To Jukeboxes

 Did you forget about Frankie Valli? Did you forget about Elvis’s “In the Ghetto”? Do you remember Captain and Tennille’s “Muskrat Love”?

 

We have them saved for you. Of course, we have them all on cd’s now. Records were cumbersome and slow. And some kid goes running past and the needle skips a little. Yeah, we don’t miss the records.

 But we have filled our slots with the music that belongs to a past you don’t remember. You’re 27, waiting in the DC airport for your flight home for the holidays and you have a three hour layover. You decide to camp out in our 1950’s themed airport restaurant, complete with small jukeboxes at every table. You flip through the selections. Some are familiar: “She Loves You,” “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” an awkward amount of KC and the Sunshine Band. But some you’ve never heard of: “Living Thing” by Electric Light Orchestra, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” by Vicki Lawrence, “Amie” by Pure Prairie League.

 

Pure Prairie League? Jukeboxes are like being in someone else’s dream, so you drop in two dollars and pick four songs you never heard before.

“Jackie Blue” comes on. Suddenly, someone else’s dream becomes the story of your life. It’s writ large for the whole restaurant to hear:

Don't try to tell me that you're not aware

Of what you're doing and that you don't care.

You say it's easy, just a natural thing

Like playing music, but you never sing.

You feel exposed for the fraud you are. You never heard this song. The waitress brings you your milkshake with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. This might as well be 1974. The nation has survived the 60’s but just barely. There is a lot of healing to be done and everyone is dressing badly. No one can decide where the line between getting what I want and being socially responsible is.

We thought we’d know by now. The songs should be dated. The dreamer should have woken up decades ago.