brought forth John Mayer. 

If one is a passive person; if one prefers music that's not too challenging, why not? I don't make judgments; I just tell you what I like and don't like. 

But this retrospective will provide, at the very least, a snapshot of how music was, and why I truly hated it.

 

 

 

1971 ~ A Year No One Ever Commemorates

(No one dressed like this.)

 Apparently the biggest news of 1971 is that cigarette ads were banned from TV (too late!)

I was fifteen-going-on-sixteen and in the tenth grade, which is a lowly teenage status. Not quite as lowly as a freshman, but at least freshmen had a distinct identity (losers). Sophomores were only semi-losers, but definitely not cool. Zit-afflicted; hair that only looked good on lucky days, we didn't walk the school halls as cowed as we did as freshmen, but we shrunk from making eye contact with anyone in the cool grades, for fear of contemptuous glances. Being overlooked was a much preferable state. 

I carried a fat geometry textbook that I never once cracked open. Perpendicular lines and isosceles triangles only mattered if they were incorporated into something I was doodling in class. Math in general was useless, but I was forced to take a couple of math classes in my quest to graduate with a "college prep" diploma. In English class, we were reading Julius Caesar, which was minimally more interesting than geometry. World History was perpetually boring. We learned about places like Constantinople and other European cities that no longer existed, so who cared? I never quite grasped what started World War I until I saw a documentary on AHC many decades later.

Since the FCC banned cigarette commercials, catch-phrases dwindled.

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature" was cool because it was spoken in such a malevolent tone.

"My wife; I think I'll keep her" is apparently offensive, because irony is a lost art.

Who can forget the spicy meatball?

In pop music, George Harrison got a bum rap for supposedly plagiarizing "He's So Fine". The truth is, if anyone ever creates a melody that's never been heard before, it will be cacophonous crap that shreds one's ear canals. Everyone borrows from someone, and when it happens, trust me, it's subconscious.

We went to the movies and saw The Exorcist, which was "stupid", rather than "scary". 

George Carlin was subversive and we loved him for it.

If George Carlin was alive today, he could kiss his career goodbye. I bought his albums, AM and FM, and Class Clown, and hid them between Merle and Connie Smith.

We watched Marcus Welby, MD and especially Mannix on TV. 

The hottest inventions of 1971 were the Intel 4004, which was supposedly something called a "microprocessor". I have no idea what possible future that sad conception could hold. Sorry, Intel; better luck next time. Keep trying! Some quirky coffee shop named "Starbucks" opened in Seattle, Washington, but no one cared. Folgers (or in my case, Coca-Cola) was everyone's intravenous caffeine delivery device.

A plug-in cooker dubbed "The Beanery" wasn't exactly a commercial success until Rival changed the name to "Crock Pot". I hope the person who came up with the moniker, "Crock Pot" got a huge bonus, but I bet they didn't. I'm guessing the CEO of Rival thought "The Beanery" would be a fab name, because that's why, after all, he earned the big bucks. Some lowly clerk hunkered in a walled cubicle thought up "Crock Pot" and got to keep her job until the next round of layoffs.

In the newly-found freedom of my brand-spankin'-new bedroom, I read paperbacks like "Love Story", which was a putrid book and a complete waste of my free time; and "Airport", which was at least somewhat captivating; albeit brain candy. But that's how paperbacks were. Reading books written by the likes of Jacqueline Susann left one with a desperate need to scrub their skin raw when they finished them. They were late-night reads. If I was to add up all the time I've spent in my life reading worthless books and watching worthless TV shows, I'd be able to tack on, at a minimum, one year to my life. All these complete wastes of time are important life lessons, though. One has to learn what is valuable and what is crap, and be able to discern the difference.

The hit songs of 1971 may have, at the time, seemed like revelations. Now they sound like hackneyed dead weights.

Like this one:

At least this song had a melody:

And, FYI, I wasn't down and troubled and I didn't need a helping hand. Okay, I was down and troubled, but James Taylor wasn't about to fix that. And I was insulted that he even thought he could.

Sorry, Jimmy. A little ditty was not about to solve all my existential problems. Besides, this song is maudlin.

If you want to make me happy, sing this one:

1971 saw the rise of "cuteness" in music; artists who tried hard to be hip, but their dimples gave them away -- The Osmonds, The Jackson Five, The Partridge Family. These were my little sister's artists. This is what pop music had become. I ignored all of that. I was frankly into country music by then anyway, although I couldn't escape pop culture any more than I could overlook this:

This song is famous for the most repetitions of the phrase, "I know". Weird thing to be remembered for, but there it is.

The reason no one commemorates 1971 is that music basically sucked. 

