Fifty Year Old Music Still Rocks

 

What music were you listening to fifty years ago.  If you’re about my age, your stack of rock albums might have included Eat a Peach (Allman Brothers), Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones) and Foxtrot  (Genesis).

If you preferred your music on the lighter side you probably owned Honky Chateau (Elton John), Catch Bull at Four (Cat Stevens) and Harvest (Neil Young).   The top country album in 1972 was Will the Circle Be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  Good Hearted Woman (Waylon Jennings) and Let Me Tell You A Song (Merle Haggard) followed on the top selling lp list.

Fifty years sounds like a long time ago but the music from 1972 is still in circulation and listeners of a certain age have their ITunes and Spotify playlists loaded with “oldies” from the seventies.

The term oldies is hard to define.  Top 40 radio station programmers in the 1970’s considered any music made between the early 1950’s and mid 60’s to be oldies.  Using that same standard, Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and Katy Perry’s Fireworks are now officially oldies.

The classic 1972 tune American Pie often pops up on playlists fifty years later.  Can you imagine listening to the radio in 1972 and hearing fifty-year-old music?  The top artists of 1922 included Al Jolson, Fanny Brice and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. The answer to the question is “no way would you hear Al Jolson on a popular radio station in 1972.”

The fact is that old music is more popular now than ever before.  A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine reported that old songs represent 70% of the U.S. music market and that number is increasing. The article went on to say that vinyl recordings are now outselling CD’s with a large piece of those vinyl sales in reissues of “old” artists and albums.

I would like to arrogantly declare that old music – my music – is better and that’s why it sells more. Of course, it’s not that simple.  New music still remains very popular with young people but it doesn’t have much of a shelf life.  Younger listeners want to hear new songs at dance clubs and on pop radio stations but they don’t stop by the record store or the App Store to buy that new music.  They are more content to accept the playlist that streams over their car speakers.

In contrast, I bought Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album in 1973. I then bought the 8-track in 1974 and the cassette in 1977. I had to have the pure compact disc version in 1982 and eventually downloaded it from ITunes in 2002.  Now I just yell “Hey Google play Dark Side of the Moon” and it happens. How cool is that?

I think much of the old music has survived because it is also good music. Old folks like me appreciate their quality and younger folks might discover their parents listened to some pretty cool music when they were in high school.

That doesn’t mean all 1972 music was good.  In the top five records of the year, we see Chuck Berry’s My Ding-a-Ling, Michael Jackson’s Ben and Melanie’s epic Brand New Key.  You just don’t hear those classics much anymore although I’m still waiting for release of the ten album Melanie retrospective. Maybe next year.

   Send comments to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Quarantine Like Its 1969

I found myself building a car model last weekend.  It was raining and I found a half-built ’69 Dodge Dart Revell model in my closet. It was started about 15 years ago on a rainy day by my daughter and me.  It stopped raining, she lost interest and we literally forgot about it.

So here I was on COVID day twenty-eight struggling to connect an exhaust system to a manifold. I came to the same conclusion I did when I was 12.  This pretend driver will never need an exhaust system.  I will just leave it out.  With that fast track approach, I finished the model in about two hours.  However, I pity the first person who tries to drive a car with no suspension or exhaust.

Like many people, the thought of staying at home for weeks at a time didn’t seem so bad with an Ipad and a laptop. What I hadn’t anticipated was spending many hours each day in Zoom calls on that laptop or answering emails on that Ipad.  I have become literally burned out on my own technology.

The year that real ’69 Dodge Dart first hit the streets I turned 13 years old. When my friends Gary and Bill were on vacation or otherwise occupied, I was trapped into entertaining myself at home – alone – with no technology.  Can you imagine?

TV wasn’t an option during the day and any suggestion that I had nothing to do might lead to some household chores. So, I disappeared to my attic or basement and kept busy.  I was too old for Matchbox cars so I might set up the HO scale slot cars for two hours.  Then I would play with them for maybe fifteen minutes and spend an hour taking them down.

I might build a tower of baseball cards at the bottom of the stairs and kill time flipping cards down the stairs to destroy it. I could update my stamp collection with the packets of stamps that kept arriving by mail.  I considered reading the latest issue of Mad Magazine and Sports Illustrated as an intellectual activity, but my favorite solo activity was building models.

An entire afternoon could be pleasantly consumed for only $2.99 and some paint.  I was never very good at building them, but the challenge was there. It was great.

