Revisiting the 1970s via AM Radio (Part 2)
Continuing to imagine I'd crossed into adulthood...
[You can read Part 1 of this series, with a playlist of about a hundred songs from the years 1970 through 1973, here. The corresponding blog posts, including some bio notes, are at Ye Olde Blog, here and here.]
Maybe it’s different now. Maybe it was different in other places, inside other heads, even in the early 1970s. But inside my own head, once I’d acquired a Bachelor’s degree, I fancied I must — must! — now be somebody other than the socially inept, unsophisticated doofus I’d been for 20-odd years.
And by 1974, married and gainfully employed as a high-school teacher, surely I’d crossed into adulthood. I knew about sex! (Well, kinda.) Younger people looked up to me (or at least did a good job of acting the part)! I had a bank account which didn’t regularly warn me of onrushing insolvency! My wife and I had an apartment, and two cars!
Of course, life — that conniving old sneak — was laying plans for me which I didn’t even suspect.
In the meantime, whenever I was in a car, I had the AM radio tuned to Philadelphia-area stations. This post’s playlist chronicles those two years by way of “highlights” culled from the Billboard “Hot 100 Singles” lists for ‘74-75; as with the 1970-73 list, it includes only songs whose titles immediately reminded me of their sounds, sometimes their lyrics, and at least the general experience of hearing them over, and over, and over…
If you were around in these years, and listening to AM radio, what songs do you remember which I’ve left off? For reference, courtesy of Wikipedia, here are those Billboard lists:
Do you have specific memories associated with the songs, even if you weren’t listening to AM radio then? (I know I wasn’t listening to radio or records in the 1930s-’40s, but my parents sure were… and they were still playing that music while I grew up, leading to many, many memories, decades later.)