Janis Ian warned us in 1975.   I like this YouTube version of an early live performance :  http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=VMUz2TNMvL0&feature=related .

She’s honest about her memories.  Let’s face it, we were not always happy at seventeen.  As the father of three teenagers, I try to protect my girls from the pain and isolation in Janis’ song.  But maybe the best I can do is play the song for them, to let them know they are not alone.

Not Every Morning Is A “Bogut In The Morning” Morning¹

Looking back, I’m more comfortable believing it was all good in the seventies, that every morning was a “Bogut In The Morning” morning.  But it wasn’t always true.  I guess most seventeen year old kids (then and now) blend memories and dump ‘em into a messy pile – good with not so good, safe with unsafe, happy with sad, confident,  terrified, feeling loved, feeling totally unlovable.   

Maybe that’s what I like about the seventies and its music.  Not always popsicles and show tunes, but plenty of “sap” if I want it.  In 1971 Don McLean wrote about popular icons who were snatched away, but we still danced to his song…or, tried to dance, or watched others who really danced.  Try the song one more time:  Don McClean- American Pie .  Can you dance and grieve at the same time?

Hey, What’s Wrong With The Beach Boys?

But I’m a sentimental optimist.  A rosy nostalgic.  In 1979, several years after Janis warned me, I was still sorting out the confusing mix when I unpacked my stuff at Penn State and quickly set up my turntable to play the Beach Boys.  With patient resolve and a few years’s experience on Philly’s streets for jading, my older roomate Dave wisely and carefully introduced me to Springsteen – the early, edgy years, while Bruce was still playing and writing at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.  Dave had help.  My friend Steve tried to lure me into David Bowie’s world … but I was too sentimental for reality.  I preferred Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  It’s a wonder I had any friends on campus.       

I like to remember rosy, but Janis Ian warned me.  Be careful how you remember.  Guard your nostalgia.  Websters Dictionary defines nostalgia as  a “wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to some past period or irrecoverable condition.”  Irrecoverable or never there?  Do we have a tendency to shine up (or modify) our memories to make them easier to carry around?

Life is a mix.  The music of the seventies gave us opportunity to hear the mix — if we listened to all of it, if we remember.  Do you remember Gilbert O’Sullivan?  O’Sullivan’s songs sounded distant, echoed, with an odd reverb quality.  His 1972 Alone Again, Naturally  Gilbert O Sullivan – Alone Again Naturally was enough to send even the most cheerful seventeen year old into depression.  But then, the seventies also brought us Debbie Boone’s You Light Up My Life Debbie Boone -You Light Up My Life  and Jack Bogut’s favorite, Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road  Loudon Wainwright III – Dead Skunk (In The Middle Of The Road)  by Loudon Wainright (although this song is not-so-happy for the skunk).

Wax Nostalgic, Wax Honest

Let’s wax nostalgic, but wax honest.  The truth of the seventies and any decade is this: ”Life is difficult,” to borrow from the opening sentence in M. Scott Peck’s book of the next decade The Road Less Traveled.²  He continues, This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this  truth,  we transcend it.  Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

I invite you to wax nostalgic, about the music of the seventies or any decade.  But wax honest.  We need Debbie and Frankie, and a bit of Janis to keep us honest.  Springsteen and Bowie will help. 

Life is difficult and it always has been.  But its OK.  We’re in it together, and its the same for all of us.  Tonight, I’m gonna’ play this song for my girls. They need to know they’re not alone:  

To those of us who knew the pain
      Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
     When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
     the world was younger than today
when dreams were all they gave for free
     to ugly duckling girls like me…

– Janis Ian “At Seventeen”

© Copyright by Jeffrey Y. Harlow, Ph.D (2009).

1. This is another reference to Jack Bogut’s morning radio program on KDKA in the seventies.
2. Peck, M. Scott (1988) The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology Of Love, Traditional Values, And Spiritual Growth. New York: Touchstone