John B. Marek is a writer, farmer, outdoorsman and recovering economic developer. You can find his books at johnbmarek.com.
To kick off our Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I went to a free showing of the movie “Grease” at Primal Brewery. It was a good time, with a contingent of people our age mixed in with young families and 20-something beer-bros.
Although I didn’t see “Grease” in the theater when it was released in June 1978, I caught bits and pieces on HBO in the early ’80s and a professional rendition of the musical in Charlotte in the early 2000s. It’s not one of my favorites if I’m being honest, but that soundtrack inhabits a particularly sticky part of my youth, and I probably know those songs better than the women behind us Friday night who were singing along to “Hopelessly Devoted to You” and “Beauty School Dropout.”
Extended periods of unseasonably chilly summer weather are not uncommon on Ohio’s North Coast, and the summer of 1978 began overcast, cold and wet. I had promised my mother I would refinish some old furniture for her over my summer vacation. I recall constantly moving the piece I was working on in and out of the house, dodging the showers, before giving up and waiting out the weather.
My other significant summer activities were mowing lawns and doing yard work, but the rain also hindered those, so I spent the first two weeks after school let out trapped in the house with four channels on the TV and a couple of lousy paperback novels.
The cold snap finally ended the third week of June and I returned to a more familiar summer agenda. Along with the mowing, sanding, raking, staining, trimming and varnishing, I carved out time for fishing and walking the bay shore and woods in search of “treasures.” Evenings were typically spent on the porch swing under the leafy maple outside our kitchen window, listening to baseball on my transistor radio or, on Saturday nights, a different kind of contest.
The most popular radio station in northwest Ohio in those days was actually located across the lake in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. CKLW was a “top 40” pop music station that played the “hits” in heavy rotation 24 hours a day, day in and day out. That said, the definition of pop music was more inclusive in those days, and I was as likely to hear classic rock favorites like Bob Seeger and Boston as I was bubblegum like Andy Gibb and ABBA. Every Saturday night, CKLW broadcast Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 countdown, and I took that imaginary ranking of songs way too seriously.
I would tune in, Canfield or Faygo soda in hand, and cheer as my favorites moved up the charts or jeer as what I considered inferior compositions overtook them. That summer, I was enamored with Bob Seeger’s “Still the Same,” Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street,” Wings’ “With a Little Luck,” Eddie Money’s “Baby Hold On” and Sweet’s “Love Is Like Oxygen.” The enemy was anything disco… and anything from the “Grease” soundtrack. Yep, I loathed that [expletive] crap. Ironically, while rooting against those songs, I learned every word of every one of them.
At the risk of muddying the cozy nostalgia-tinted picture I’ve just painted, there was also burgeoning awkwardness to all that. It occurred to me that other 15-year-olds were likely not spending their Saturday nights alone in their backyards listening to songs they didn’t like on the radio. It was the dawn of self-awareness, but I had no idea what to do about it.
Shortly after I returned to school at the end of that summer, my buddy Jeff turned me on to a relatively new radio station he had discovered: 104.7 WIOT, Toledo’s Best Rock. My days of putting up with the Bee Gees and Yvonne Elliman between the songs I wanted to hear were over. The first song I heard on WIOT was Rush’s “The Trees,” and I thought, yeah, this is different.
These days, when I hear one of those songs, even the ones I didn’t like, from the summer of 1978, I can’t help but sing along. Time wears down a lot of the jagged edges.
Bluer than blue. Sadder than sad. You’re the only life this empty room has ever had.
If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody, baby. If I can’t have you, oh, oh.
Sum-sum-summer, well it’s almost summer.
And in a world of people, there’s only you and I. There ain’t nothing come between us in the end. How can I hold you when you ain’t even mine?
And yes… I got chills*; they’re multiplying, and I’m losing control. ‘Cause the power you’re supplying, it’s electrifying.
ELECTRIFYING!
*Contrary to popular belief, shoes are not multiplying, nor are they in control.