I think Mother's Day is coming soon. I don't pay too much attention to the date, now that I don't have a mom. Special days are always more important for those who celebrate the honoree than they are for the one being honored. I think my mom was mostly embarrassed about the attention we heaped on her on that day. Mom was nothing if not keenly aware of anyone making a spectacle. She reminded me many times, mainly through disapproving glances, that I needed to dial it back, . That may be why I went the other way -- I loved being the center of attention, albeit outside my mother's sight line.
When people talk about the strong bond they have with their mothers, I nod, perplexed. My mom and I had more of a "handshake" relationship. And that was during the good times. It was partly her fault; partly mine. She was very reserved while I was had no blueprint for how to display emotion. So, it was a standoff. For all my growing-up years, I knew that she disapproved of me. I wasn't the daughter she would have chosen. We had nothing in common. I was artsy; she was practical. We both preferred to be left alone with our thoughts. I never once saw her display any modicum of imagination; my whole life was imagination.
Home life was tough. My older sisters might know a different mother, but when I was growing up, my dad was a crazy alcoholic and Mom had her hands full. She eventually resorted to pills, and thus she became crazy, too. At thirteen I would have called myself my own mother. And I was woefully unprepared to be one. I was barely a teenager and I was expected to be responsible for two toddlers. I didn't do a good job. It's a wonder my little brother and sister aren't insane. Turns out they're better human beings than I am. Resilience is a wondrous thing.
About the time I turned forty, my mom finally decided she approved of me. I could sense it in the way she spoke to me when I visited -- sort of in awe of what I'd become, which didn't amount to anything, really, but I had a corporate job with responsibilities, and maybe she was astounded that I'd actually assumed any. Too, I had kids who were normal. My mom loved my kids far more than she ever loved me, which was okay. That's what grandmas are supposed to do. Grandmas are more relaxed; more laisse.
The last time I saw my mom was after Dad had passed away. She was tranquil; resigned. She knew (although I didn't) that her end of life was near. We sat in her living room with the TV on -- the CMA Awards show played in the background. I think that was the year that Faron Young was honored posthumously. Mom said, "You really liked him, didn't you?" I was astonished that she knew that. It was as if she was trolling her memory to recall pieces of me. If it had been my older sister in the room, Mom would have dredged up an old favorite recipe.
Mom was telling me that she loved me, as messed up as I was. Telling me while there was still time.
Maybe I'll do that, too. My kids are special humans who think I don't care about them. The truth is, the absolute best years of my life was when I had them all to myself.
My parents moved us in the gloomy month of December, 1966. Three kids, two of whom were barely toddlers; and me, an awkward, bashful eleven-year-old. Like most things we humans think will be magnificent experiences, reality is a letdown. Initially, in the late summer of '66, when my parents casually informed me we would be moving far away, I was elated. Country life had its virtues, but I'd experienced (tiny) city life by then, and I was sick of being isolated. All I had was my bicycle, after all, and it was a long trek into town on a bike.
In my fanciful notion of a new life, as I twirled down the dirt road on my bike, arms outstretched to the winds, I pictured a quaint town where I would window-shop, drop the kickstand down on the concrete, mosey into a little store and purchase an emerald frock. The shopkeeper would smile benevolently and perhaps pat my hand as I proffered my four dollars.
Reality was a sun-dimmed, dirty snow-pile parking lot and a musty apartment far from any town I could traverse on a bicycle. The motel my parents had laid down their life savings for was nineteen rooms laid out in a semi-circle with a cement speed bump smack-dab in the middle and a three-foot-high American elm holding on for dear life poked up through the concrete. Welcome to upward mobility!
The dank apartment attached to the motel's office had two full bedrooms with one microscopic bathroom between them. Thus, I became ensconced in a bunk-bedded room with two waifs sharing the bottom bed and me on the top. "My" room was so minuscule, I could extend my arms and touch the opposing walls.
I hadn't even met my new school yet and I was miserable. It was winter break, so I had approximately seven days to acclimate to my new home. I hated everything about it. Back in Minnesota, I had my own room (albeit shared with my tiny sister) upstairs, away from everyone, where I could play my records as loudly as I pleased, and nobody bothered me, ever. I had privacy. Now I could hear every snap of the bathroom tap; every time my dad got up in the middle of the night to fetch a drink of water.
