Spring is here.It had taunted us briefly with temperatures in the sixties, but then the chill returned and brought a smattering of snow with it. This time it's not a trick. Spring is hard-fought in Minnesota, like most everything. We're used to being deceived and we try to accept it, much like our quarantine. I don't wear a mask when I'm taking my lone walk to the mailbox, but I don't glad-hand people, either. I want them to keep away from me, much like in my pre-COVID life (unless they're walking a dog). My neighborhood is rather transient -- people come and people go -- I don't know any of my neighbors except for a nodding acquaintance with the lady next door. I'm not being rude by passing them by. I like solitude. I like smelling the apple blossoms and comparing my front-yard tree's magnificence to the other spindly trees on the block as I shuffle home, bills and circulars in hand. Mostly I don't go out. I don't like serpentining around the casual walker, wary they might breathe on me. I traveled to my local convenience store on Tuesday morning, the first time I've been anywhere in more than a week. I got to say, "hi" to folks I know and then I went home. Five-second personal interaction. My seventeen-year-old cat spends most of his day under the bed and I work eight hours a day, so I see my husband at breakfast time and during our nightly news-watching hour. When I was younger, I was perfectly content with my own company. As the years ticked by, I found that people can be fun. I miss shooting the breeze with my work friends. Email is not the same. Texts are three-word missives.I'm afraid that as this isolation goes on I'll revert back to isolation, which is mentally unhealthy. I've finally concluded, after two months of irrational fear, that staying away from people is stupid. Sure, I'm soon-to-be sixty-five years old and catching Coronavirus could be a death sentence -- or not. But this scene has become ridiculous. I'll take care of me; let other people live their lives. This is going to be a perpetual earthquake. Nobody, or mostly nobody, wants to conjure the devastation that will result from lock-down. I guess I'm lucky that my biggest concern is the apple blossoms. Things I've done this week:
I submitted my retirement date to HR. It was harder than I expected -- it's so final. But I'm feeling pretty good about it, once I finally pulled the trigger.
I tweeted too much, but really, some people are so imbecilic.
Things I've learned this week:
Humans are pliable. I can't even fathom returning to the office at this point. Home is my workplace now. I could probably be held hostage for eighteen months and I'd eventually be okay with it.
There's truly no one better than George Strait. I do wish SiriusXM would do a deeper dive into his album tracks, however. I miss my computer and all my favorite music
If there was a worse cook than me in the mid-seventies, I don't know her. When I got married, I knew how to make absolutely nothing. I'd made Kraft macaroni and cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches. I'd heated up Campbell's soup on the stove. Why was I so inept? I simply never cared. I had a mom who cooked dinner.
I also rarely ate actual food that didn't tumble out of a vending machine. My parents owned a business that had magazine racks in the lobby and cigarette machines and spinning candy dispensers; not to mention cold eight-ounce bottles of Coca-Cola. Thus, I read every movie rag available and rotted my teeth on chocolate and developed a life-long nicotine habit. My sixteen-year-old dietary regimen consisted of menthol cigarettes, Seven-Up candy bars and sickeningly sweet Coke and Dr. Pepper. Not to mention refreshing Fresca, which contained enough saccharine to hobble an African elephant. Regrets? I have a few.
But cooking? That was so passe. Old women (in their forties) did that. I was young and hip and liberated. I had pantyhose and polyester mini-skirts and long swinging hair and Cover Girl makeup. I had the Grass Roots on my transistor radio. Aside from the candy, I really didn't eat. I smoked a lot and hid the black plastic ash tray under my bed. Sometimes I drank a can of beer, if I was able to procure one. I was still pseudo-religious, so I gave up snacks for Lent, which meant I essentially ate nothing, since snacks were my only source of nourishment. My teenage years were a cornucopia of excess, as if life was tenuous. And it was, then.
At age eighteen, when it was deemed that life was passing me by, I became engaged. My fiance and I trudged the mobile home lots in the dead of winter to find a suitable home we could afford. Renting was not even a flitting thought. No one we knew actually rented except for my friend Alice II, and her apartment was only a brief stopover until she, too, became married and bought her own mobile home. We perused a few units, clambering the wrought-iron stair steps of each; and they were all essentially the same ~ except for the one that had a kitchen floor of black and white geometric linoleum. I became fixated on that floor, and no other selection would do. We purchased our first home based upon pretty flooring. The color scheme of the remainder of the home was burnt orange and lime green ~ long-stranded shag carpeting. And we didn't even yet own an upright vacuum cleaner. We hoped to secure one as a wedding gift. We owned absolutely nothing except the console stereo my parents wanted to be rid of.
Around '75 we splurged on a microwave oven. Mom and Dad had a microwave, a monstrous behemoth that claimed almost all the kitchen retail space.
It was good for almost nothing, but like halter tops and leisure suits, it was the thing to do. It defrosted ground beef defectively, but it did work for boiling water. There were no prepared foods created exclusively for microwaves, so using the noisy apparatus was trial and error...mostly error. Major companies did have the foresight to market special ceramic serving dishes exclusively for microwaves, so there was that expense (we were scared to use paper plates ~ they might burst into flame). There was also the niggling dread that these "waves" could potentially poison anyone who consumed anything nuked in them, but we were young and indestructible, so we took our chances.
