It was the Summer of 69....NO 79! I'm not that old!

Songs remind you of all kinds of things. I know one I write about often on here is “Purple Rain” and my mother. Today I heard one while at work that took me back to the summer of ’79. “Miss You” by the Rolling Stones. Not sure when that was actually released, but it is a song I remember hearing a lot that year.


I had a friend I hung out with all the time. We used to have a gang we called the Mad Dragons. Yeah, it was 6th grade. “The Warriors” was one of our favorite movies along with “Saturday Night Fever” and believe it or not “Grease”. We saw that movie a hundred times easy. We went to the Palace Theater every Saturday afternoon and watched episode after episode. They used to let us in free. There was hardly anybody in the theater with us and we’d just sit there and watch trailers and movies.

Another song around that time that always played when we were waiting on the movie to start was “My Love is Alive” by Gary Wright. That song got me into the 70’s funk music. I love Parliament and George Clinton. I got into Lakeside and so many others.

My mom really pushed me to be open to music and I was but since the early 90’s I have been more critical. Music just isn’t as good. It is getting harder and harder to really find good music.

I remember watching the Midnight Special with my mother and the one memory that I remember above all others was the night Janis Joplin was on and Momma turned the TV up real loud and was dancing. We lived in an apartment down town and one of the neighbors called the cops and had said a woman was screaming down stairs and thought she was fighting with her husband. Now my mom wouldn’t hold back from knocking the crap out of my dad if he got stupid and they did tend to get rowdy, but tonight she was dancing and enjoying her music.

Back to my original thought, there are a lot of songs that make me think of times in my life like that. That one is pretty nice to remember running all over Blount County, Tennessee, riding my bike or skate board. Playing baseball and going to the swimming pool. No bills to pay, just school was all I had to worry about and the occasional bully or fight.

I miss my mother and those times and I know I had fun back then, but now I can really appreciate what she was enjoying. She just loved good music and feeling alive and would share that with anyone. Her favorite thing she always did was sit at her desk with the radio on, listening to the Eagles and writing short stories. She would do that all day and be perfectly content. I love you momma.