Right now I’m listening to someone else’s playlist on Spotify called “Best of Rock: 1974.” And I’ve taken a shine to quite a few songs on this list! And wow, I did NOT know that Robert Palmer had a solo career long before his late ’80s solo career that generated the charting hits “Addicted to Love” and “Simply Irresistible.” I secretly wish that “Simply Irresistible” was written about me, but NOT for the reasons you think (he obviously wrote that song about a bad-ass woman and I can only dream about being that bad-ass…sigh)!

One of Robert Palmer’s songs from this 1974 list is “Sneaking Sally Through The Alley.” It’s very funk driven, and sounds like it would be perfectly at place in the Fritz the Cat soundtrack. Yeah, it’s a bit…sleazy (I like it)!

Though not everyone might be a Kiss fan (pity the fools), it’s hard not to like the cut of the jib of “Strutter.” Nice dirty guitar riffs, tantalizing lyrics about a woman whom must’ve been hot as shit.

Today while I was at work, I found myself alone in a dusty stockroom filled with boxes and boxes of stuff. I should not have been alone – one of the people whom I was “supposed” to be working with went home claiming he felt ill, another was a no-call, no show, and my own supervisor left early. So it was just me, a lot of boxed up merchandise (some of which my co-workers needed for store pickup orders), and dreadful, dreadful holiday music. All I want for Christmas is to NEVER EVER HEAR ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU EVER FUCKING AGAIN! Not even the countless covers! Uh, moving on… I remedied that last problem by turning on one of the high-velocity fans (oh what bliss that white noise can be)!

Then unexplicably – though not out of the ordinary for me – a song popped into my head. This time the song was “Ready for Love” by Bad Company (also on the 1974 list). So that was the first song from that list I queued up just now.

So why was 1974 so special? The hippy-dippy psychedelic stuff was on its way out, disco hadn’t quite taken hold yet (though I will not badmouth disco, LOL), new wave was a glimmer in Brian Eno’s eye and auto tuning was at least a couple of decades away. I’m not going to pretend to be some kind of 1974 pop culture expert or anything, but we were just coming out of the Vietnam War, Nixon resigned and I was a wee 2 year old lass. I have no idea what all of this means (I said I wasn’t an expert in pop culture from that era). All I know is what movies and TV tells me about this era of tight bell bottoms, shirts unbuttoned down to the waists, and…what did the women wear? I have an old picture of my mom from around that time wearing a halter top and overalls. Did women wear this stuff back then?

But someone must’ve rocked out to songs from this list on their 8-track players in their shag carpeted vans with horses painted on the outside. Maybe a long haired mustached dude made it to second base with his lady on a beanbag inside that horse van. Maybe some babies were conceived in scenarios like this. Marijuana haze optional. Quaaludes required.

Well? What are you waiting for? Go find these songs on Spotify right now! And ask your mom and dad where you were conceived!