I set up my battery-operated record player inside the three-shelf recessed closet in my room, stuffed my (two) albums in the cubbyhole above, and made believe that this was "home".
My best friend's brother had warned me that North Dakota was backward. When I spied my new sixth grade classroom, his words scorched my ears. I showed up in the tall-windowed eighteenth century chamber, settled into my third-desk-from-the-back, cracked open my fat World History textbook and pretended not to notice that everyone in the room was eyeing me. I looked around and didn't see one friendly face. It took a couple of months (which seemed like years) to find one single person who would deign to talk to me.
I desperately wanted to go back home. Sadly, "home" was now occupied by a family of strangers, which was an insult in itself. They'd probably changed things -- ruined my basement Imagine Land by turning it into a carpeted den or something. Replaced the breezy lace curtains in the living room with heavy damask draperies.
I ached to go home right up 'til the day a girl in my new classroom shot me a grin at something ridiculous Mrs. Haas had uttered, and I instantly realized this skinny blonde girl was somebody simpatico. And just like that, I had a best friend.
Life didn't suddenly become sublime -- I hated, hated my apartment (I refused to call it "home"). I hated the claustrophobia of being tightly packed among people I could barely tolerate on good days. I hated that I couldn't take a walk outside without running into complete strangers.
But, even though she lived miles away and traveled a different bus route, my breath was lighter knowing I had a friend -- Alice.
My big brother was an apparition. Some days he was there; some days no one had any idea where he'd gone. He'd ostensibly moved to North Dakota with the rest of us, but he was his own man, at age twenty. There obviously wasn't room for him in our little dormitory, so he got a motel room all his own; exactly what I yearned for, but didn't possess the requisite number of years to claim. Fortunately for me, my brother was gone a lot, and the motel office had passkeys.
I slipped the lock on his door, dropped the phonograph needle on this 45 and exhaled:
I loved The Turtles, to the point that I memorized the number of times Flo (or Eddie) sang, "so happy together" at the end of the song. And no, Ferris Bueller didn't invent this song:
I loved this one even more:
I almost feel sorry for those who weren't yet born in 1967, because they missed songs like this:
...but not really. Maybe I'm not "cool", but I was at least alive (and kicking) when some of the best music of all time burst into being.
My brother was a carpenter and an entrepreneur, and he knew a good gig when it stabbed him in the eye. He hammered together a fireworks stand and perched it on the edge of our new motel property, placed his mail order requisition, and proceeded to rake in the bucks.
By late June the sun was hot and I was barefoot, scorching my toes on the melting asphalt. My little brother, Jay, and his best pal Royle, pedaled up to the fireworks stand on their bikes and tried to wheedle Rick out of giving them free bottle rockets (he did).
Dad had invested in an outdoor swimming pool to drive new business, so I reveled in this new windfall. I slipped on an orange two-piece, donned my cheap plastic Woolworth sunglasses, tiptoed across the driveway in front of Rick's little kiosk and settled on a chaise lounge beside the turquoise waters, flipped up the volume on my transistor, and heard this:
And meanwhile, Felix sang this:
This song was so sixth grade:
Not to be outdone by Ray Kazmarek's organ riffs, Procol Harem showed they were no slouches. The only quibble I have with this track is that it unnaturally fades. They could have tacked on another 30 seconds or so, because it seems to end weirdly:
Another of my clandestine break and enters featured this song (which was, in fact, the only song by Herman's Hermits I ever actually liked):
Yes, I liked this one a lot. The Grass Roots don't get the acclaim they deserve. Aside from being the first live rock 'n roll concert I ever attended, these guys had scores of hits in the sixties:
The best thing Graham Nash was ever a part of:
God bless you, Neil Diamond -- you're still going strong -- and you had one of my favorite singles of 1967. I still remember that black and yellow BANG! record label:
So, while 1967 personally sucked mostly for me, I can still say that the music was awesome, and I was there.
So life, in essence, is a series of yins and yangs; searing pain and soaring heavens.
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.
