John reading.
There are only a few songs that take me back to a specific moment in my life. All of them were in my teen years.
Fingertips, Stevie Wonder-I guess I was fourteen. I was over a friend's house and we turned on American Bandstand prepared to dance, prepared to see if Carmen was still dancing with her
boyfriend on the show. Fingertips came on. You couldn't dance to it. We stood frozen. We had never heard anything like it, nothing that long, nothing from a kid younger than us. The repetition of goodbyes at the end wiped us out. We were ecstatic. Exhilaration. She Loves You. The Beatles. It was probably a year or so later. My dad has just got a new car. A Pontiac Le Mans, I think. Gold. We went out for a ride. He switched the radio on and there were THE BEATLES, singing She Loves Yo
u. My brother and I shared that moment. Discovering something entirely new. I don't think anyone not around then can imagine how different their sound was from Motown and Bubblegum Rock. Change.Where Did Our Love Go? The Supremes. I am sixteen and miraculously I had persuaded my mother to let me spend the summer in New Hope, PA working at a restaurant called The Crystal Palace. I am rooming with my best friend. I am so free--I will never be that free again.
I am sitting in my room, each wall painted a different color--perfect for teenage girls. I look out the window and a car is coming down the street--a convertible--and Wher
e Did Our Love Go is blasting from the radio. Chills. Freedom.These are the songs I will always locate on a specific day and with a specific feeling. What are yours?
26 comments:
There are a gaggle of tunes that remind of me of various days/years in my life. A few:
"25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago - I didn't really know who Chicago was. A friend loaned me a tape and I put it in and started walking my dog. "25" was track 1. It was a wonderful summer day in 1985. By the time the song ended, I was running back to my house to call him and chat about this 'new' band Chicago. Thus began my love affair (obsession?) with Chicago.
"Desert Rose" by Sting/"Thursday's Child" by Bowie - 1999 was a fantastic year. I ended my education, got married, started my career, and moved back to my hometown. "Desert Rose" from Sting's 1999 CD Brand New Day and Bowie's "Thursday's Child" from his 1999 CD ...hours are the epitome of that year for me. Here were old artists doing something new while still remaining true to their core. The same could be said of me.
I have so many more that I'd take up your entire comments thread.
Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons sang "Sherry" almost constantly on the radio (well, it seemed constant) as my adolescent infatuation with a girl named Sherry percolated to dangerously high temperatures. The Four Seasons went away, Sherry went away, and I went on with my life (shattered but hoping for more opportunities for more percolation). Now, Frank Valli is a septugenarian, I am not far behind, and God only knows what happened to Sherry. Well, perhaps that blonde from Elizabeth-Forward High School (Class of 65) will read this blog and . . . . Well, enough of that silliness. At any rate, that's my song!
Postscript to earlier comment about Franki Valli and a girl named Sherry:
Here is a link to Franki Valli belting it out in 2007. God Lord, how does the man keep singing that way?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDwpYmb5_6I
I can't hear 'Starting Over' without reliving the awful moment I learned John had been murdered.
I remember my son discovering Chicago as a young teenager. I think his love of music might date from around then too.
SHERRY-I am walking on the boardwalk in Wildwood and it's blaring from every radio. I was Sherry the summer I was fourteen. I was Class of 65 too.
I would love to see JERSEY BOYS/
Me, too with IMAGINE. When they played it at the end of one of those Vietnam movies, I couldn't get out of my seat.
The first time I heard Jimi Hendrix's version of ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER, I thought my hair was on fire. I was studying for a big exam at Marquette University when this incredible song came on the radio. I dropped everything and ran down to the record store and bought ELECTRIC LADYLAND. The other songs on the album held no interest to me, but I played ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER until the grooves wore out.
Guess that's what it makes being able to download a single track nice.
I grew up in a house consumed by music, my father has a particular affection for the (mostly female) singer-songwriters. Petula Clark, Joni Mitchell, Melanie. When he did lean towards bands, it was toward the melodist’s: the Beatles over the Stones, McCartney over Lennon and I couldn’t relate.
