1
Growing up on the east coast, the distance between towns was never very far.\u00c2\u00a0 Seemed like the whole eastern seaboard was one big suburb.\u00c2\u00a0 A megalopolis.
But Idaho was different.
I was living in Salt Lake City.
It had been a strange time.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d graduated from college.\u00c2\u00a0 Which freaked me out just like everybody else.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d lined up a job for the winter at the Goldminer’s Daughter in Alta, Utah.
And then I broke my leg.
I ended up in Salt Lake.\u00c2\u00a0 My cast gone a few weeks, living at the house of two people I’d met once.
Pretty bizarre.
And one day the phone rang.\u00c2\u00a0 My parents were going skiing in Sun Valley.\u00c2\u00a0 Did I want to meet them?
Doing nothing, I left Salt Lake Sunday afternoon, and about an hour shy of the Idaho border, the flurries I’d been ensconced in since my departure turned into flakes shaken hard from the sky.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d like to say there were clowns to the left of me, and jokers to the right, but there was no one in sight.\u00c2\u00a0 For miles.
Fearing getting stranded in the middle of nowhere decades before the ubiquity of cell phones, I turned around.\u00c2\u00a0 And watched the weather.\u00c2\u00a0 Day after day.\u00c2\u00a0 It was supposed to continue to dump.\u00c2\u00a0 Once bitten, twice shy.\u00c2\u00a0 But when Wednesday arrived, with snow still part of the forecast, I decided to try again.
This time it was sunny all the way to the Idaho border.\u00c2\u00a0 Gray until I hit Interstate 86, the main drag through the southern part of the state.\u00c2\u00a0 And then it started to blow.\u00c2\u00a0 The wind howled.\u00c2\u00a0 The snow was swirling.\u00c2\u00a0 My first instinct was to turn around.\u00c2\u00a0 But I was over halfway there.\u00c2\u00a0 I could have slowed down.\u00c2\u00a0 Taken it easy.\u00c2\u00a0 But fearing even worse weather and nightfall, I was determined to maintain my sixty five mile an hour speed.\u00c2\u00a0 I soldiered on.
The left lane was covered with snow eighty percent of the time.\u00c2\u00a0 The right, just the opposite.\u00c2\u00a0 Clear, only occasionally slick.\u00c2\u00a0 But, in the right lane, was the occasional twilight zone vehicle.\u00c2\u00a0 Moving at about thirty five, oblivious to the fact that we could DIE out here.\u00c2\u00a0 Amidst the sagebrush.\u00c2\u00a0 With only an occasional fenced in Indian reservation along the way.\u00c2\u00a0 So, I’d be zipping in the slow lane, see a porker, and slide into the fast line.\u00c2\u00a0 Knowing that everything would be cool unless somebody did something stupid, and I had to put on the brakes.
The car was a sauna.\u00c2\u00a0 I needed all my blower power to defrost the windshield.\u00c2\u00a0 And as I sat there, gripping the wheel, what kept me going, what rode shotgun, was Loggins & Messina’s "Mother Lode".<\/p>\n
2
You didn’t leave home without cassettes.
I’d made twenty six before I’d left Connecticut.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything from the new releases to true classics like "Blue" to recent favorites like "The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle".
But after driving across the complete country, I was burned out on those tapes.\u00c2\u00a0 I needed something new!
So, before I left L.A., my temporary home, for Salt Lake, I went to Pacific Stereo, purchased some blank Maxells, and transferred the latest releases onto cassette.
Let me mosey on over to the cassette rack to review what those tapes were.
Let’s see, we’ve got Bonnie Raitt’s "Streetlights".\u00c2\u00a0 Her worst album to date.\u00c2\u00a0 But, it included "Angel From Montgomery" and her cover of "That Song About The Midway".
"Eldorado"!\u00c2\u00a0 "Midnight, on the water, I saw…"\u00c2\u00a0 You have to remember, in 1974, we were still waiting for the new Beatles.\u00c2\u00a0 And an act that SOUNDED like the Beatles would do.\u00c2\u00a0 ELO, after releasing two ho-hum records, suddenly burst forth with a classic!\u00c2\u00a0 I LOVED hearing "Can’t Get It Out Of My Head" on KMET.\u00c2\u00a0 I RUSHED OUT to buy the album.
There was the Average White Band album.\u00c2\u00a0 God, what a CLASSIC!\u00c2\u00a0 Forget the instrumental "Pick Up The Pieces"…"Work To Do" slays me.\u00c2\u00a0 And "Person To Person" too.\u00c2\u00a0 Saw them that spring in some ballroom in Salt Lake.\u00c2\u00a0 I beamed as they played my favorites.
Then there was the Who’s "Odds & Sods".\u00c2\u00a0 With "Naked Eye".
Randy Newman’s "Good Old Boys".\u00c2\u00a0 I heard "Louisiana" in the mountains last night on my iPod and I felt good all over.\u00c2\u00a0 That piano intro like the sun rising on a dew-stained plantation.\u00c2\u00a0 We move so fast up here in the North.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t slow down and appreciate life.\u00c2\u00a0 Listening to "Louisiana" makes one wonder why you’re chasing the dog’s tail.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s time to slow down and appreciate the magic.
There’s the Rolling Stones’ "It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll".\u00c2\u00a0 With "Time Waits For No One".
And "Mother Lode".<\/p>\n
3
I had a rule.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to listen to the whole tape through.
