Warning: foul language, sensitive issues

Were you here then? Do you remember?

Rock and Roll was in its death throes, and not much was worth hearing. If you were like me and only got singles in Top 40 format mixed in with oldies and classic rock and folk, then you were probably just fine. On WCAO Baltimore, whose signal went everywhere I could go, you could hear “Rock Around the Clock” followed by some Sinatra, Merilee Rush, then one of the top 100 songs in the current Billboard hits.

This one always comes to mind when thinking of that summer.

Not rock, exactly. It’s pure Country, so the next on my list won’t surprise you. Remember this?

Strange, but TV show themes were big that year. I’m no way gonna link them here, but Mike Post hit with the theme for “The Rockford Files” and then there was the stupid ass show “Baretta” with Robert Blake. His wife wasn’t there, but Tony Baretta did kill people.

McCartney and Wings were still on game when their album “Venus and Mars” was released, and although there was really only one hit single, “Listen to What the Man Said” was only one of a great bunch of songs.

The vinyl LP has two great songs that melt into each other and should have been played as such on radio. Here they are, courtesy of YouTuber AudioPhil:

Disco was there in 1975 and “The Hustle by Van McCoy was a hit with a dance to go with it; I’ve seen people do it, but it’s like watching someone pull a rabbit out of a flatcap.

Elton John hit at least twice with “Someone Saved my Life Tonight” which is my favorite of all of his stellar songs and with “Philadelphia Freedom.”

ELO had some strange songs, but every one of them was a good listen. This one is infectious; I never forgot it.

That one was from 1974 but finished in Billboard’s 1975 top 100 of the year.

America had no distinctive sound to me, and I always confused them and CSNY. But the songs by America had such absurd lyrics! “Alligator, lizards in the air” had to be about an acid trip, right? But this song stands out as hopeful, simple and just plain neat. I love it!

Grand Funk Railroad hit twice, but this is the best. YouTube credit: JMoore75860

I had not heard that song again until now, 50 years later.

QUEEN!

Yeah, they had already been around, but finishing at number 78 on Billboard top 100 was a big deal.

At number 77, John Denver had his most poignant song, a mournful tune and a story about a lost love.

Chicago:

Eagles:

Aerosmith:

We want old school! 1975 was a strange year, not just for music but for movies, headline news and cultural turmoil. And then there was me, the quintessential American Asshole.

Blockbuster films were usually released around the fall and winter holidays, but Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws hit theaters on 20 June, and the legacy was the summer blockbuster. Jaws left many people leaving theaters with a traumatic and unreasonable terror of beaches and water that lapped the sand, with great white sharks undoubtedly lurking just beyond the breakers. I do not like the movie, even if it’s a good one. And I hated the book, as I view infidelity as a grave sin and a heartbreaking one at that.

James R. Hoffa vanished, and to this day the crime remains unsolved. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though, as independent and freelance reporters managed to come close to solving it through networks of informers, all of which, when under oath, invoked the Fifth Amendment. In later years, theories as to where the body had been disposed of ranged from the plausible to the outrageous, the later of which saw workers digging in Giants Stadium in Jersey.

That year saw the last days of the Vietnam war. The fall of Saigon is remembered through footage of Hueys taking off from rooftops, bound for offshore aircraft carriers with refugees who had aided the Americans, whom the NVA would no doubt execute. Sacrifices of heroic Americans deciding to remain on the ground so refugees could be flown out have been forgotten. But it really happened.

Microsoft was born from either a fever dream or a late night pizza-induced nightmare.

That summer we lost Rod Serling, the greatest and most thought-provoking writer and narrator who lived. His Twilight Zone and later Night Gallery series survive him, and they are still loved and watched today.

Richard Nixon has been pardoned, but the country is still reeling from scandal, as Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman sit in prison. Water cooler talk can’t get away from the energy crisis, who caused it, and from ongoing investigations, book releases, magazine and newspaper articles still dog anyone suspected of being involved, the blank spots in tapes, I was sick of it.

In July, a Good Humor truck, the old, open top kind with only one seat, and a sexy girl riding on the hump beside the driver, started to make my father’s warehouse on Penrod Court a stop. We were busy that year, with a lot of people working. The truck drivers and crew went wild over her, but I was still developing my people skills as an asshole.

I told the depraved truckers, “Man, I wouldn’t fuck that with a dozen rubbers on my cock!” I was far enough away that there was a slim chance she wouldn’t hear me. But I had to grin when the drivers and crew burst out laughing. Here’s the boss’s son coming up with filth and cruelty. And she had heard me. She wasn’t there after that. In fact, the truck never came back after a few more trips.

I’d had a long history of verbally abusing ice cream truck drivers, but it had always been the Mr. Softee guy who took the worst of it.

I regret that. I’ve got too many regrets. And they go back more than 50 years.

1975. What a year. What an awful, wonderful, strange, confused and fucked-up year.

And really, all things considered, don’t we miss it? Don’t we wish we could go back?

Meh.