1973: the cover of the Rolling Stone

(Be warned: I wrote this entry at work and the memories in it are disjointed even by my low standards.)

I have iTunes radio blasting rather loudly in the whole building trying to wash "Cover of the Rolling Stone" out of my head. (I'll put the video link at the bottom. This one has a series of Rolling Stone covers to go with the song, which is kind of neat to look at.) Not that there's anything wrong with the song, but it's been stuck in my head for two days and I'm ready for a new earworm. (Memo to iTunes: on what planet does a cover of "Falling Slowly" from The Voice count as "alternative" music?)

OK, so 1973, the year Rolling Stone became a household name  - well, in some households, anyway - was also the year I started high school. I had sung in choir through junior high, but high school "a cappella" choir was a whole new world. For one thing, it was full of people a lot older than me - there were only a handful of freshmen and I was as always the youngest freshman. (I was allowed in, I think, on the basis of being able to sight-read music rather than really on the quality of my voice.)

Choir was really the only thing I really cared about in high school. I could coast through most classes - with the exception of algebra, which I spectacularly failed to get the hang of and almost failed that year. I just squeaked through. I did better in geometry, the next year, but nobody found a way to explain algebra to me at that time in a way that made sense to me. I'm not sure anybody tried too hard to explain it to me, quite honestly - it was the 70s and the idea that a girl would need to know higher math was still pretty radical.

The choir geeks liked to hang out in the music building at all hours, and the choir director did not seem to discourage that at all. I use that term, "choir geek" - but actually in our school just being in choir did not make you a geek in and of itself, and a lot of "popular" kids were in choir. That said, I was totally a geek. I was smart and at the same time immature and socially inept and had a tendency to have fits of obnoxiousness besides. But I was not friendless; choir and music gave me a place to fit in. We did "Camelot" as the school musical that year and I was an accompanist rather than being on stage - which meant I went to almost all the rehearsals, and I loved it all. (I had attention-span problems with acting; when I tried it, I'd forget when it was my turn to say my lines. I never had that problem with music, somehow - because with music, I was singing along in my head even when I wasn't singing out loud, I think.)

The music that was most popular then is music that would mostly be considered very uncool nowadays: The Carpenters, John Denver, Olivia Newton-John. I do remember "You're So Vain" being a big thing - I think I started being influenced to some extent by hanging around with older kids - I had several friends who were juniors that year. That may be why I knew all about "Cover of the Rolling Stone" too.