1972 was kind of icky when it came to music. Yes, I was firmly ensconced in country music, but one could not escape the pop hits of the era since they were everywhere -- on my black and white portable TV, on my little sister's record player, in the bloodstream of every sixteen-year-old who hadn't slid into the dark side (shudder!) of music.
I was sixteen and a junior in high school. Being a junior has its own cache. One is almost there -- too sophisticated to be condescended to by the senior class like the puny freshmen. Juniors had earned a modicum of grudging respect by way of their advancing age. The nice thing about being sixteen was, I didn't have to meet any expectations. I was in that wedge phase; too young to assume adult responsibilities; too old to be patronized. Sixteen was when I started smoking -- a life decision I would now heartily disavow. But it seemed Kool and grown-up at the time. And subversive, which was very important.
The truth is, I was foundering. Granted, things weren't as bad at home as they had been, but the scars were still raw and not scabbed over. The difference was about 100 feet -- the distance from my newly-claimed room from the family living quarters. I could almost pretend that I wasn't part of that broken clan. I'd found something new to grasp onto -- order. Sublime order. Order is very important to the child of an alcoholic, which makes sense, although I didn't realize it at the time, because I was stupid. I didn't know why one minute's difference on my alarm clock would disrupt the course of my whole day. I didn't understand why I had to flip on my portable TV before I stumbled into the bathroom to apply my makeup and hear the same CBS promos every single morning. Every task had its time, and if some unexpected event occurred to scramble my schedule, my heart began pounding.
Humans are distinct from other mammals in that they can create a whole way of getting by out of nothing. The downside to that is, we become slaves to the course we've adapted, and it turns into a prison we can't break out of. I'm still very time-oriented and I experience a flash of panic if I am one minute off-schedule. I've gotten better, but it's still there.
What was family life like?
I would call it "unsure". I never knew what to expect when I burst through the kitchen doorway in the morning. I was, however, always on guard; girded against the worst. Some mornings it was eerily silent -- no one was around. I preferred those days. Other times, there was a super-serious discussion taking place -- my dad still woozy from his overnight carousing; my mom futilely trying to yell some sense into him. On the worst days, there was hair-pulling and obscenity-laced tirades, combined with amateur judo moves, played out on the green shag living room carpet. At times I'd find my dad with a trickle of blood oozing from his fingernail-scratched cheek. I'd step across the melee and head out the front door to wait for the school bus.
I compartmentalized. Compartmentalization is a very valuable tool. Keep stepping forward. Sadly, life seemed useless. I went through the motions. If I was cognizant enough to think about ending it all, I probably would have. I was too naive for that, though. My sinews wouldn't stand for it. I stiffly believed that life had to get better; that this wasn't all there was. My life's goal was to get out. Then I'd show 'em.
I don't know (although I suspect) what my little brother's and sister's existence was like then. We all internalize things differently. Unfortunately, I was born a sensitive soul, and life simply battered me.
It didn't help that music was so schizophrenic. Aside from radio, I had my TV, which only featured the hits of the day on late-night Fridays. The Midnight Special was my tether. I didn't sleep much, so staying up late on Friday nights was de rigeur. I recall that Johnny Rivers hosted a lot of Midnight Specials. The music wasn't good.
The worst rock song of all time clocked in at approximately eight and a half minutes -- the height of self-indulgence.
No song should ever be eight-and-a half minutes long. Some say it's a great song. I say it's long. If this song is representative of 1972, let's just erase 1972 from history.
The Hollies were still around. A lot of folks were still around. This song is the Hollies' road to glory. I may have heard it too many times, because now it's just background noise played on FM oldies radio. I don't know why they were working for the FBI, which seems rather far-fetched. And once we get past the (admittedly) iconic intro and the working for the FBI bit, I lose interest.
This song, on the other hand, I like. I think it boils down to repetition. Anyone can sing along with it, and really, isn't that all we want in our music? I love Neil Diamond.