I eventually learned how to cook ~ in fact, I became more and more adventurous as the months ticked by. I shed my fear of electric appliances and began experimenting. It wasn't so hard after all! As unschooled as I was, I developed an affinity for Chinese cooking (and we didn't even own a wok). Like every other thing in life, cooking is scary until one actually tries.
My black-and-white linoleum required a weekly pan of Spic 'n Span and sore knees to maintain. I still liked it, though. It was the centerpiece of my home. Everything else in my trailer was shit, but I had that floor!
I was learning how to be a grown-up, bit by bit. It wasn't necessarily by choice, but it was time. I also was learning about poverty and how to make a life out of nothing. Our first Christmas tree was a two-foot-high plastic proxy for the real thing that I set on an end table and trimmed with decorations I fashioned out of folded paper. I scoured my checkbook daily to determine if money existed with which to buy groceries. Benevolent gifts from parents saved us from starving.
But I had music. That hand-me-down console stereo in the living room kept me company as I "housewifed". Memory is a funny thing ~ when we think about music, we cull the charts for those tracks that are timeless, but that's not how music actually worked in real time. These are the songs I remember:
In retrospect, aside from America, the hit songs of '75 were kind of mopey. No wonder I spent a lot of time staring into the abyss that was my shiny new, scary microwave oven.
1975 was the last time I could label myself a "kid", albeit a married kid. The last time I would prioritize music over everything. Before long, a completely new experience would change my life forever.
If you know me, you know that I've been consistent in denigrating nineteen seventies music. My long-held stand has long been that the seventies were the absolute worst musical decade. So why am I drawn to the "70's on 7" channel on Sirius? Could it be that I've wiped that musical period from my memory? And if so, why? The seventies were most certainly the most formative season of my life. After all, I graduated from high school in 1973, and by '76 I was a mother.
I think I was torn then. I'd been steeped in country music since roughly age thirteen, and I felt like a traitor listening to pop music, which I most certainly did, especially in 1973. Then I got married to a man for whom top forty was foreign gibberish, and since I actually, technically still liked country music, I set my pop stylings aside.
But when I hear certain songs from that era, I'm practically giddy. Not all of them, mind you; just certain ones. I still can't stomach Debbie Boone who likened her new paramour to God; or Paul Anka, who was bursting with pride that he managed to inseminate a woman. Both of those songs are creepy in their own inimitable way.
Then there is this:
And I'm no snob:
Elton's best:
For personal reasons, this is my favorite:
To be continued, but damn. I'm going to immerse myself in more nineteen seventies music...
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.
Dave Porter can create the soundtrack of my life anytime.
It takes a rare talent to do it right. When it's right, you know it. When someone is phoning it in, you know that, too.
I confess, I am obsessed with Breaking Bad. My life partner and I have watched the entire series twice now, and damn, I forgot a lot of stuff from the first time! If there is a more perfect TV show, well....no, there just isn't.
Aside from the cast and the writing and the cinematography, there is the music. If I was a music supervisor, I would luxuriate in my serendipity. But it's a hard job, matching the quintessential track to that breath-stirring scene.
I could create a complete album of tracks from Breaking Bad, and relive each moment in infinitesimal detail. And I think I might.
Gale Boetticher dripping coffee into a carafe:
David Costabile must have had to study that song for weeks to be able to sing along.
It was a touch of genius to use a dusty cassette tape of Marty Robbins in the last episode:
The most obvious reference that nobody thought of:
Walter White, singing:
The most ingenuous use of a song I never liked:
I could watch Breaking Bad over and over and over. It gets inside your bones. I'm smitten with Jesse and Mike and Hector. And Badger and Skinny Pete. And mostly Hank and peculiar Marie.
It's mostly thanks to Vince Gilligan and Bryan Cranston, but also to Dave Porter, for creating the soundtrack to a bizarre world.
SPOILER ALERT: Don't watch this if you haven't watched the series in its entirety (and you really, really need to):
Let's keep looking for America. I think she might still be there.
Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies
And we walked off to look for America
Cathy I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America
Laughing on the bus playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said be careful his bow tie is really a camera
Toss me a cigarette I think there's one in the raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
Cathy I'm lost I said though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America
---
"America" as written by Paul Simon, Bruno Lauzi
I just learned that Dan Peek passed away on July 24. Dan was the lead singer of America. Though to be correct, all three guys were lead singers in the group, which included Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell.
In reading about the band, I learned that the three guys were all sons of American fathers and British mothers, and grew up in England. Thus, naturally, they called themselves "America". They were a CSNY-influenced group, and their early recordings really reflected that.
However, this one is my favorite, and I don't think it sounds like CSNY at all. In fact, this is one of my very favorite pop/rock songs. And wow, really? It was from 1974? Here are the guys on Midnight Special:
Luckily, Dan did not write this next song. However, it is arguably America's best-known track, so it seemed appropriate to include it here. (The song was written by Dewey Bunnell).
