Queen 14

If I could figure out how to add a gadget to this blog for the playlist to my 14 year old self, which this chalk figure somehow reminds me of, despite her smushed-in face (it's more about the attitude), it would be here in this post. The Young Victoria got me thinking about my own Young Queenliness and so I began to remember the music I loved best at my Most Royal age of 14 — which was old enough to drive a car up to Velvet Freeze in our neighborhood (when the parents were out of town!) Here it is: Wharf Rat, Morning Dew, Jack Straw, China Cat Sunflower, and Candyman (Grateful Dead), 4+20 and Country Girl (CSNY), Four Days Gone and Expecting to Fly (Buffalo Springfield), If You Could Read My Mind and Sundown (Gordon Lightfoot), Lay, Lady, Lay (Bob Dylan), Dreams (The Allman Brothers Band), and Silver Dagger (Joan Baez). I had a dog named Queenie in those days, and in the summer of my 14th year, she and I would tramp for hours along the gravel bars of the Missouri Ozarks, I in worn out Keds and she in worn out paws, before heading back to the Farmhouse to play Vinyl. How desperately I wanted to be a hippie! My brothers would try to play Steppenwolf, Bloodrock, and Black Sabbath instead of my sissy music, but somehow, Young Queenie that I once was, I always won... Now that hormones are fleeing from my cells, listening to those old timey tunes makes me remember, as if from far, far away, the days when hormones were new and in full flood. By 17 I had forsaken Folk Rock for The Ventures and Punk Rock, and was quite embarrassed by my earlier album collection. And now I only can only listen to Billie Holiday with any real enjoyment. So the question posed by this post is: do hormones affect our musical taste?