OK. I was wrong

The phrase, ‘It was better being 20 in the ’70s than being 70 in the ‘20s is the signature realization of every baby- and near-baby boomer. Whoever first said or wrote this truism was right. Actually I thought I had been the first to think of it, but I’m at that age where, though the odd rebel yell may be muffled, it still boasts a modicum of truth.

At the beginning of 2024, my husband of 33 years underwent a double lung transplant. He’d been extremely unwell for nearly two years, during which his lung capacity dwindled to a disturbing level. I do believe our family doctor dropped the ball and his IPF (Idiopathic Pulmonary Function) should have been caught months earlier. By the time he was finally approved for a lung transplant in March, it was more than likely that, without it, he wouldn’t have survived the summer

To make matters worse, we have a small horse farm and I’m not getting any younger. My brush with FND (Functional Neurological Disorder) two years ago did a number on my balance and I was continually tripping, never a good thing to do in the midst of a herd of horses. As my father told me repeatedly during his battle with lung cancer, “Don’t get old.” Despite the alternative there is, I’ve certainly found, a wealth of sagacity in that utterance.

So far, this recounting has nothing to do with music, but I’m getting there. I need to take my time these days. Despite my rushing into things immediately head on, I realize that those are all fool’s errands. And such a fool I feel when nothing goes as planned.

Having never been particularly sick during my life, or he during his, this invasive surgery bore the mark of old age, something I had never thought I was. I still think I’m 12. The mirror doesn’t but I often accuse it of being a traitor when it tries to convice me I'm actually a smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-baby-boom boomer (a term I truly hate, though not nearly as much as ‘zoomer’, which is accorded seniors over 55). It’s heinous.

Transplants may not be the preserve of the elderly, but more of the elderly need preservation efforts, generally speaking. This realization about his poor health, combined with the fact that I‘m three years older, moved me to brood about age and reflect on a time when all things seemed possible, the world was a stage where anyone could do anything, and the future was a promise.

For me the stage was set in the 1970s and I was in my 20s. And music underscored my every move. During that decade I graduated from binge listening to The Beatles and The Monkees, Paul Revere and the Raiders and rock and pop in general toward country and country rock music. Gone were the bands and artists who had populated my teens as I gravitated toward my new theme music. The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Larry Gatlin, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Pure Prairie League, Johnny Cash, Waylon and Willie, Alabama, The Gatlin Brothers and the like became my aural backdrop and, since that music played constantly in my head, it accompanied my every thought and action.

What I missed entirely during the ‘70s was the bands plying the airwaves with Metal and Metal Rock. For some reason, that genre irritated me. I found it tuneless and lacking the gently rhythmic beat of its country rock counterparts, so it never featured in my signature tunes. And so it went. I reached the 2020s a virtual metal rock virgin.

It was freezing and snowy, windy and altogether miserable that evening in February 2024. I had taken over all the horse chores and was in the barn getting feed bowls ready for my four-legged equine family. I noticed my husband had put a Google virtual assistant in the tack room, and though I largely eschew, and rage about, modern technology, I couldn’t find the radio I’d left out there, so capitulated and asked Mrs. Google to play some ‘70s country rock. And she politely agreed to accommodate my request.

As always, I found the music soothing. So many years on, the sounds were resonant of my youth and that exhilarating time in my life when, though I’m vegan, the world was my oyster. About four songs in, the Missus introduced a Grateful Dead song. I knew it was The Dead because my friend’s daughter had been a Deadhead and followed the band on tour in the 1980s. That was my passing familiarity with them and their music. But was it country? Was it country rock?

Whatever it was, I liked it. Over the weeks and months that passed, I graduated to asking Mrs. Google to play ‘70s rock and metal bands, and she decided to introduce me to my youth. Led Zeppelin and Procul Harum sang me songs in their entirety: The Immigrant Song, A Whiter Shade of Pale. Whereas, all those years before, I’d immediately changed the station when a song by AC/DC, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and their ilk began to play, now I was enjoying their evening serenades. And wishing I hadn’t so summarily dismissed their contributions to the music world of my youth.

In 2025, I’m still asking for the genre when I do my evening barn chores. Sometimes Google is contrary and will play the same three songs from Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and The Who (also a band I missed entirely) on repeat but, usually, she entertains me with a far-reaching musical tableau of the past age.

I’ve come to appreciate this music rather late in my life, but listening to it, now regularly, takes me back to the school and beach dances where drum solos would go on for 10 minutes and I’d want to scream. But those were…my halcyon days, let’s call them, and I want to enjoy them as long as I possibly can.

Video, most assuredly, did not kill the Radio star. At least not in my barn.