Just like Buzz and Woody in Toy Story, my models eventually got boxed up and stashed in the basement.  Years later, after we got married, decisions had to be made about how much of my “stuff” was coming with us and how much would become junk.  

I didn’t put up a fight over the models.  They would not match our newlywed décor.  I stacked them up, shot some photographs and dropped the box in the trash.  It was not an emotional moment, but I do remember thinking about all those quiet, rainy afternoons they represented.

I was right back there last weekend with that ’69 Dart.  It was a nice place to be and for a while. Being quarantined like it’s 1969 wasn’t so bad.

Remembering Fish Friday For The Wrong Reason

 

I was never a big fan of fish.  As a kid in a Catholic home, I assumed eating fish during the Lenten season was a form of penance.  My mother would probably have agreed with that– but not about eating the fish. The penance for her was getting her kids to eat fish.

Catholics have abstained from eating meat on Fridays since the earliest times. The reasons may have changed over the centuries but the practice remains.  In the early days, forgoing meat was forgoing a luxury. This was especially true in the Middle East, where meat was scarce and fish was plentiful.  Ironically, fish is now the luxury and meat is more or less affordable. 

The tradition of abstaining from meat never required one to eat fish.  That memo never reached our home so every Friday during Lent we had fish.  Of course, the 1960’s were the peak of processed foods.  We never had fresh fish but the canned tuna and salmon harvest in our home was plentiful.

Tuna was the preferred choice for my brother and I. Thank goodness for Chicken of the Sea. It somehow tasted less like fish. Fortunately, I never made the connection between their logo – a mermaid - and the can of fish.  Even so, mom had to disguise the fish as tuna casserole with cream sauce and peas.  Apparently, this most popular family dish was created by Campbells Soup in the 1940s although fish parts in crème sauce was an old 1800’s dish called cod a la bechamel.

Salmon came straight from the can in patties much like SpongeBob’s crabby patties. The best part of salmon cakes was the potato pancakes mom served with them.  The “pancakes” were served with applesauce. For a kid who gagged on salmon, two full tablespoons of applesauce helped the salmon go down.

Fish sticks could also be consumed with a generous amount of catsup or mashed potatoes. General Foods introduced fish sticks in 1953 under their Birdseye brand. They were part of a rectangular food stick line that included chicken sticks, ham sticks, veal sticks and dried lima bean sticks – egad. Only fish sticks survived and became the preferred choice in many countries where the quality of fish was suspect. Fish sticks also solved a bigger problem. Fishing technology after WWII led companies to overfish. To keep from spoiling, the extra fish was processed into frozen sticks - Yum.

Abstaining from meat on Fridays for Catholics became optional in 1966 when U.S. Bishops allowed members to replace the abstinence with other forms of penance. There was little argument from our household.  Fish Fridays soon became Pizza Fridays and all was good with the world. I haven’t eaten a salmon cake since.

It was never about fish of course. It was about abstaining from something we desire to focus our thoughts on more important things. It’s a big month for that as Christians prepare for Easter, Jews celebrate Passover and Muslims prepare for Eid al-Fitr, a feast that follows one month of fasting and reflection. Happy celebrations to all our Allen neighbors.

Send comments to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Rediscovering The Wonder and Torment of Plastic Models

 

   This time will be different.  I’m a grownup and I know how to follow directions.

   With that in mind, I have decided to tackle one of my childhood demons – the 1:25 scale plastic car model.  After all, how hard can it be to finish building a level 2 plastic car model?  The answer depends on how you would define the word finish.

   I built a fleet of car models in my life.  It was a boredom buster for my friends and I in the days before video games. We would ride bikes to the 5 and 10 (cent) store and pick out a cool model along with a few jars of Testors paint and a new tube of glue. With the hopefulness of a Cowboys fan in August, we’d race home, stack a few Beatles lps on the turntable and crack open the box of wonder. 

   Whether we were building a Model A Roadster or a hot rod Cadillac Hearse (seriously), the modeling process for 11-year-olds was the same.  Ignore the directions and start painting stuff.  The results were predictable but satisfactory for an 11-year-old who had lost interest about halfway through the project.

   Five and dime stores no longer exist. Neither do $3 plastic car models. Model prices now range from $25 - $40. Surprisingly, many of the actual models have not changed at all.  Model kit companies like AMT, Monogram and MPC have been bought and sold since the 1960’s but the actual molds and packaging have survived. The model I chose to rebuild my confidence; a 1960 Ford Starliner, was probably designed and molded sixty years ago.

