Summer ‘73
Posted by: Fusion 45 in Props and Missives, Radio Mixes, tags: b.w. stevenson, billy preston, carpenters, chicago, deep purple, dr. john, helen reddy, jim croce, mac davis, maureen mcgovern, paul mccartney, paul simon, seals and crofts, three dog night, wingsIt is the 25th 35th anniversary of the Summer of 1973. I was 10-years old during that particular summer.
I have a 10-year old of my own today. He’s sometimes sweet, often petulant, always inquisitive. In short, he’s a lot like his father.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that summer over the past several months, how much the music will always be a soundtrack to that time.
I was going to write a week long series of posts about my summer as a 10-year old, riding our banana-seated bikes around the lake where we camped (predecessors to the mountain bikers of today), catching crayfish in the creek, fishing for blue gills in the lake, burning piles of wood in the fireplace (because we could), singeing marshmallows and eyebrows over the campfire and listening to the jukebox in the campground rec room. Especially the jukebox in the rec room, where we dropped quarters on the pool table and the pinball machine in a freshly built space that smelled forever like concrete and sawdust.
But, I’m off on a business trip tomorrow (a few hours after school starts) and, like the summer of 1973, the opportunity for a long list of reminisces has largely passed.
I did get as far as making a CD of these songs for car listening. Grandmom immediately identified them as “songs from the lake” and my kids immediately wanted to hear Smoke On The Water several hundred times (which they promptly renamed Barbeque On The River).
In a way, I managed to pull my summer and his summer as 10-year olds together. Briefly, which is always the way life is…
And say goodbye to summer…one more time.
The Carpenters - Yesterday Once More
Not written by Paul Williams, but should’ve been.
Seals And Crofts - Diamond Girl
Great piano part.
McCartney And Wings - Live And Let Die
Maureen McGovern - The Morning After
Shelly Winters. Need I say more?
Mac Davis Clint Holmes - Playground In My Mind
Jim Croce - Bad, Bad Leroy Brown
Helen Reddy - Delta Dawn
Dr. John - Right Place, Wrong Time
Spent the entire summer of 1983 learning these lyrics.
Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water
BW Stevenson - My Maria
Like Croce, we wonder what would have been if he’d stuck around.
Paul Simon - Loves Me Like A Rock
Bette Midler - Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
Doobie Brothers - Long Train Runnin’
I had yet to have my first schoolboy crush (Stephanie Turk, 7th grade math class) but I got it.
Indeed…
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