1974
The soldiers were coming home the next year.
Not that any of us believed it. Belief was impossible
in the summer of 1974. None of us knew Brian Wilson
was holed up in his mansion, eating steaks
and taking drugs, but we would have sympathized. I remember the day
in your room across the street from my grandparents' house
in the sweltering summer of Gainesville, Florida,
during the annual Family Vacation
suprised and dismayed when you said No; Listen:
To surfer music? I might as well listen to Muzac!
What is this horseshit you're telling me?
That's GOT to be you're parents' record. And you said No;
Listen:
and I did, and the album cover
ENDLESS SUMMER
mocked me from the foot of your bed. The head
wants to say, logically, there's no such thing
as an ENDLESS SUMMER
and there's no way I'm sitting here listening to The Beach Boys.
Then, the ear hears, for the first time closely, for the first time not on AM radio,
Good Vibrations, and Wouldn't It Be Nice?
What in the hell is going on here? How
did I miss this before? What the hell
was I thinking?
What in the hell am I trying to say here?
Maybe that my innocence had already been crushed out like a Marlboro. Maybe
that I found some measure of it again on that summer day
in the organized clutter of your room
where you said No; LISTEN. Later
it would be Papa Frank and the Mothers
with their Lonely Dental Floss
still later
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, just a few hundred miles away in Jacksonville,
ripping the cover off the flight plan and improvising a new mission.
1974.
How could it possibly have been a bad year?
The soliders were coming home and freaking out.
The President was on trial for being an asshole.
The President-To-Be couldn't get a full sentance out of his mouth without fumbling at least one verb, God bless 'im.
But you were sitting there wearing that ratty T-shirt
from a South Florida bar you'd never been too
"FAST EDDIE AIN'T FAST"
And our ears were opening
To a brave new world we never knew existed.
What in the hell am I trying to say here?
Just this: thanks. Fast Eddie, wherever you may be,
thanks.