Today
I had a catharsis. I was watching American Masters on PBS and the
program was about the Troubadour in L.A. and the many
singer/songwriters that appeared between the late Sixties and mid
Seventies. It featured artists like James Taylor, Joni Mitchell,
Carole King, Elton John, Jackson Brown, Eagles (note: the group name
is Eagles, not the Eagles), and extras like Cheech and Chong and
Steve Martin. It was the music I loved as a young adult. Note I
didn't say as a kid as by the time this music came out so had I and I
was in my twenties which is where you really learn what life is
about. The minute a song started off in mono and slowly was cross
faded to the stereophonic records I immediately raised the volume to
11. You know, the place you go after you've gotten to ten and you
need just that little bit more to take it over the top. “Where do
you go? Eleven!”
I
was transported back to a time to where I was protected by an
educational system and allowed to find out who I really was. It was a
time when “we” hated the bomb and everything for which our
parents stood. How could we be the police of the world? Sticking our
hands into a place where we didn't belong. Nixon was in the White
House and it seemed that anything goes, both good and bad. The music
of that time had moved from the Brill Building's factory manufactured
groups and music and moved toward celebrating the writers who had
become the artists as well. The British invasion was over at least as
far as the music industry was concerned. It was a time before Coke
and Horse and “everybody smokes pot” as the Beatles sang at the
end of “I am the Walrus”.
In
prep school, we had a dorm band who made the Youngblood's song “Get
Together” a popular song almost two years before it was
mainstreamed on FM radio. From '66 to '68 I devoured this new music
with the help of several dorm mates who seemed to know a lot more
about these artists that I. Blood Sweat and Tears, Cream, Country Joe
and the Fish, The Blues Project: So many songs, so much music. With a
loss of a room mate to graduation, I actually lost his stereo, I was
forced (although not very hard) to purchase my own stereo system. I
worked all summer for the Military Industrial Complex in the form of
Stone and Webster Engineering to earn enough money to go to Stereo
Lab and buy a H.H. Scott receiver, speakers and a Garrard turntable.
I was set. Each week I added more albums to my collection. Moby
Grape, The Beacon Street Union and most of the artist I heard on the
now converted local radio stations FM signal to underground rock. The
voice of the Mount Washington Valley, WMWV still plays this kind of
music. There was no more AM rock, except for maybe Dick Summers and
stations like WBCN in Boston, WHCN in Hartford, WNEW-FM in NYC and
WMMR-FM in Philly were the power houses of new music. These were
heady times but no where near what would happen to me when I went to
college in western Mass at the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst.
Ah
to be young and free at college again. By the spring of '69 I was
ready for a big change. I was tired of pretending to be someone who I
wasn't, so I came out just before the riots at Stonewall in NYC. Much
to my surprise, my new friends at school accepted me as I was. I also
discovered Pot at the same time. To quote David Crosby, “There was
a time between the coming of birth control pills and the on-slot of
AIDS, and during that time, if you were lucky enough to be out and
single and running around, sex was really a lot of fun. Really, a
lot, really!”
Although
I had come out, I wasn't really very interested in what was the “gay”
scene. There was a gay bar in Springfield, under the railroad tracks
that was regularly raided and occasionally burned. This was not my
idea of a place to go to meet people. There was a gay organization on
campus which wasn't too bad but it was very clickie and I had already
placed my eggs in the radio station basket so to speak. I again was
left on my own to figure out what was next. My first beau was curious
and although it took him some time to warm up to the idea of having
sex, when the time was right, he sprang. I was totally amazed.
Although I had fooled around for many years, I would not have called
it having sex. This was the real thing and I jumped in with both
feet. I guess I frightened him. After the deed was done, he had a
difficult time figuring out what had just happened. I have said he
jumped back into the closet but I don't think that that was correct.
What I think happened was that he got a lot more that he had figured.
I think he thought into the future and was totally frightened with
the prospect of explanation to his friends and especially his
family. I only hope that he has at least some fond memories if he has
not shut out the memories completely. I still connect with him on an
electronic level but I'm not sure we will see each other for what
remains for me of this life.
I
have been listening to the music from that era for most of my life
and this afternoon is no exception. I've gone through Carol and CSN
and Y too. About to move to JT and then Elton John. I have the early
recording of these two and it should bring back even more memories.
This
was a time when as Steve Martin puts it, “Everybody's pretty when
your 20. To quote Carol King, “You got to get up every morning with
a smile in your heart.” I must say that now I find that hard to do
on a regular basis but I had a time when it happened every morning,
back when I was young.