In retrospect, it was a transitional time. Some of the fifties acts were still around and still churning out hits. Elvis Presley always makes me laugh when I catch his performances on screen. I can't help it. It's not that I want to laugh at him, but I find him to be so ridiculous. I actually would like to find resonance in his catalog of hits. I think perhaps it is that he was so synthetic -- a plastic facsimile of himself. Nevertheless, he still had a hit song in 1972:
Rick (nee "Ricky") Nelson was also still around from the fifties. I watched "Ozzie and Harriet" with my brother, who made delicious fun of "Ricky", and I was afraid to admit I liked some of his songs. Ricky later became sort of surly about his early success. After all, he would have had zero success in the music biz if it wasn't for his dad's TV show. His resentment was well on display with this song:
Carly Simon had a hit song in '72, which will always be immortalized like this:
Hey, that's what you get when you sell your soul to a condiment company.
There were songs from 1972 that I didn't hear, or I missed; that are now classics. That's sometimes how it goes with music. Nilsson was someone I didn't know. I choose not to know him by way of Jimmy Webb's awful book. But listen to this one all the way through. It's magic:
I also missed this song, because apparently Bread claimed the charts. Any band that calls itself "Bread" deserves to be lost to history.
Al Green:
One of the few things America has going for it is that this song was featured in Breaking Bad. The other thing they have going for them is that they actually had one good song. This one isn't it. Dave Barry did a whole riff on "for there ain't no one for to give you no pain". You be the judge:
There were other acts who hit big in 1972, like Jim Croce, who was awesome and underrated. And some new guy named "Elton John". And Chicago, who I frankly didn't care for until the eighties, when Peter Cetera (who the other band members disdain) joined the group. Derek Erick Clapton and the Dominos did "Layla", which wasn't ever any good until the "Unplugged" performance.
All this was tangential to my pitiful life.
Sometimes I wish I could revisit that time, to observe the person I was then. I might be able to offer some comfort to her; let her know that the future would be hard, but that things would work out in the end. Nothing exciting would ever happen, aside from giving birth, but the road would meander to places she never dared dream of.
Life is a conglomeration of memories, happenstance, accidents. NOTHING ever turns out the way one imagines when they are sixteen.
I like this song, because my little sister and I shared it. That's the story of life. Memories are all well and good, but if you don't have someone to share them with, they'll just be a whisper in the wind.
Please buy this book so April, who is too lazy to start her own blog, apparently, will stop begging to hijack mine in her shameless attempt to shill her wares. It's not enough that I've linked her book over in the right-hand column, claiming territory that I could use for "fun" things.
Honestly, it's a good book, but come on...
Now April (the web-hapless author) has somehow managed to create her own Spotify playlist for the book. I admit, listening to the songs brought the story back to me in all its stark intensity. Still...
I got this email from April:
Hey!
Do
you mind including my Spotify playlist on your blog? I worked on this a
long time, and it wasn't easy, because Splotify isn't user friendly.
I
promise I'll start my own blog soon and I'll include any stupid stuff
you write. What do you use? Wordpress or whatever it's called?
I write a lot about the sixties, because like most people, my teenage years were my most momentous.
Life, however, did not stop when the next decade began. If the mid-sixties were tumultuous, the early seventies were just as confusing; perhaps even more so. Unlike kids today who are twelve-going-on-twenty, I was nineteen-going-on-twelve. I was wholly unprepared for life, but impatient to get it started. I missed out on a lot of stuff in my teen years due to the jittery dysfunction of home life ~ things like how to grow up to be a regular person. I appropriated bits from my best friend's family dynamic and combined that with daydreams of how things were supposed to work.
I operated on instinct. I was trying to cram six years of learning into six months. Every little experience I tucked away for future reference.
My life in a nutshell:
I graduated from high school.
I got a job.
I found a boyfriend.
I got married.
Things went wrong from the beginning.
My first "real" job (which means, not working for my parents) turned out to be an echo of the same queasiness I'd fought so hard to get away from.
My boyfriend (soon to be husband) was a mismatch from Day One. I knew it, but did nothing to stop it, because I needed to get away.
I (and by "I", I mean I) picked out our new home ~ a nice 14 by 60 mobile home parked on the sales lot that had black-and-white linoleum and harvest gold appliances and long-looped green shag carpets. I didn't even know one had to pay an electric bill or a gas bill or lot rent. Or pay money for food. My parents didn't have love, but they had money. Thus, while my mom insisted that I purchase my own clothes for school, I never had to lay out one thin dime for anything except my reel-to-reel tape recorder and my JC Penney component stereo.
