Yeah when things get stupid and I just don’t know
Where to find my happy
I listen to my music on the AM radio

Everclear

I’m old.  Ish.  How can you tell?  I remember Beta.  I’ve also listened to 8 tracks.  I remember when Leif Garrett was cool.  Shaun Cassidy too.

For those of you too young (and therefore not there) or those who were stoned during the 70′s, let me tell you it was OK.  It could have been better, but it could have been worse.

The VCR and the DVD
There wasn’t none of that crap back in 1970
We didn’t know about a World Wide Web
It was a whole different game being played back when I was a kid

Technology is amazing.  It really is.  In my 45 years I’ve listened to music on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD and MP3.  I’ve listened to music on a hand-held radio with a big ass antanae and I’ve watched videos on my cell phone.  Speaking of phones, I remember when we got our first push button phone.  I thought we were all rich and shit.  Dialing a rotary phone was for losers.

I’d be in bed with the radio on
I would listen to it all night long
Just to hear my favorite song
You’d have to wait but you could hear it on the AM radio
Yeah, you could hear the music on a AM radio
I can still hear Mama say “Boy turn that radio down!”

I remember the mid-to-late 1970′s I would have my radio tuned to either 640 KFI in Los Angeles or The Mighty 690 out of San Diego.  That’s where they played the good music.  You listened and you waited for your favorite songs.  I would have it playing as I fell asleep and that’s what I woke to as well.

When I was 12 or 13 I received a small boombox with a cassette player that would actually record off the radio.  How freakin cool was that?  I could save money, make my own tapes and take advantage of the new breakthrough in audio technology–the cassette tape.  Hell.  Yeah.

I was watching the Super Bowl yesterday on my totally-low-end 40 in HD TV and I found myself marveling at the picture quality.  I clicked over to the broadcast on the regular FOX channel and was totally impressed with how good the picture looked.  I’m not sure why I was so intrigued.  We’ve had the TV for almost two years.  After being mesmerized by my own stupidity, I remembered back to when I was a kid and the TV we had then.

First off it was TV.  Singular.  Not TVs.  Only one.  And it weighted about 150 pounds.  The remote control was the youngest child in the family and they only had a handful of channels to choose from.  Sometimes the station would go off the air because they had no programming.

I was a junior at Valley Christian High School when we got our first computers at school.  They ran MS DOS and had those big 5 1/4 floppy discs.  Drama Queen’s kindergarten class had computers in the classroom.  A generation makes a helluva difference!

I remember 1977
I started going to concerts and I saw the Led Zeppelin
I got a guitar on Christmas day
I dreamed that Jimmy Page would come from Santa Monica and teach me to play…Teach me to play…

My first concert was NOT Led Zeppelin.  Not even close.  I am ashamed to admit what my first concert was.  I’m going to tell you, but I want to remind you that I was young and that my parents took us to see someone they liked.   I had no say in the matter.

My first concert was Andy Gibb (as in dead brother of the Bee Gees).  I will forever live with that shame and request that you keep the mocking to a minimum.

It’s hard to imagine that I was 14 in November, 1979.  But I was.  I was a dorky kid and teenager.  I felt like I never fit it.  I rarely went out in high school because of an extreme lack of self esteem.  I’ve recently found out that there were some pretty cute girls I went to school with that actually might have considered going out with me if I’d shown interest.  Shit.  That was information I needed in the early 1980′s.  Not 2009-10.

When I get stressed (which recently has been all the time) I like to think back to the simpler days back in the 70′s and 80′s.  Back to the days of Casey Kasem with American Top 40 and Dr. Dimento playing Dead Puppies on KMET.  Days when chilling was the only thing you could do, so that’s what you did.

Yeah when things get stupid and I just don’t know
Where to find my happy
I listen to my music on the AM radio.

J.R.

If you’re of legal age, I invite you to grab an alcoholic beverage,  pack a bong or do whatever it is you do to relax.  Click on the video and get either a history lesson about the 1970′s or re-visit some fond memories.  Pass it to the left…