Many, many people enjoyed this song. They enjoyed it so much that it was a number one hit for America. These same people also enjoy plants and birds and rocks and things.
I'm not trying to be disrespectful. Dan would probably laugh about that, too.
We've lost a lot of good people in 2011, and Dan Peek left a legacy. This is one he did write:
Thanks, Dan, for Sister Golden Hair, and for all the music.
Here we are, back to revisit the seventies. I had so much fun with the last post, I decided to keep going!Now, don't get me wrong. I'll admit to a bit of cynicism regarding this decade, but in my last post, I found a bunch of keepers. HOWEVER, as I'm browsing the list of number one songs tonight, I'm beginning to revert back to my original opinion. Interestingly, there are not a lot of number one songs for each year, because, you see, the songs that did reach number one tended to hang on to that spot for several weeks, usually.For example, in 1970, there were only 21 number one songs.
So, to totally drive this topic into the ground, I thought I would choose one number one song from each year. (My standard proviso remains: This is dependent upon what I can find on YouTube.)
1970 - THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY - I THINK I LOVE YOU Unfortunately, there's a bunch of (bad) acting before the song actually begins. But this was the best I could find. And gee, for a song that so many people hold dear, you'd think there'd be a better video available.
I never really got into the Partridge Family, I guess because I wasn't eleven at the time. I mean, c'mon, they're no Monkees. You know, if you're choosing a pre-fab band, the Monkees are way better. But who am I to stomp all over somebody's cheesy pre-teen memories?
1971 - THREE DOG NIGHT - JOY TO THE WORLD Let me get this straight....Hoyt Axton threw a bunch of non sequiturs together, and made a "song" that someone actually recorded? Well, cool. Sign me up! I can do that. I mean, really, if you listen to the song, it makes absolutely no sense....I guess, unless you're stoned. And to this day, old Hoyt is sitting back, counting his money.
But I really, really do have to feel sorry for Three Dog Night. Can you imagine having to sing that song over and over and over and over for decades? Face it, the song gets tiresome real fast. I mean, I'm tired of it, and I haven't heard it in about 20 years.
1972 - AMERICA - A HORSE WITH NO NAME "There were plants and birds and rocks and things". You know, those things. Not plants exactly. I guess, not birds. Or rocks. Hmm....what do you call those things?
"Cuz there ain't no one for to give you no pain". Ahhh. Truer words were never spoken.
America had better songs, but this is a nice folk-rocker, and props for sounding like Neil Young.
However, much like Hoyt Axton, people are going to become suspicious when you just string words together. I'm just saying.
1973 - JIM CROCE - BAD, BAD LEROY BROWN Hey! Remember that show, "Midnight Special"? I do! You'd turn that on on Friday nights, after you got home from your drunken carousing. Ha Ha! That's not true!
Too bad that this is the song that most people remember Jim Croce for, because he had a whole bunch of really great songs. And, much like, "Joy To The World", this one gets tiresome pretty quickly. But search out Jim Croce videos on YouTube. You'll find some gems.
1974 - STEVE MILLER BAND - THE JOKER One can never really forget the pompitous of love. If one knew what that meant. But this is one of those songs that never leaves you. I remember driving around, hearing this song on the radio. Cuz they played it every 5 minutes, I think. That's okay. I like it. And it really screams, "seventies"!
1975 - ELTON JOHN - PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM You may or may not like this song. But I like it. Believe me, if you had been cleaning motel rooms, and pushing your maid's cart from one room to another in the hot sun, this was your only salvation. Thank God for the transistor radio. And you could boogie down as you were stripping sheets off the beds and cleaning toilets. Wow, those heady days of 1975. When I was making $1.25 an hour. Cleaning up after tourists. Ahh, the nostalgia. I can almost smell the Lysol now.
1976 - STARLAND VOCAL BAND - AFTERNOON DELIGHT Well, I was pregnant when this song came out. And while I didn't have morning sickness, hearing this song could still make me puke.
Enough said. I'm feeling a little queasy just listening to it again.
1977 - ANDY GIBB - I JUST WANNA BE YOUR EVERYTHING I picked this one because I really kinda like it. The Brothers Gibb also had a number one song that year, coincidentally ~ "How Deep Is Your Love". But I like this one. It's a nice pop song. RIP, Andy. Nice song.
1978 - WINGS - WITH A LITTLE LUCK FYI ~ Perusing the number one songs from 1978, that year sucked! This is the best I could find. So, I'm nominating 1978 for "worst year ever". Sorry, Matt. I know you were born in 1978, but it's not your fault. But hey, doesn't Paul look young here? (I'm looking for something positive to say.)
1979 - THE EAGLES - HEARTACHE TONIGHT Whew! I can end the seventies on a high note. I was worried! Thank you, Eagles, and thank you, Glenn Frey. Nice way to end this! And I didn't have to include even one Donna Summer song in this whole post! Lucky for me!
So, we bid a fond adieu to the seventies. Well, maybe not fond, per se. But we do bid ADIEU!
