70's Music

On the way to Memphis this past weekend to visit our daughter Betsy and her husband Adam, we scanned the Sirius/XM radio in my car to find some tunes that helped ease the 3-1/2 hour road trip. We usually settle on the 70s channel.

Most of the songs that play on the 70s channel are tunes from the top 40, AM radio of the day, and not the deep album cuts from FM. In fact, the sound of the high-quality, digital stereo playing in my car is a bit foreign since most of those 70s tunes were played through a mono AM radio. Today, I hear musical parts in the songs that I never knew existed--guitar and vocal parts that never translated through those cheap car or home radio speakers we had back then.

My emotional connection to 70s music is obvious: I am a 50-year old guy; I graduated from high school in 1978, and by the time the 80s rolled around, I was huffing it on the road making music in a traveling band. Those 70s songs always keep me emotionally grounded. When I hear one of them, it can bring me back, in an instant, to how I felt, where I was, and the little house on Southgate Avenue in Fullerton, California, where I grew up. By "grounded" I mean the music helps me put into perspective that, as an adult, I can move away from those disappointments, insecurities, and failures. The memories that flood in help to remind me I am all grown up, and the perceived limits I faced back then have given way to new opportunities as an adult. Don't we all remember the longing to have someone to love and to love us back; to wonder what we would do when we graduated high school into the big world of responsibility; what our kids would look like and where we might live? These 70 songs have the unique ability to unlock all of those doors that lead into our sub-conscience and into the basement of our past life.

When I turn my car radio to the 80s station, I am not as emotionally moved. I was, as I said, rocking the US for the first half of the decade, and then soon married and started to raise kids with Brenda. When one is deep into family life and parenthood, it is the time when " trying to be cool" gives way to "how do I keep this ship afloat?"

70s music always sounds good to me. As a guitar player, all of my guitar tones are based on my heroes from the old days: Richie Blackmore (Deep Purple), Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath), Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Mick Jones (Foreigner), Mick Ralphs (Bad Company), all the dudes from the pre-plane crash Skynyrd, Dickie Betts (Allman Bros.), and the list goes on. I very rarely hear people say, "I want to dial in that '80s' guitar tone." The Seventies are still alive. I don't want to go back there, but when I am transported through my Sirius/XM radio, I am in heaven.