A STORY WORTH TELLING
“It’s like I’m 16 again. I grew up listening to this music on the radio.”
— Heard at a recent KC and the Sunshine Band concert
I recently attended a concert featuring the 1970s disco-funk group KC and the Sunshine Band. That marked the second time I witnessed the Florida-based musicians perform. The first occasion was the early 1970s in East Texas.
New on the music scene, they were opening for Willie Nelson.
I was there for the music, but my momma didn’t raise an idiot.
The venue packed with pocket pints and the aroma of wacky weed led me to surrender down-front seats and instead stand near an exit.
Some 50 years and many hit songs later, the venue was very different. Gray-haired grandparents wearing Velcro-fastener tennis shoes shuffled to their seats while adjusting hearing aids. But two lines into “Boogie Shoes,” revolving light beams bounced off disco balls as these same fans took to the aisles busting moves not seen since John Travolta immortalized “Saturday Night Fever.”
It’s no secret I love many kinds of music.
Music was instrumental in my formative years. I watched Mom smile during housecleaning listening to her high school record collection: Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw.
I laughed at her little brother, my Uncle Bill, talking about music, emotions and memories revolving around Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
Before psychological studies explored the notion, he related stories about the early 1950s in the Navy. He spoke about guys on ships a long way from home listening to music and sharing memories, as well as the cars they drove, the girls they dated and places where memories were made.
Coming to appreciate music over the years, I concur that music does more than simply entertain, it jogs memories and stirs emotions rooted deep in the soul.
Therefore, it was no fluke that revisiting the music and subculture of ‘70s disco recently unleashed a rush of recollections, like the time a dozen or so friends ventured from East Texas down to Panama City Beach, Florida, on motorcycles.
We spent a week at the not-so-glamorous, but affordably cheap, Barney Gray Motel.
It was a time before Panama City Beach saw a significant shift to the resort area it is today, back when it was affectionately and otherwise known as “Redneck Riviera.”
But that mattered little to us. We were there for the sun and the fun.
Just a year or two out of college and being my first time in Florida, the trip was not only fun, but also educational. It’s where I learned about severe sunburn, faced death on the Starliner (the infamous wooden coaster at Miracle Strip Amusement Park), and cruised the Miracle Strip beach road lined with hot cycles and cool cars every night.
It’s also where I was exposed to another ’70s phenomenon, one immortalized in a wellknown musical work –– Ray Stevens’ “The Streak.”
The bare facts are that a half dozen guys were huddled around an arcade pinball machine, challenging each other to pile up the most points. In the whimsical song, the singer warns his wife, “Don’t look, Ethel.”
But when two young women ran au naturel through the arcade and right past us, I just happened to be the only one not focused on the pinball game.
Stevens’ song suggests the streakers he saw wore nothing but a smile. The genuine, in-the-flesh arcade streakers I witnessed that night were wearing nothing but paper bags over their heads, preventing me from testifying as to status of any grins.
Dumbfounded, I called out to my unaware friends.
“G-g-guys,” I stuttered, “Over here! look at this!” But they were too late. The girls flashed right by us and out a nearby door before one of the pinball players finally turned and asked, “What are you hollering about?”
“Never mind,” I said. “I could tell you, but the effect just wouldn’t be the same.”
The effect would be perfect at this point to say that KC and the Sunshine Band was playing on the jukebox at the arcade that revealing night I got a peek near the pinball machines.
However, the honest truth is even better. Another ‘70s disco-era hit provided musical entertainment that summer night down in Florida — a Johnny Nash song that charted as a Top 100 No. 1 in 1972: “I Can See Clearly Now.”
Contact Aldridge at leonaldridge@gmail. com. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge.com.
