KRLA – Shadoe Stevens – November 18, 1970 – Rob Frankel Collection –
There you are – smack in the middle of 1970, the year has left you in shock and it’s not over yet.
Maybe you’ve just gotten really serious as you get older – like suddenly liking coffee and a cigarette in the morning and not knowing why; it just happens – everything reminds you of the Peggy Lee song “Is That All There Is?” – but the year really did blow chunks and you keep thinking about it. Not a whole lot of happiness going around – giddy is a thing of the past. Giddy was Junior High and being in love every 20 minutes – Giddy was every song on the radio being the best song in the world. Giddy was not worrying about your life. Giddy was looking forward to the next day.
You worry about everything now. The world has become a heavy place – and you’re stuck in the middle of it. It doesn’t feel particularly good, being seventeen. What freaks you out is if eighteen is going to be any better. You wonder. Every guy you know who is in your class is freaking out because they’ll be turning eighteen soon and there’s the Draft. And then you think about all the protests and all those kids and the ones who got shot and how everything is just a little creepier now than it was before.
Yeah – 1965. That was the year – that was the best year. That was the year you got your braces off and you had a lot of friends – that was the year you fell in real, honest to god love at The Teenage Fair and your girlfriends were jealous and then his family up and moved to Denver and you never saw him again. That was 1966 – that wasn’t such a good year, come to think of it. You already broke up by then – but still . . .
So – is it all going to be this serious and strange and painful forever? Is it going to be 1970 over and over until you die?
You don’t know – nobody does. The only thing that’s for sure is your radio and your tunes, and you confess to really liking The Partridge Family. Oh yeah, and Badfinger – at least the music doesn’t blow. There’s that.
Here’s 45 minutes of Shadoe Stevens exactly as he was on November 18, 1970 at KRLA. Big thanks to the Rob Frankel Collection.
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