American Top Forty redux

On any given typical weekend day as I'm preparing our traditional big family weekly closeout breakfast, I normally flip on the kitchen radio for a dose of NPR to soothe my nerves as I engineer and institute the perfect order of fry bread johnnycakes, King's Hawaiian sweet bread french toast (stuffed with blueberry/cream cheese filling) or the omelette du'jour.

If we've somehow managed to sleep in some (rarely), before NPR's weekend entertainment programs make their airwave appearance, I'll tune into the local golden oldies station.

Oldies (in Rock and Roll lexicon) is a relative term to each particular listener.

Those who lived American Graffiti, look to the 50's and 60's tunes as the soundtrack of their formative years, while those of us who saw American Graffiti in the movie theatre and experienced first hand the rise and fall of disco, look to the 70's and 80's as our music to reminisce by.

My local Golden Oldies station must be chasing the latter demographic group on the weekends, since it has taken to playing reruns of Casey Kasem's American Top 40 countdown from the 70's.

The other day it was 1974 all up in my kitchen and I was flipping flapjacks while Bo Donaldson was telling Billy not be a hero, The Guess Who was clapping for the Wolfman, and Chong was complaining about an earache.

All top 10 hits mind you.

So next time you get all huffy about the ills and shortcomings of my generation, just tune in to one of Casey's AT Top 40's from the 70's and give a good listen. You may change your tune (bad pun, sorry) about us.

Or not.