During those rather tenebrous days of the 70s, you could go to a cocktail party and discuss Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Yes, and there would be no smirk, the conversation would not linger on the superfluity of notes, the brazen ostentatious lyrics, instead the conversation would be serious, almost academic, maybe too academic, the conversation would be littered with Greek and Roman allusions, the lyrics would be compared to Byron and Keats, the musicianship would be fawned over. During wine and cheese you could bring up any subject, the intelligentsia would deconstruct and construct with the vigor of Irish road workers. I spent very little time outside, so the dark, wind, and rain hardly bothered me, the early 70s was lived not between cocktail parties, it was one long endless cocktail party, and this is how my trouble started. (more…)