Saturday, March 03, 2007

Bow. Chicka. Wow. Wow.

One of the local Adult Contemporary stations has a Seventies Saturday Night. The other A/C station said, "Oh yeah? Well, WE have all-seventies weekends!!!! Nyahhhhh!" Now, I am an 80s girl. That was my coming-of-age time, and I love 80s music. Most of the time, if I'm listening to XM, it's on "80s on 8." Most 80s music brings a smile to my face because I usually have a specific great memory attached.

But there's a special place in my heart for 70s music as well. It was in the 70s that I first listened to and learned to love radio and music and all that stuff. Most of the time, it gives me what I call the "sunny" feeling. I always think of summer and 70s music as going hand-in-hand. There may or may not be a specific memory, but it's always summer, it's always bright and sunny, I'm almost always outside, and it's generally good to be alive. What more can you want, right?

So I'm driving around today and as I was scanning the dial, it fell on the 70s Weekend station. They were just starting a new song -- "Pick Up the Pieces" by Average White Band. One of my favorites, by the way. And I started laughing and couldn't stop.

Porno Beat Music. What better way to describe a lot of the music of the mid-to-late 70s, especially the disco stuff. Okay, I love disco. I do. There. I said it. And in the late 70s you couldn't escape it. Even the Stones and Steely Dan and the Eagles all did disco-tinged stuff (even if they didn't call it disco themselves). "Miss You"? "The Fez" or "Kid Charlemagne"? "Those Shoes"? All great stuff and not overtly disco, but with that unmistakable beat.

The thumping bass. That bow-chicka-wow-wow guitar and synth.

And all those hidden things just flew over the head of one music-happy, fun-loving little girl in South Carolina.

1 comment:

Talmadge said...

Every time I think about the 1970s, it seems like I need a dose of affirmation that, musically, the decade was far from terrible.

It just seems like the BAD (read: white people who aren't AWB) disco seems to define the whole period for most.

Speaking of satellite channels, SIRIUS' "Totally '70s" has a regular thing called JUKEBOX FROM HELL (where have we heard that one before, hmmmmmmm??) that has me laughing out loud every time.

I discovered music quite early for my age, which puts me at recalling stuff as far back as '69 (age 4). The '70s are a mixed bag for me, but so are the '80s. The best thing is that I am a child of both decades. Memories a plenty.

Just please, make me forget "Playground in My Mind" ever existed. That was an awful record. Awful, AWFUL record.

-TG

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