Tuesday

Romanticable Me

Friday evening, I sat on the front porch, enjoying a nice late summer evening and some drinks. I was streaming Pandora from my iPhone into my (splendid) bluetooth Sony wireless speaker. The channel: 70s Lite Rock Radio.

I was really digging it, which was no surprise. It's long been one of my favorite Pandora stations. But on Friday, I was vodka-waxing over it, trying to figure out why I was digging this music so much.

My conclusion: I'm the Kerouac type. A guy with a "romantic" or dreamy streak. And that 70s Lite Rock Radio station brings memories of my youthful romanticism to the surface.

I started high school in 1980, so I first heard those 1970s lite rock artists--James Taylor, the Carpenters, Bread--when I was just a little kid, before I could cruise around town and hang out with the cool kids at high school. I remember, with reasonable clarity, how cool I thought the high schoolers were and how it would've been great if I could drive and hang with them. It seemed exciting, like something cool was always happening.

Such, of course, are the idealized notions of a youngster who doesn't realize that high school kids are just kids, with their own problems and angst and boredom.

But still, that's how I thought high schoolers in the 1970s lived.

And when I heard those songs (and I heard a lot of them, my clock radio always on and frequently listening to my older brothers' albums), I knew those were the songs the high school kids were listening to while they were out living the high life in my little town.

That's why I think those songs appeal greatly to me today. They bring back a level of nostalgia that I don't get from 1980s lite rock. The 1980s were my decade: from 1980 through 1991, I was in school . . . and having a pretty good freakin' time. But I also know, first hand, that youth brings its problems. And angst and boredom. So I have very little tendency to romanticize the 1980s.

But the 1970s, with disco and long-haired kids arranging meeting places via CB radio (a craze among the even the upper-middle class in my town)? I wasn't there. So, whether merited or not, it holds a lofty spot in my soul.

And I believe my subconscious is indelibly inked with its music.