I took my teenage bed to my new marriage home and someone (in-laws, I believe) gifted us with a tufted Sears sofa. We filled in the other missing pieces with particle-board end tables and a round cardboard "bedside stand" that looked great as long as it was draped with an FW Woolworth table topper.
I quit the crazy State job after nine-or-so months and informed my parents I would now be back working for them. I can't believe they let me, but they had other fish to fry at the time, like my dad going berserk on booze and my mom trying to find a way to offload him onto somebody who'd lift her burden.
It wasn't all daisies and cumulus clouds working for Mom and Dad. I cleaned motel rooms. The weird thing was, I liked it. I liked working alone. It was the first time I'd ever been left with nothing but my own thoughts. It was heaven! I didn't have to answer to anyone. I had my portable radio that I carried with me from room to room, and I lived a life that I couldn't quite describe or put my finger on, but it felt like freedom.
1975 was my bridge year. I wasn't yet pregnant ~ I was still technically a kid. Life held possibilities, although I'd kind of smothered those by choosing to marry the first guy who asked me. My dream life, however, was completely awesome.
And the music on my radio was magical.
It's not so much that the music of 1975 was notable, but some of it was:
I didn't even like this song so much, but I remember it:
These were songs that, when I talked to the people in my life, they could not relate to, but they nodded and pretended they understood. My mom liked Conway Twitty and my dad didn't like anything except "Paloma Blanca". My husband was a go-along, get-along kind of guy who didn't understand this whole music thing, but mollified me.
BJ Thomas had captivated me in 1968 with his "Eyes Of A New York Woman", and now he was singing country. Country fans were as snobbish as rock fans, except country was more like a secret club. Even in '75 one did not advertise that they liked country music. To admit it would subject oneself to a cultural shaming. So, "we" disdained any artist who appropriated country -- John Denver, especially; but also Olivia Newton-John, even though we secretly sort of liked them. To me, BJ Thomas sounded country, and "the sound" was prime.
There was a new guy who appeared on my radio. He reminded me a bit of Jerry Lee, and he played piano like Jerry Lee Lewis, too. Die-hard country fans know authenticity when we hear it. Gary Stewart was authentic. It makes me sad to watch Gary's videos, because life did not turn out well for him, but he was, for a brief moment, a star. And he deserved it.
Another guy who showed up in...well, technically, 1974...but was huge in '75, was Ronnie Milsap. I always think of Gary Stewart and Ronnie Milsap in the same parcel, because they (contrary to what you may have been told) were the the most shimmering stars of 1975.
Female singers didn't spring up like male singers did. The ratio of male country artists to female is approximately 95 to 1. Really -- make a list.
I was at home, kneeling on my green shag carpet, fiddling with the dials on my console stereo, when this voice piped through the radio speakers. I was puzzled. She wasn't Dolly, nor Loretta. I didn't know who the heck she was, and I knew everybody. I didn't know her because she was new. Soon to be "not new". I rushed down to my local Woolworth's store and purchased, for $3.99, her album called "Elite Hotel".
Everybody thought Ray Stevens was a fool, including Ray Stevens. He was a novelty act, albeit a clever one. At my rancid State job in 1974, I was subjected to "The Streak" approximately 20,152 times on the radio. But Ray could do other stuff, when he set his mind to it:
It's difficult to describe the pop culture of the mid-seventies to someone who was not there. We had our radios and our TV's, and that's it. The big three networks would only feature country artists who weren't too "country", "Hee Haw" aside (CBS would soon purge that program). The only place we'd ever see country artists was on variety shows, but they were all abuzz with Jim Stafford and, of course, novelties.
Here are the top two country singles of 1975. You can guess how I felt about them:
I didn't begin to like Glen Campbell until somewhere around the 2000's. As for CW McCall, well, we don't hear a lot of covers of "Convoy", do we? And just for the record, nobody had CB radios. Nobody.
Music was my lifeline in 1975. I was adrift and didn't even acknowledge it. Like all of us, I sauntered through my days focused on inconsequential things. Life hadn't exactly turned out right, try as I did to make it so. All I had that made any sense was music, and I don't dwell on that time. I hurt for the semi-person I was then.