   I say that I never finished a model because every time I assembled one, I was left with a pile of spare parts. There was a usually a water pump and a rocker arm, a few shock absorbers and a radiator hose left over.  That stuff was hidden anyway, right?

   The most dangerous but most satisfying part of the project was painting the car body.  Years of bad paint jobs have finally convinced me to follow paint instructions this time.  I watched a YouTube video and followed the advice of “professional modelers.”  Did you know you are supposed to wait for one coat to dry before applying the second coat?  

   Glue was the biggest hurdle for me. No matter how careful I was, there was always a smudge of glue somewhere on the “glass” windshield.  I recently watched an enlightening YouTube video on that as well. This time it will be different!

   Models weren’t much fun once they were completed but I never had the heart to throw them in the garbage. Years later when we were married, I wisely recognized that my childhood car models would not be part of the new home decorations.  I stacked them in a big pile and photographed them before sending them to the junkyard for good.  They all had one thing in common – a chubby fingerprint on the front or back windshield and a lousy paint job.

   This time I will build a model with all of the parts and no chubby fingerprints – probably. I will keep you posted.

   Send comments about your car model experiences to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

 

I withheld comment recently when someone on Facebook posted photos of the “ice storm” that shut down schools and highways in Dallas last month. Others were not so kind.

In fairness, it was a thin but solid sheet of ice that covered everything. The photo didn’t really tell that story and several readers mocked the phrase ice storm.  It really was more of an ice dusting but one person’s storm is another person’s dusting I suppose.

There is a sense of pride or smugness when it comes to telling tales about surviving terrible winter weather.  Bragging about the weather is an unsanctioned sport in coffee shops and office lounges “up north.”.  Most tales start with “It was so cold that….”  They often end with someone else saying “that’s nothing. I remember when…”  Eventually the group nods in approval that the final tale depicts the coldest, longest, or snowiest storm ever.

The title of worst winter storm, according to numerous sources, belongs to the Great Blizzard of 1888.  The storm hit the northeastern states in March 1888. It caused more than $20 million in property damage (about $550 million today) and killed more than 400.  New York City was buried under 22” of snow. Further north, cities were hit with up to 50” of snow in two days.  Wind gusts up to 80 mph buried buildings, horses and people under massive snow drifts.  Now that’s a storm to remember or forget.

There’s a bonding that occurs when several people experience the same storm, even though it may have happened fifty years ago. The really bad storms are etched in people’s memory in much the same way hurricanes and tornadoes mark history for hundreds of years.

Everyone has a good winter storm story. Texans may have felt left out of that conversation until February 2021 when the temperature dropped way down and millions lost power.  Winter storm Uri, as it was named, has the dubious distinction of being the costliest winter storm on record with $196.5 billion in damages.  My memory was more localized as I fought the ice flow in my pool for a week with a large wooden pole.

My personal winter storm brag is surviving the Chicago blizzard of 1982.  A week of snow was followed by extreme low temperatures of -26 degrees on January 10 and high winds that pushed the wind chill to -80 below.  The weatherman didn’t mince words when he said “if you go outside you and your pets might die.” It was good advice.  It was so cold… that ice formed on the inside of some walls of our home.  I should mention that it was a rental.

A temperature of -26 sounds darn cold but residents of Fargo, North Dakota will brag that their grandparents survived -48 degrees in the late 1800’s.  Then again, workers on the Alaskan pipeline recorded a balmy -80 degrees in 1971. Let’s just hope the storm tales are over for this season and we can get onto bragging about the heat.  Did you now that it was so hot in Texas last summer that…

Send comments and your own storm brags to flipsidecolumn@gmail.com.

Christmas Wish List

 

Dear Santa – Please bring me a gas-powered plane like the one on the back of Boys Life Magazine. It’s ok if I don’t get anything else.  I did lose the football I got last year, and battery acid ruined my Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea submarine but I really, really want that airplane.

   Santa never personally responded.  Neither did my parents.  The response came on Christmas morning when “the package” wasn’t an airplane. It was actually a Spirograph set that lasted me for years but that wasn’t the point in 1966. I really wanted that plane.

   All of us have experienced that moment of disappointment – even on the most exciting day of the year.

   Parents prepare their children for many of life’s letdowns but when it comes to Christmas morning, kids are pretty much out on their own.  After all, it’s Santa magic that brings all the toys. “Don’t look at me,” they are thinking.  