"What were the top songs of 1971, Dad?"

"Well, son, someone sang a song about his dog that he gave a really stupid name to."

"He sang about his dog?"

"We had very little to sustain ourselves with back then, son. If we wanted to take our music somewhere, we had to find a crate and stuff our LP's in it and load them in the trunk of the car."

"What's an 'LP'?"

"It's not important now. Just listen to Lobo on this here eight-track cartridge I fished out of our neighbor's garbage can."

The primary reason I've never discussed 1971 is that, aside from the fluff posted here, I barely remember it. I can conjure up snippets of memories, but it was a lonely time. I did my best to fill my days and nights; nevertheless, every day was a day to slog through. It was paper I crumpled in my hand. 

I hadn't yet figured out who I was or who I wanted to be. I thought that once '73 arrived, purple butterflies would flutter and alight on my outstretched hand.  And the secret of life would unfold.

I'm still waiting.

They Placed a Wreath Upon His Door

I thought George Jones would always be around.  He was always around ~ for my whole life.

My friend Alice and I, when we were tweens, religiously attended whatever cavalcade of stars was playing at the World War Memorial Building.  And, because we were kids with nothing much to do, we always managed to snag front-row seats, because we showed up a couple hours early and plopped ourselves down in the seats of general-admission honor.  In 1968, the same year we encountered Merle Haggard (in more ways than one), we also saw a package show with a new girl singer named Tammy Wynette and a bunch of other people we'd never heard of, including Tammy's husband, Don Chapel.  We liked Tammy ~ she'd had a few hits by then; Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad; Take Me To Your World; I Don't Wanna Play House.  She seemed unnaturally shy for a performer, though.

The star of that show, however, was George Jones.  As the closing act, he took the stage with his Jones Boys band (who'd actually been on stage the whole time, because they were the backup for...everybody), and kicked off hit after hit after hit.  White Lightning, The Race is On, Love Bug (I always preferred George's up-tempo numbers); Walk Through This World With Me, She Thinks I Still Care.  George, with his outdated crew cut, was energetic; having fun.

Midway through his set, George called Tammy back onto the stage.  The two of them sang some duets, and wow!  Tammy loosened up!  Now, she, too, seemed to be having fun.  The two of them locked eyes and sang to one another.  All of us were just bystanders by then.

A few weeks later, we heard a couple of disc jockeys joshing around on the air.  

"D'ja hear that Tammy Wynette is divorcing her husband to marry George Jones?"

"And get this; her next single is called D-I-V-O-R-C-E!"

Har har har har har.

Yep, George Jones definitely had an influence on Tammy.

It seems that George Jones had an influence on a lot of people.  Alan Jackson, for one, idolized him.  Keith Richards was a big fan.  It's said that Neil Young wanted to stop by backstage and meet George after one of his concerts, but George said no, because he'd never heard of the guy.

George had a lot of nicknames:  Possum, No-Show Jones, The Singer's Singer.

George was a stylist.  He didn't have a voice like George Strait; nor did he have a voice like Merle.  What George did have was a way to break your heart.

His instrument was like a rubber band stretched taut.  It dipped and it soared, and it dipped back down again.  George could turn one syllable into three or four; just by climbing that stairway and then descending it.  The reason people liked him so much was because the pain in his voice hit everybody in the gut.  It sounded real.

As I said, when I was a kid, I liked George's up-tempo numbers.  Like these: 

George Strait covered this one:

George, of course, had ballads, too, in the nineteen sixties.  Like this one:

My favorite from the late sixties came from the album surprisingly titled, "Good Year for the Roses".  Here's a remake; a duet with a silly-looking Alan Jackson:

And, naturally, there were the duets with Tammy:

And one many years later (they sure could make beautiful music together):

 

George recorded this one with James Taylor.  Sadly, there is no video of the two of them performing the song:

 

I've always contended that, no matter what anybody said, this next song is more gut-wrenching than, you know, that other one.

I saw George Jones live once again, three decades later.  He was on a bill with Vince Gill and Conway Twiitty.  I'd come to see Vince Gill.  George could still bring it, though; boy.  I didn't go to that show with Alice.  Time had passed and lives had splintered.  I don't know if Alice was in the audience that night.  If she was, she, too, was probably there to see Vince.  Vince was the headliner, and his career was glowing hot.  Alice most likely didn't remember the night in 1968 when we watched a romance blooming from the first row.  Life marches on, relentlessly.

Rest in peace, George Jones.  A whole slew of people are never going to forget you.

My dad loved this song...

He stopped loving her today

They placed a wreath upon his door

And soon they'll carry him away

He stopped loving her today