It's 1974. High in the Colorado Rockies I sit in a cabin with a bunch of hormonally challenged 13 year olds - a motley crew who all look like rejected casting finalists from Bless the Beasts and the Children. They have nicknames that include the likes of "Doc", "Silent", "Lupus", "Dopey", and our martyr, "Red", whose innocence will be shattered (and by extension, ours as well) five days into that fortnight - sacrificed on the altar of adult indifference and ass covering. This is my first and only experience at summer camp. In between the archery, horseback riding, swimming, hiking, mountain climbing, and greased watermelon contests my cohorts and I - the "Bobcats" - spend our free time hanging with the girls who bunk in the "Silver Foxes" cabin (co-ed camps were the settings for more first kisses than anywhere else on Earth.) The entire experience is soundtracked by scratchy AM radios, and the hits that fuel the summer explode from this record. From Jet and Helen Wheels and the title track, to Let Me Roll It, and Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five (the last two seeping out late at night from the counselors' FM sets), this music sets the stage for the obnoxious ditherings of this, our early adolescence - that tipping point from childhood to hell.
I can't hear anything from this album now without being dragged back to that place - those moments. The songs carry with them the whiff of pine, the numbness of chilly mornings, and the sting of raw sunburns, but most importantly, they carry the distinct images of those cabin-mates, not one of whom I have seen in three and a half decades, but who are nonetheless as clear to me as if we lunched yesterday.
The record is easily slagged. Although a masterpiece of style, its substance is light as a feather. But who gives a shit? It's what it does that matters. This is exactly why we listen to music: because years later it can, as keenly as the scent of a first love's cherry lip gloss or the feel of Lake Granby's cool mud between the toes, ignite memories of who we were, what we did, and how much we lost.
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