   Almost everyone has a tale of Christmas morning surprise. A New Jersey friend told of the year he begged Santa for a NY Yankees jersey. Santa brought him a NY Mets jersey.  My guess is that the Mets gear was discounted because they were the worst team in baseball. That reminds me, Dallas Cowboys gear is on sale at Kohls.

   I deserve some blame as well.  For years my kids hoped Santa would deliver a motorized ride-on car. Every visit to Toys R Us included a trip to the car aisle where they would sit in every car and dream of the day Santa deposited one in our living room. They never got one probably because we regularly watched the dumb things do with them on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

   I don’t think any of us are bitter.  Every toy that Santa brought and every gift our parents wrapped was bought with love.  There was just a communications breakdown somewhere along the way.

   My suggestion would be to create an online pdf form that kids fill out with wish list items, rationale and budget estimates – just like their parents do.

  I recently saw a Facebook post of “The Sears Christmas 1963 Wishbook.” There was Mr. Machine, “the comical walking robot who swings his arms.”  I really, really wanted one of those.  Scanning the page, I found many other items of 7-year-old desire. So here is my unfinished Christmas list for 2020 with 1960’s prices.

   Dear Santa – If you have time, please bring me a Schwinn Stingray Bicycle ($49), Mr. Kelly’s Car Wash for my Matchbox Cars ($5.99), a wood burning set ($5.89), the 190 piece D-Day Combined U.S. Air and Ground Invasion Force with Exploding Mechanisms ($5.89), Matchbox City heat sealed and vacuum formed highways and overpasses ($7.99), G.I. Joe Splashdown Space Capsule - G.I. Joe not included – ($9.49) and the Lost In Space Robot with Blinking Lights and Movable Arms ($6.88).

   I’d give them all up for a gas airplane though but the Spirograph was actually very cool.  Thanks Santa mom and dad.

Last Minute College Advice

 

Hundreds of Allen kids headed off to college this week. If they are Allen High School graduates, they are well prepared for the academics. My concern is how they will cope with dormitory (or luxury apartment) life.

   Having successfully completed college myself in the 1970’s, I feel a responsibility to share my experience with younger parents and college freshmen.

   For example, did you remind your daughter not to leave cassettes on the dashboard where they will melt? Would your son remember to pack some extra Hai Karate in case the college bookstore ran out?  You can see why I’m worried.

   Here are some tips that worked for me and should help your college bound kids as well.

1.    You will be sharing a phone with at least three others so write down all of your calls.

2.    Always reverse the charges when calling your parents.

3.    Call your girlfriend or boyfriend after 11 p.m. on Sunday nights for the best rate.

4.    Avoid embarrassment by turning all of your Carpenters and Abba records backwards so your friends don’t spot them.

5.    Leave James Taylor and Cat Stevens records around your dorm room when girls visit. They like sensitive stuff like that.

6.    Playing Dark Side of the Moon at 45 rpm will pick up any dorm party.

7.    Milk crates make excellent record racks and coffee tables.

8.    Make sure your bell bottoms are properly frayed before leaving for college.  Cigarette ashes rubbed into the legs also give them a weathered look.

9.    Bring extra batteries for your transistor radio.

10.  Aluminum foil balls on the rabbit ears will expand your television reception.

11.  Never buy a used Chevy Vega – even if it looks like a really good deal.

12.  It is better to weigh down your turntable arm with dimes instead of quarters to get a clearer sound.

13.  Never stack more than three albums or they will start to slide.

14.  Electrical tape is expensive.  Masking tape makes a good substitute on stereo cables.

15.  Use the Herbal Essence Shampoo I gave you – girls dig it.

16.  Leave the galoshes home.  Bring Totes instead.

17.  Pumas…not Adidas…

18.  Keep your Navy peacoat dry – it smells when it gets wet.

19.  When attending campus demonstrations, carry a dime to make a phone call if you get arrested.

20.  You might rethink the Nixon/Agnew sticker on your bumper.

21.  Platform shoes are for high school proms, not college. Earth shoes are a much more practical solution.

22.  A summer job paying $1.75 an hour should be enough to pay for two semesters of college.

23.  Make sure you gas up on your odd or even day before driving back home.

24.  Beer cans and wine bottles make lousy decorations no matter what your friends say.

25.  Remember – there is more to life than Pong. Don’t let the video game disrupt your studies.