Worse, this was the late eighties when House was ascendant in the 1980s. I’d leave the house and everything would be horrible synthetic drums, poor lyrics (one hit had the line ‘Techno! Techno! Techno!’ as it’s high watermark) and so forth.
Then one night, when I was 13 I was listening to John Peel, an influential DJ over here. He played a song called ‘I am The Resurrection’ by The Stone Roses. It’s a magnificent record, at once contemporaneous and recalling the sixties, it not only enabled me to understand The Rolling Stones (equally important, as it wasn’t my parent’s music and I understood the need --very early on-- to establish my identity as independent from that of my parents.) and the burdening Manchester scene.
All these years later, they’re still the yardstick by which I judge bands.
The first four Talking Heads albums were important for me too.
Teens and music...one finally notices how music takes us over in those years.
In re "...Watchtower"--one could buy a 45rpm single, too...if that was released on one...
"I will never be that free again."
That's pretty chilling, too.
1984: I am feeling like a failure, out on my first day of training for the door-to-door canvass for SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, before the SANE/Freeze merger. I've recently moved to the DC suburbs from Hawaii, where I'd dropped out of UH since I couldn't put make enough in the jobs I could get to swing the rents I needed, until I already had the federally-subsidized airline ticket in hand...and it seemed the saner thing to do come to Virginia. And live with my parents and brother and cat again. So, in hopes of doing something good and putting away a little for getting back into school, the attempt at the canvass, a job I'm not temperamentally suited for. On the commute back from the target neighborhood to the office, the driver has the U. Maryland fm station on, and a raggged, energetic song comes on...I'm the only one in the van, despite the range of ages present, who can recognize the tune as "Eight Miles High"--"only a punk, or punk-influenced metal, cover of it," I suggest to the assembled. My introduction to Husker Du, and apparently most if not all of my temporary colleagues', as well. You would think there'd be a hardcore fan or two in a DC lefty van in 1984, but no, unless you counted me...though it would take another couple of years before my womanfriend (met in college in 1986) would get me to accompany her to the hardcore punk shows in DC and envrions.
1977, spring. I already was playing the grooves off some of my parents' jazz, classical, comedy and rock albums, and I could occasionally pester them into buying me a cutout or a Pickwick (read, cheap) record from a discount store (in 1975, I bought the first record I picked out for myself, the Brownsville Station's intentionally goofy protopunk "Smokin' in the Boy's Room" 45--backed with a cover of "Barefootin'"). A relatively inexpensive purchase, a catalog item from CBS and therefore probably at a $4.99 pricepoint, was purchased at my urging, as a potential gift for my father, the jazz fan between my parents. The Brubeck Quartet's TIME FARTHER OUT: MIRO REFLECTIONS. I had a new favorite record. (Under similar circumstances that year, I was able to get money to buy Joe Turner's Pablo Records album JOE TURNER, since my mother had his Atlantic lp from the pre-stereo days, one of the few if not only of her early rock/r&b or rockablilly albums to survive her younger sister's attentions.) That one was good, too.
The favorite-record status was challenged in summer, 1980, when I finally caught up with the Modern Jazz Quartet's THE LAST CONCERT.
And you can dance to "Fingertips," or at least I could, if ungracefully, as I dance to everything. But do tell that guy what key it's in.
I definitely also particularly remember the utter pleasantness of hearing Ripperton's "Midnight on the Oasis," Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," and the Beatles' "Got to Get You Into My Life" (as a '70s rerelease as a single, presumably keyed to the "blue album" anthology or somesuch) on the radio for the first time. Likewise Gil Scott-Heron, twice--once with "Johannesburg" on the Richard Pryor SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE in '75, and, several years later, finally again on the radio with "Lady Day and John Coltrane," when I had the wherewithal to seek out and buy a recording of his work.
Jeez, I can certainly tell you guys are writers. I think this merits a short book. Gordon-I bet my kids have the same complaints about music we played as they grew up. And certainly Joni Mitchell played a lot.
Todd-first in line to read your memoir.
Around '91-'92 I heard So What by Miles and realized there was a whole world of music I hadn't explored yet. Pop/Rock had pretty much run its course, for me, at that point.
