Stop me if you've heard this one before. I know you have. In fact, I'd be willing to bet you've heard all of them before -- the nasty '70s attempts at glory, such as the classic cuts off Disco Star Wars and Christmas Disco.

Songs that make you remember, that take you back . . . that send me running out of the apartment.

I know I'm in the minority, but I hate the revival. It isn't an old time Fight for Your Ssssoul, ssssinner. It's what happens when some over-the-hill music clearing house realizes it's got way too many copies of that Greatest Sounds of the '70s CD it tried to push on the masses back in about '83, when everybody was finally getting tired of bad laser lights and hotpants. This time, though, they'll go for it. Seventies Preservation Society is back, peddling music on late-night TV, and if you don't own it, someone you know does. We've all heard "Disco Inferno" at parties and seen the horrible effects.

Don't get me wrong -- I've seen Staying Alive and I didn't hate it. But only because I was laughing hard enough to blow my small intestine through most of the movie. Otherwise, the trend toward "retro," "kitsch" or any of that other old garbage is way too much to handle.

I was born in 1974, and can guarantee I and many of my fellows missed the paisley-shirt years. But there's still some kind of psychosis that seems to be more contagious than the flu, one that makes people actually like this stuff.

In most cases I have an open mind when it comes to music and memorabilia, but why did the trend have to go back only as far as that decade? Wasn't it enough to re-hash the '60s? Maybe the '20s and ragtime -- I'd look good in a vest and hat and some saddle shoes (picture Robert Redford in The Sting).

Sure, there was a time when I wore butterfly-collared shirts, but it was only because my mommy dressed me that way. I was too young to enjoy my parents grooving to Captain and Tenille. I could wail on about the problem actually being that our generation is too diverse to pick any one type of expression to focus on and that we've turned to our past for inspiration, but the truth is I just don't care.

I'd rather eat the formica off the kitchen countertop than hear another ABBA song.(CW)

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This capitalist society has been smokin' the same joint since pop culture became pop culture. It's a machine. Once this beast of burden cranks out the '70s were stuck. It cranked out Beck 25 years ago. Take out the hip-hop beats, the bleaps and distorted blunders and ya got James Taylor. Wait a minute, hip-hop and rap were '70s confections (check late '70s reruns of "Soooul Train"). Hell, Beck knows he's a '70s drone. He even sings an ode to Ozzy on Stereopathetic Soul Manure complete with sickly Sabbath-era vocal grunts. Hell, good 'ol J.T. is still around, playing his same brand of plastic nauseating nasally folk. Beck is cool 'cause he knows J.T. is cool, he just hasn't found the right time to release his "Fire and Rain."

To paraphrase the Beasties, "What goes around comes around."

The '70s are here to stay, and they never left us. You could throw away your eight-track player, but they eventually come back. The Collegian just recently threw it's eight-track system out, and I quickly picked up so I could play my Spaced-Out Disco eight-track I bought in Nashville. No use in just forgetting a decade.

Back then the bass was cool, the falsetto was just right and irony hadn't been invented yet. (Check The Bee Gees playin' it straight in a film version of Sgt. Pepper.) The guys and gals in ABBA were really earnest when they sang "Dancing Queen" or "Knowing Me-Know You."

This late in capitalist hell, irony, not originality, is now the premium. The factories at Warner Bros. can only make so many variations. So we get Neil Young sounding like J. Mascis or J. Mascis sounding like Neil Young sounding like the Jayhawks sounding like Neil Young. Everything works on a cyclic assembly line. The '70s are with us and there's no escaping unless you are really into ragtime. (But then again, Arlington, Va.'s Grenadine just released a ragtime-y album.)

It's unavoidable, it's everywhere. Try going to Player's without getting thwacked with a pair of bell bottoms. Try not plowing down on the couch and getting stuck on a "Mary Tyler Moore" rerun. Try listening to Snoop Dogg without hearing the P-Funk. And try not to get too dazed and confused.(JC)