August 24, 1974 – KHJ-AM – Machine Gun Kelly – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Where did Summer go? It’s like that every year. June happens – finals, grades, clean out the locker. Head to the beach – road trips, blank spots – Friday turns into Monday and then Friday again. You make good on your pledge of falling in love at least once a day – it’s the Summer and clothing is mostly optional – and the girls you knew at 14 look a whole lot different at 17. They know and you know and you know they know. They say and they do things and you are fascinated.
It’s all going by fast – and even you’ve started to notice.
But the new semester is only two weeks away – there’s still time – still time to party – still time for a road trip somewhere.
Of course, aside from the Summer going by really fast, it’s been a strange one. 1974 has been epic in a lot of ways – even you got interested in politics when Nixon was resigning. Watergate was something else and you started watching Walter Cronkite a lot. You missed Vietnam and all the protests – you heard about them, but you didn’t really know what they actually were.
Maybe that’s what getting older is about – you pay attention to things you didn’t just a few years earlier. All of a sudden you notice what you didn’t notice before. Just like you notice time is going by fast – and you’re one year older and it will be the Fall soon – and how did that happen?
At least there’s music and you have your radio – and you don’t think about it all that much. As long as there are tunes, life is good – and you can’t ask for more than that. Even if the future is a little hazy from time to time.
To get an idea what August was all about in 1974 (aside from Nixon and Watergate) here’s a little under 90 minutes worth of Machine Gun Kelly as he was holding court on KHJ on August 24, 1974. Just so’s ya know.
