74... Just a Number

Now I'm 74 years old and it's just another number. But it did get me thinking about the year 1974. Looking back that was one of the most important years of my life. I just finished four years in the Navy in late December 1973. I was a civilian again in 1974 and ready to party. 

I bought a house in my old neighborhood of Germantown in Philadelphia where I grew up. I got the house from my great aunt's estate. The house had been in the family since 1909 when my great-grandparents Thomas Keegan and Bridget McDevitt Keegan moved there. Now I was making it into a college party house. Three of my friends from the neighborhood moved into the house with me. We each had our own room.

I think I went the whole year of 1974 without a haircut and shave. Something about getting out of the Navy I guess. I was working a real job, part time and not something military. I was living in the neighborhood I grew up in and I was going to college at Temple University on the GI Bill. I was going to rock concerts almost every week and buying lots of albums trying to catch with what I missed over the past four years. It was a good year.

Here are some of the concerts I saw in 1974. The last part of the list were from the 3 day Philly Folk Festival. Lots of others too. 

• Eric Clapton
• Neil Young
• Hall & Oates
• Bob Dylan and The Band
• David Bowie
• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
• Joni Mitchell
• Grateful Dead
• Little Feat
• Badfinger
• Tom Waits
• Al Stewart
• Mahavishnu Orchestra
• Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
• Gordon Lightfoot
• Sandy Denny
• Tim Buckley
• Leo Sayer
• Average White Band
• Buddy Miles
• Emmylou Harris
• Fairport Convention
• Hawkwind
• Sun Ra
• Incredible String Band
• String Driven Thing
• Dave Van Ronk
• John Prine
• Bruce Cockburn
• David Bromberg
• Arlo Guthrie
• Tim Hardin
• Leon Redbone
• Tom Rush
• John Hartford
• Norman Blake

Another number... 51. 1974 was 51 years ago and I was born in 1951. I was 23 in 1974 and had just experienced the world. I would meet Becky in 1975 and we would start living together in 1976. I would graduate from Temple University in 1978 and we would move to Buffalo in 1979. We got married in 1980. Now it's 2025 and I'm getting towards being an old man. We went to a friend's birthday party the other day and I was the oldest person there. The only place I don't feel old is going to the Buffalo Chamber Music concerts.