‘We Can Never Know About The Days To Come . . .’

 by whiteray

So, just for fun, what was it I was hearing from my radio speakers fifty years ago as the year of 1971 ended and 1972 was about to begin? 

(Neither year, in retrospect, was horribly important to me. The highlight of 1971 for me was nearly flunking out of college during my first quarter there, and 1972 brought me my first French kiss. As important as those seemed at the time, well, my life got better and at least a little more exciting over time.) 

Here are the top ten records in the last survey of 1971 offered by KDWB of Minnesota’s Twin Cities: 

“American Pie” by Don McLean
“Old Fashioned Love Song” by Three Dog Night
“Friends With You” by John Denver
“White Lies, Blue Eyes” by Bullet
“I Know I’m Losin’ You” by Rod Stewart
“Brand New Key” by Melanie
“Day After Day” by Badfinger
“Sour Suite” by Guess Who
“Once You Understand” by Think
“Behind Blue Eyes” by the Who 

Seven of those are immediately memorable. I had to remind myself, with brief listens, of the records by Denver, the Guess Who and Think. The latter – “Once You Understand” – was one of those “heal the generation gap” records that came along once in a while: As a voice croons “Things get a little easier once you understand,” we hear an adult male voice snarl, “I expect you to get a haircut by Friday!” and then an adolescent male voice whines, “Forget it, Dad.” And the audio sermon goes on from there. 

I’m not surprised that I had to remind myself of three of those records. The last months of 1971 had brought a change in my radio listening. I’d begun spending time – and gaining one credit a quarter for doing mediocre sports reports – hanging around the studios of KVSC-FM, St. Cloud State’s student-run station, which played classical music during the day and wildly varying rock in the evenings. And during the day, rock filled the station’s offices from the turntable in Studio B, entertaining those hanging around in the lounge while the staffer sequestered in Studio A sent Mahler or Mendelssohn out on the airwaves. 

At home, I’d traded radios with my dad. He’d had an AM-FM radio near his workbench but he only used the AM band, so I gave him the old AM radio my grandfather had once given us. That allowed me to leave behind the AM Top 40 sounds of KDWB, St. Cloud’s WJON and Chicago’s WLS for evenings of progressive rock on KVSC. 

Even so, I look at the thirty-six records that KDWB put onto its last survey of 1971 (the survey was called the “Big 6+30” for the station’s frequency of 630), and all of those records are familiar from years of reading, research and listening. Some of them I remember from that season and some I learned about later. 

And one of them – one I heard occasionally on AM radio during that winter and then numerous times after it was co-opted for a ketchup commercial – showed up on the radio on a Saturday morning in June 1987, making me laugh as I looked forward to a very important date that evening with my new ladyfriend. 

Fifty years ago today, “Anticipation” by Carly Simon was at No. 36 on KDWB’s 6+30. In February 1972, it peaked at No. 6 on KDWB; that same month, it spent two weeks at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.