50 Years of Song Project: 1973

I can already see that it is going to be difficult to stick to my intention of picking only five songs from each year.  I know I can do whatever I want, because, hey, this is my project.  But, I'm practicing staying within the rules I've set out for myself, even if it's difficult.  My therapist might call this an 'exposure.'  Still, the punk rocker inside of me wants to strike out against any notions of form and order.  This tension between form and freedom always lives within me, and manifests itself in different ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes like a screaming banshee.  

So many of these songs lead to memories, and then on to different threads of analysis, regret, gratitude and joy.  I've come to think of nostalgia as a dangerous emotion in and of itself.  It's only when it can be used as a catalyst for further creativity that I see it as something positive.  But, it's so easy to get trapped in it, bogged down in memories and a hopeless longing for a more innocent time.  I actually think nostalgia has become something of a cultural disease, where we all have a tendency to look back and imagine that things were so much better 'back then'.  But, were they really?  Who knows.  Our own personal histories are as mysterious as the history of anything else.    

1973 was my first full calendar year on the planet.  I was an only child living with my young parents in Burgettstown, PA.  I wonder if the technology will ever become available for us to access those memories from our earliest years?  

Crocodile Rock

Elton John makes his first of what I'm certain will be multiple appearances on my list.  For some reason, Sir Elton stopped playing this song at his concerts circa the late eighties.  I don't know the full story, and this isn't a documentary, so I'm not going to look it up right now.  In the fall of 1994, I saw Billy Joel and Elton John at Cyclone Stadium in Ames, Iowa.  During the encores, each artist would come on and perform a few of the other artist's songs with their own bands, before closing it out with everyone on stage together.  I remember Billy, during his solo portion, telling the crowd that Elton might not play Crocodile Rock anymore, but that wasn't going to stop him from playing it himself.  I think Elton started playing it again live some years later.  My favorite part of the song is the organ instrumental interludes.  It's impossible for me to not hum along.

Rocky Mountain High

I remember when I used to listen to this song in the days when I was a recent college graduate wastrel trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I was always inspired by the lyric: "He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year".  I was only 23.  There was still time to figure things out, I told myself.  Maybe a trip to the mountains could show me the way.  Well, I was forty years old before I made it to the Rocky Mountains.  But, I was there on an unforgettable trip with my lovely wife and two wonderful sons so, at least to some degree, I had managed to figure things out without the mountains.  I've made a few subsequent trips to the Rockies over the years.  In 2018, my son Dominic and I climbed Mt. Elbert, the highest peak in the state.  We also went white water rafting down the Arkansas River.  One of the neatest things about this trip was that we camped just outside of Leadville, which is home to a big Climax Molybdenum mine.  My dad worked for Climax for over forty years!  He actually had multiple opportunities to take a promotion which would have required moving to Leadville, but he turned them down, I suspect because he didn't want to uproot the lives of me and my sister.  I can't imagine what else would have held him back, because he loved the mountains, hunting, fly-fishing and nature.  He would have been in his own version of paradise.  In 2021, Dominic, Ben and I went on a backpacking trip to the Gunnison area.  We were there for a week with my friend Jerod and his family.  We camped on the banks of the Taylor River, where we tried our luck with flyfishing, but didn't come away with any fish.  But, that's the thing about flyfishing, and especially so in such a beautiful setting--you don't have to actually catch any fish for it to be a sublime experience.    

Drift Away

I swear I was 40 years old before I knew that the lyrics were 'gimmie the beat boys, and free my soul', as opposed to 'gimmie the people, and free my soul.'  I realized that the latter didn't make any sense, but since when was rationality a requirement for rock and roll?  The song became mega-popular in the new millennium after Uncle Kracker released his take on it, which smartly and beautifully included an appearance by Dolby Grey, the singer who made it popular back in the 1970s.  It's a super catchy tune that puts a smile on my face every time I hear it and has now become part of the cultural experience of multiple generations.  I remember when Dominic was young, we used to sing along to it together in the car.  What a testament to the power of music to move the human soul!  

Papa Was a Rollin' Stone by The Temptations

I actually don't know this song that well.  However, my dad, who was not exactly what I would call a music aficionado, and certainly was not a Rollin' Stone, was a huge fan of the Temptations.  I envision him listening to this song as he rocked me to sleep at night.  My dad was pretty stoic most of the time, but he had a funky streak.

Dueling Banjos from the Deliverance soundtrack

This bluegrass classic from the Deliverance soundtrack is instantly recognizable after the first few notes.  I used to pick around at the mainline melody on my acoustic guitar.  This song was a smash hit in 1973, following it's centrality to an unforgettable scene in the 1972 movie Deliverance.  Evidently, the song was around well before it's use in the movie, and a version of it even featured in an episode of The Andy Griffith show.

Deliverance is a disturbing film that I didn't see until I was in my 20s, but I was familiar with the song long before that, and it was one of the songs on my double CD Instrumental Magic, that my friends and I listened to relentlessly in my dorm room in 1990 and 1991.