True confessions

and how often have I used that headline?

It’s always a question of exactly how much to divulge — enough to be interesting, but not so much that the true depths of my patheticness are revealed. Hmmm . . . .

See, last week I was out doing the weekly groceries and decided to set the iPod on “stun” with what I had intended to be an ironic, awful collection of songs from the ’70s, which I had called “Sucking in the Seventies.” (No apologies to the Stones, and I never thought that album title had even a trace of irony to it.) But, perhaps sadly, perhaps not, I actually found myself deeply digging the songs I was hearing, much to my amazement and dismay. Songs that I had long since thought I had gotten over, back in my good graces after only a few decades of waiting out on the curb. Well, maybe it’ll pass.

So, what were they? Well, really, I’m not going to give you the whole playlist, because it’s just too embarrassing. But here are some:

• “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature,” The Guess Who. Actually, I have always liked No Sugar, but only the 45 version. This full version is very funky, sincere, and meaningful in a way few have tried since the ’70s. There’s a reason. But it’s a good song.
• “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” Crosby, Stills & Nash. Now come on. What were we thinking? You call those harmonies? We thought these guys were great? We waited outside the stage door, trying to tempt Stephen Stills with submarine sandwiches? (The wrong stage door, as it turned out.) A huge, sprawling mess of a song that lit a million Bic lighters at concerts across the country. It has no discernible point, no hook to speak of, it begins one place and ends another, and takes a hell of a long time to get there. But I was digging it in the cereal aisle, baby.
• “Woodstock,” ditto + Neil. “Woodstock” reminds me what I don’t think we’ll be able to convey to our children — people really thought the revolution was coming. Now I’m afraid it did, but it was the wrong one.
• “Sultans of Swing,” Dire Straits. I completely equate this song with a particular campus bar where I whiled away many millions of hours drinking and playing pinball and PacMan, a place that was renowned for its jukebox, on which this was one of the few very up-to-date songs, so it got played a lot. I really thought I’d heard all I needed to hear of this song back around 1980, but there it was last week, and it was good.
• “More Than a Feeling,” Boston. Okay, admittedly, I couldn’t last all the way through this one. My most vivid memory of this song, which at least one reader (which would be about 50% of my readership) may share, is it blasting out at an Explorer dance at the highly swank Ramada Inn in Schenectady, where the dance floor vibrated so hard from the dancing that we couldn’t keep the needle in the groove and kept having to restart the record. I gained a deep fear of dying in a Ramada collapse that I haven’t completely lost to this day.
• “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” Elton John. I mean, what the hell is this about? But man, it takes me back to a sweltering summer night, a very very long time ago, so vividly I can smell the air.

More will not be revealed.