Maybe that's why I don't pen a lot of posts about the seventies.
I "graduated" from junior high in May, 1969 and transitioned to Mandan Senior High that September. I was grown-up! Shoot, I was fourteen going on fifteen! On my way to freshman renown!
Richard Nixon had become president. I'd pissed off my dad by tacking my eighth grade history project (a campaign placard) up on the wall right outside the kitchen door ~ "This Time Vote Like The Whole World Depends On It ~ Nixon/Agnew". Dad was reliably perturbed and baffled. I think he literally scratched his head as he alighted the stoop. My work was done!
That summer odd things happened. Teddy Kennedy killed a girl and the Manson Family killed a bunch of people in gruesome ways. Woodstock happened and most people didn't give a shit. My best friend Alice and I went to the Mandan Theater and saw "Butch Cassidy" and "True Grit". We learned that Glen Campbell was a terrible actor and that Paul Newman still had the bluest eyes under the sun.
Oh yea, there was some kind of "moon landing" that summer. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday night, which was really bad scheduling. Plus the optics weren't good. It was hard to make out what exactly was going on. I did park myself in front of our console TV, and I think my dad was there, too. Maybe Dad was more impressed than I. I didn't grasp the enormity of the event, but I was fourteen. I was more excited anticipating the next "World of Beauty" kit that would land in my mailbox.
(I hope it has white lipstick!)
I'd abandoned rock and roll. But old habits died hard. I still had one foot in AM radio, but mostly, thanks to the influence of my new best friend, I became immersed in country music.
I was still aware of certain '69 hits, like this:
And this song, over and over:
This was catchy:
I liked this one because I watched Hawaii Five-O every Thursday night at nine p.m. on CBS television (Book 'em. Danno):
But frankly, the number one song of the year was one my seven-year-old sister really liked, because it was a cartoon. This is where pop music was in '69, as much as one wants to wax nostalgic over "Get Back" and "Lay Lady Lay":
On the home front, life had settled into a routine. Dad was sober "sometimes"; Mom was a harpy, mostly. I retreated to the room I now shared with my adolescent sister and spun records on my (still) battery-operated turntable.
TV was supreme. After all, that's where I basked in Hawaii Five-O and Medical Center, and that's where I found the Johnny Cash Show on ABC TV.
1969 was Johnny's year. He was insidious. Johnny, with his black waistcoat and his Carters and Statlers and his Carl Perkins and Tennessee Three climbed inside one's brain matter and made himself at home.
But, try as he might, Johnny could never supersede the artist of the sixties, or basically of ever; Merle:
Glen Campbell had his Goodtime Hour on CBS. It was a summer replacement for that subversive Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. I was so oblivious I didn't know the Smothers Brothers were incendiary. We tended to overlook the political screeds, because they appeared nightly on the network news, and focused instead on the comedy.
Glen Campbell, on the other hand, was an artist I despised. Fortuitously, I later came to my senses ~ but it wasn't entirely my fault. Glen played the hayseed role so well, he was one of the prime reasons I disavowed any familiarity with country music anytime I was pinned down about my musical tastes.
"Hi! I'm Glen Campbell!" he piped up through the cornfield. If it hadn't been for John Hartford, I would have clicked my TV dial to whatever medical drama was playing out on NBC.
It didn't help that Glen insisted on recording Jimmy Webb songs, although this one, in retrospect, is not bad:
My musical tastes ran more towards:
As a (bogus) CMA member, I voted for this next song as Single of the Year. Freddy Weller had once been a member of Paul Revere and the Raiders, whose posters from Tiger Beat I had tacked to my bedroom wall. I didn't actually like Paul Revere and the Raiders, but I thought Mark Lindsay was cute, with his ponytail.
This Joe South song didn't win, despite my best efforts.
Nobody (but me) remembers Jack Greene, but he had the number one song and Single of the Year in 1967, with "There Goes My Everything".
In 1969 he had an even better song (as Ricky Van Shelton can attest).
Porter Wagoner actually had a career without Dolly Parton, believe it or not. Alice and I sat cross-legged in her living room and played this LP (and made up our own lyrics to the song (that are NSFW):
Transitions, yes. Confusion, yes.
Music was my lifeline. And I was just trying to get by.
