Domenic Priore:
CLASS OF 1978
Mark Keppel High SchoolClass of 1978
Alhambra, CA
Domenic's Story
Back in the day, mostly interested in goin' to rock 'n' roll clubs and concerts, baseball games, playing baseball and going to the beach... maybe Hawaii a couple of times. Wouldn't give any of that up, but it is interesting how I would have done things differently then, looking back. It was tough to know, however, how to deal with the kind of societal changes that were going on at the time... we were small children during a great time for the American economy, for example, and were in High School during a decline brought on by the aftermath of the war in Vietnam that just has never seemed to get better. We grew up, maybe until 1975, it was a very liberal time, but conservatism was encroaching on the culture by the mid-'70s, people forgot about Tricky Dick pretty fast, and that was weird coming right after the Watergate scandal. Ronald Reagan becoming president the same year John Lennon was murdered... that was like a cultural nightmare for me personally. It's like there were Two Americas forming and the weight of one was overwhelming the other by the end of the '70s when people in my class graduated from High School. In many respects the pendulum had swung in that direction after the progress of the '50s and '60s, and thankfully it began to swing back beginning in the early '90s, and by that time I was aligned with socially conscious people again living in San Francisco and New York as a journalist and an author. If I could go back to those days when I was starting out in High School (1974), I would have become more involved in things like the school newspaper and school politics, and would not have just dismissed the lameness of the era, which was, at the time, something I was trying to avoid. There was unfortunately a tremendous sub-culture then that instead of fighting against lameness in mainstream society, it was better to drop out (not of school, but out of mainstream society) than to be an activist for social change. I should have been more involved with issues at school, and an activist overall. For me I began to understand that dropping out wasn't the right way to go about it around the time I discovered Punk rock by the end of my time in High School. I didn't go for the nihilism of the trend at the time, but instead the acti...Expand for more
vist sentiment contained in the lyrics of bands like The Clash, The Specials, The Dead Kennedys et. al. By the time I began to align with all that, it was too late and I had to start all over some time in the early '80s at Junior College. It's like I missed about eight years of having an education when I was young... I was a straight-A student during the '60s and into the early '70s but the 1970s were, again, a very confused time historically. The '60s were aflame, an exciting time when people on the streets brought about social change, beginning with the Civil Rights movement, and then the hard-fought protests to stop the bogus war in Vietnam. The '70s, instead, were a burnout period. And... I should add... I would never have been involved in Team Sports in High School, now I realize this was a terrible waste of time and energy... Sports are fun but far too much emphasis is put on Sports in the context of the education system... and with the Sports also comes the social status (and mis-directed order) that wastes people's mental time. (Apologies to my High School pals Gary Klein and Jody Braun who became High School sports journalists as adults, I think those guys are smart enough to know what I mean by that.) That said, this whole era we were in High School (1974-1978) may have best been summed up in cinema by two films about the era we went to High School... on the lighter side, "The Spirt of '76" captures the absurdity of the times, while "Dazed and Confused" covers a lot of the reality that was the undercurrent of the culture we grew up in... even if it was a bit more fun and optimistic to be in California during the '70s than the Texas High School depicted in that movie. I managed to have a lot of good times despite the bunk era we were living through during the '70s, but somehow I managed to have good times no matter what. We still had timeless places like El Tepeyac in East L.A., Dodger Stadium, the beaches and an incredible variety of live music and culture to choose from growing up in the less-trafficy Los Angeles of the time. I wish the best to you and hope everyone is receiving the benefit of living the golden rule, that's the best we can do because in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. - domenic priore
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