TRACK 19: "Those Were the Daze"

I loathed Boomer nostalgia before it became fashionable to loath it

Steve Terrell

Jul 08, 2025

Oh the way that Hendrix played

Everyone was getting laid

Dope was of the highest grade

Those were the daze

xxx

Always knew who you could trust

Cruising in your microbus

They were them and we were us

Those were the daze

Bridge

All the things we’re into then

Tarot cards, I Ching and Zen

Mister we could use a man like Timothy Leary again

xxx

Hardly needed any cash

Always had a place to crash

Everybody shared their stash

Those were the daze.

copyright Sidhe Gorm Music (BMI)

(written circa 1980)

Now here’s a song that I believe is more relevant now than it was when I wrote the lyrics in 1980 and recorded it in ’84.

It’s obviously a straight-up parody. But All in the Family has been off the air now for so many decades, I’m sure that if there are any younger readers of this Substack, they might not recognize the original source.

You see, boys and girls, back when I was a lad, there was this tv sitcom called All in the Family, which was about this horrible bigot named Archie Bunker and his long-suffering, sweet but insipid wife Edith. Archie was always scrapping with his obnoxious hippie son-in-law Mike, who was living for free at the Bunker residence with his wife, Archie’s daughter Gloria.

The show touched on controversial issues of the day including racism, the war in Vietnam, homophobia, Richard Nixon, etc. and it usually made Archie’s reactionary observations seem incredibly backward.

The Youth of the 2020s respond: "What’s a sitcom"?

Sorry. That’s my own inner Archie Bunker responding.

The opening theme song of the show, featuring Archie and Edith sitting at a piano and singing. The song, called "Those Were the Days," was a nostalgic look at the good old days when Glenn Miller was on the radio and "girls were girls and men were men"

Earlier this year, The Washington Post published a piece about Archie & Edith’s song, which saved me a lot of work. Here’s a gift link, which hopefully will work.

The piece, by writer Amy Argetsinger, says:

A lot of us assumed it was an old-timey song from the 1940s. All the cues suggested it: Edith’s sheet music, the lace cover across the piano top, the lilting familiarity of the tune — if you were a kid taking piano lessons in the 1970s, someone taught you how to pick out the simple melody on the black keys — and actor Carroll O’Connor’s nostalgic glow while singing it. In fact, it was purpose-built by the acclaimed Broadway songwriting team of Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, who died Thursday at 96.

"Thursday" was May 15, 2025.

Adams and Strouse at the time were best known for the Broadway hit Bye Bye, Birdie, which included the song "Put On a Happy Face."

Argetsinger continues, saying "Those Were the Days" …

… changed the game for theme songs. After that, who could go back to “Here’s the story of a lovely lady …” or “a three-hour tour.” But how to top it? Not possible. So the genre retreated instead to anodyne vibes that told you nothing of the plot and little of the characters. What would we do, baby, without us? Sha-la-la-la …

Hey! There’s no reason to insult Gilligan’s Island!

Even as early as 1980, a lot of people my age or a little older already were starting to grumble about how things weren’t like they were back in the Woodstock era.

Naturally I saw the connection to Archie Bunker.

Time for a music break. Here’s a cool garage-rock duo from Cleveland from just a few years ago. They called themselves Archie & The Bunkers:

Wasn’t music great back in the 2010s? Not like the crap they call "music" these days …

Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

If "Boomer nostalgia" was a grumble in 1980, it’s turned into a roar the past several decades. I wrote quite extensively about this annoying, if predictable phenomenon in a chapter of my previous Substack, Steve Terrell's Snazzy Life.

My wise words of wisdom:

And beyond politics, another aspect of social media that cheeses me off is the prevalence of smug Boomer nostalgia. …

… I must have seen a hundred stupid memes that basically say My Generation had the best music, implying that anything new is inherently inferior.

And the same mindset produces oft-shared posts about how kids these days ain’t got no respect (especially for their elders!), no morals, no common sense .. and they got shitty music that’s NOT music, just noise.

Indeed, yes, I hate the fact that so many formerly idealistic peace-and-love hippies have turned into hateful, right-wing grumps who literally long for those glorious days when "girls were girls and men were men."

And in the last election, these Boomers, especially my fellow male Caucasians, decided "Mister we could use a man like Donald J. Trump again."

Sorry if the following video makes you puke, but I feel it’s my duty to alert you to it:

I wonder if Tulsi ever sings this in Trump cabinet meetings. I can honestly say I never liked this song, even back in the Daze.

When I first started performing "Those Were the Daze" live, I’d usually sing it a cappella. And after I wrote "Rock ’n’ Roll Hell" (more on that song next week) in 1982, I’d usually introduce it with my a cappella version of "Daze."

But when we recorded this song for Pandemonium Jukebox, I figured my unaccompanied voice would drive listeners to the fast-forward button on their cassette players.

So I enlisted my sister Mary to do the voice of "Edith." And, as she did on "Child of the Falling Star," Mary stole the show on this track, her voice on “Daze” as obnoxious and screechy as it was beautiful and eerie on the older song.

Instead of my usual guitar-centric approach to my songs, I figured this parody needed to sound as close to the original as possible. My friend, Bob Graybill, who at the time was the arts editor of the Santa Fe Reporter, said he could play Edith’s piano part.

And he was right.

I already was a little familiar with Bob’s piano playing. He and I previously had teamed up under the name "The Fabulous Lounge Lizards" (Mel Lounge and Eddie Lizard. though I forget which was was which.)

It basically was a rip-off of Bill Murray’s "Nick the Lounge Singer" or maybe a less-hostile version of Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton.

Or maybe you could call us a proto-Richard Cheese.

I was — and I assume Bob also was — totally oblivious to the fact that there already was an avant-jazz band called The Lounge Lizards.

Sorry John Lurie!

Same goes for The Austin Lounge Lizards, who often worked the same side of the proverbial street as me with their funny songs.

Sorry, guys …

**Back in the Daze I could afford snazzy threads like this checkered sport coat.**

Plagiarized name or not, Los Lounge Lizards de Santa Fe performed a couple of times during my Sunday nights at the Forge — including my raucous final regular Sunday.

With Bob tinkling the ivories, we did songs like "What Kind of Fool Am I," "Mona Lisa," and, of course, "My Way."

Sammy would have dug us, I’m pretty sure.

This was the only Panda Juke tune that was not recorded, at least completely, at the Luxurious ElectroElf Studios (Tom’s house). He didn’t have a piano there, so, Tom hauled his Fostex 4-Track over to Bob’s house to record the piano and vocals.

The final "those were the daze" included basically everyone there: Mary, Tom, Bob, Bob’s then-wife Nadine and myself.

The one part that was recorded at ElectroElf was the faux-Hendrix guitar intro. Instead of Jimi’s "Star Spangled Banner," I thought that another patriotic song I learned in grade school would be cooler. So we chose a section from "America" (aka "My country ’tis of Thee").

The most recognition "Those Were the Daze" ever got actually came months before Pandemonium Jukebox was released.

Back in the early 80s, decades before he became famous for Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin and I were pals. He frequently was in my audience sat the Forge on many Sundays back then. He asked if he could use the lyrics to "Daze" as the epigraph of his novel The Armageddon Rag.

In exchange for using my lyrics, George took my wife and I to dinner at Molly’s Kitchen, one of my favorite New Mexican food spots in the '70s and '80s. Also, he bought Pam and me tickets for The Grateful Dead at the Downs at Santa Fe.

You’ll be hearing a little more about George in next week’s post in Songs the Wild Taters Sang.