Driving in the western U.S. isn’t like going from Fairfield to Stamford.\u00c2\u00a0 No, the ride is long.\u00c2\u00a0 ENDLESS!\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t cherry-pick.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t only listen to your favorites.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d run out of tunes in an hour.\u00c2\u00a0 No, you have to pick a tape, rewind it to the top, and let it play.\u00c2\u00a0 From beginning to end.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, if it rubbed you the wrong way right at the start, you could eject it.\u00c2\u00a0 But, once you got past the two minute mark, you were in.\u00c2\u00a0 The hope was to get sucked into the mood of the album.\u00c2\u00a0 The head of its makers.\u00c2\u00a0 To lock into a trance.
Now when driving in sunlight, you let the tape play through, and then you pop in another.\u00c2\u00a0 But when it’s white knuckle weather, you can’t do that little maneuver where you look through what’s available, eject and then insert.\u00c2\u00a0 In those mere instants that you were distracted from the task at hand, you could lose traction on a patch of ice.\u00c2\u00a0 Start to slide.\u00c2\u00a0 Swerve.\u00c2\u00a0 Be heading for the ditch.\u00c2\u00a0 You might be required to pump the breaks.\u00c2\u00a0 Press the clutch.\u00c2\u00a0 Downshift.\u00c2\u00a0 No, you had to pay ATTENTION!
And on this particular afternoon in February 1975, when Mother Nature decided to fuck with my life, the tape I was playing throughout was Loggins & Messina’s "Mother Lode".
I was a fan.\u00c2\u00a0 That first album, "Sittin’ In".\u00c2\u00a0 Great.
But the second.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of lightweight.\u00c2\u00a0 With that lame "Your Mama Don’t Dance".\u00c2\u00a0 But, there was the incredible "Angry Eyes".
Since I was INVESTED in the act.\u00c2\u00a0 Had even seen them in concert the previous Thanksgiving at Madison Square Garden.\u00c2\u00a0 I purchased "Mother Lode".
But hadn’t played it all that much.\u00c2\u00a0 Like I said, I was stuck on "Eldorado".
But driving Interstate 86 I suddenly became hooked by this song "Changes".<\/p>\n
But I’ve seen changes It was like the song was speaking to ME!\u00c2\u00a0 Like Jimmy Messina was riding shotgun, reviewing his life, telling me about his hassles with his manager, girlfriend and the IRS, warning me that this world was quite different from the illusion, the rap.\u00c2\u00a0 That you had to keep your eyes open, make choices.\u00c2\u00a0 But, still, you’d be bounced around like a pinball.\u00c2\u00a0 What was I DOING??\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t want to be in college, but this regular life…IT WAS CREEPING ME OUT! 4 5 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1Growing up on the east coast, the distance between towns was never very far.\u00c2\u00a0 Seemed like the whole eastern seaboard was one big suburb.\u00c2\u00a0 A megalopolis.But Idaho was different.I was living in Salt Lake City.It had been a strange time.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d graduated from college.\u00c2\u00a0 Which freaked me out just like everybody else.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d lined up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-1a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
They happen every day
And I see change
Comin’ your way<\/em><\/p>\n
I was living with people who treated me okay, but were mostly interested in my wallet, wanting to know I could pay the rent.\u00c2\u00a0 I was a ski bum at the most difficult ski area in the country, and I’d just broken my leg.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody knew who I was.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody cared.\u00c2\u00a0 Except for Jimmy.
I reached over and pulled that lever to rewind the tape.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing the gears turn for the better part of thirty seconds, I let go, and let the song play again.
And shortly after that, the weather became TRULY intense.\u00c2\u00a0 I not only COULDN’T change the tape, I didn’t WANT TO!
It was me and Kenny and Jimmy in my 2002 together.\u00c2\u00a0 A team of three sharing one mind-set.\u00c2\u00a0 If we stuck together, we could fight the elements and WIN!
I’m being oh-so-gentle with the pedals.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got the lights turned on to fight the storm darkness.\u00c2\u00a0 Zooming towards Twin Falls.
I’m both zoned in and zoned out.\u00c2\u00a0 Totally focused on the road, but probably unable to have a conversation, if there were a live human being there with me.
The tape played through.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again.<\/p>\n
Strangely, shortly after getting off the Interstate in Twin Falls, pointing my BMW towards Ketchum, the wind stopped blowing.\u00c2\u00a0 The flakes faded to a whimper, and then disappeared.\u00c2\u00a0 The sky was still gray, but the sun illuminated the cloud ceiling, there wasn’t all-encompassing darkness.
I stopped at a gas station.\u00c2\u00a0 Filled up.\u00c2\u00a0 But when I got back into my automobile, I continued to let "Mother Lode" play.<\/p>\n
Not too long thereafter, Loggins & Messina broke up.\u00c2\u00a0 Kenny Loggins embarked on the solo career he thought he’d begun years before when Jimmy started producing his debut and then joined the band.\u00c2\u00a0 Kenny went on to have some monster hits, but they were all lightweight trifles.\u00c2\u00a0 And, when the hits dried up, he disappeared.
Jimmy Messina made a solo album.\u00c2\u00a0 And hasn’t been heard from since.
When kids comb the archives, looking for great stuff, I don’t think they’re looking for Loggins & Messina.
And, I can understand on some level why.\u00c2\u00a0 Because of "Your Mama Don’t Dance".\u00c2\u00a0 People think the band was lightweight.
But Loggins & Messina had their moments.\u00c2\u00a0 "Mother Lode" stands up.\u00c2\u00a0 I downloaded every track from KaZaA.\u00c2\u00a0 I was glad to see they were available.\u00c2\u00a0 My only hope is that the Internet will keep their music alive.\u00c2\u00a0 All those seventies acts that weren’t about glitter, rather saw themselves as musicians, playing mellifluous material.\u00c2\u00a0 That spoke to their audience.<\/p>\n