My son loves Miles Davis. I need more of a tune: Brubeck, Monk, Haden.
Miles Davis's quintet who recorded "So What" as part of KIND OF BLUE were plenty melodic...Bill Evans, the pianist on most of the album, had learned about modal improvisation with George Russell's "Smalltet" (see the JAZZ WORKSHOP album on RCA) before joining Davis's group, and he taught them the technigue, leading in large part to KIND OF BLUE. Davis's work with the Gil Evans Orchestra even more melodic.
It's just with the fusion albums, particularly the later ones, that Davis got Very lazy.
(But he was apparently always a jerk.)
Try Gerry Mulligan and Randy Weston sometime, to say nothing of the (LA-based 1970s) Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band sometime (the NYC version of the orchestra was never quite as good, though also good).
Love Bill Evans. Waltz with Debbie, right? Yeah, fusion turned me off to jazz after that. Thanks for the recs.
Yeah, I think Megan still leans towards the Manchester stuff like ‘Joy Division’
I did realize after posting that ‘Leave The All Behind’ by Ride was also really important, or the ‘Metal Box’ (called ‘Second Edition’ in America, I think) by Public Image Limited was also important.
Or or or…..
This really could become the nerdiest conversation I’ve had in quite sometime! (and I talk about Pop culture all day!)
A song that sticks with me is "If You Leave Me Now sung by Chicago". It was played almost endlessly over the bus PA on a trip I did from Kathmandhu to London in 1975, so I had plenty of time to have it embed itself in my brain.
Oh, boy I remember that one, Kerrie. It's probably going to be playing in my head for days now.
I remember as a kid walking into a store in 1963 which I think was either a Walgreen's or a Woolworth's and there was a display photo of a new band from England called The Beatles. The song playing over the P.A. system was "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".
Thomas-Isn't it hard to explain what made the Beatles stand out so starkly right from the start?
The Beatles: They sang and played catchily and energetically in minor keys. They were reasonably attractive young men who seemed "safe" without being bland, in fact leaned impish and witty. And they were students of and drew upon every sort of pop/roots music that had played a major role in the UK, the US or both. The Rolling Stones rode their coattails at least through the breakup, the Kinks were stymied by their internal rivalries and eccentric tastes and visa hassles, the Who just weren't as good songwriters nor singers, even if they were better instrumentalists with a rough draw between McCartney and Entwistle as bassists; the Yardbirds similarly, despite spawning so many "supergroups" that would do better commercially. The Zombies also faced visa restrictions and remarkably clumsy management, and were probably too geeky. The closest we came over here to replicating their appeal, the Byrds, underwent a rather similar commercial collapse to that of the Kinks and for similar reasons...and the Beach Boys, who didn't quite make the transition that some of them hoped to. The Band were too country and weird. The Rascals just seemed too lightweight.
In a nutshell. Is there any topic you can't write a paragraph or two on? How are you on dinosaurs? That's the big interest in our house right now.
Well, when they de-listed the brontosaurus, I certainly was saddened...were we to lose the diplodocus or the ichthyosaur next? Felt like much more a betrayal of my childhood fascination than the reclassification of Pluto, which had all these cool new cousins in its planetoid status (and Ceres is a planet by any reasonable measure, and once was)...
Who beside the littlest is the dino fan?
None of us-that's the problem. Only two, he already corrects our pronunciation. And ones at the toy store that are unidentified are a real problem with 300 species to look through. And those darn manufacturers paint them any color. Or the pictures of them are cartoon-like. At the circus last month, he kept insisting the dinosaurs were going to come in through blue door he had spotted. Extinction hasn't quite sunk in.
For me, there are many memories I associate with music. Though I have always pursued education in the Liberal Arts and Sciences, I have had a strong connection to music since I was a child.
"Henry the Eighth" by Herman's Hermits. Not a particularly melodic or lyrical tune. But I remember being 4 years old, riding to the beach with my mother (who was my very best friend EVER), and singing that song with her in the car on the way there and on the way home. Sometimes when I am really missing her, I sing that song and smile.
"The Sounds of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. I was in high school, and my choir director was allowing us to put together the first popular music performance - solos, duets, trios instead of whole choir - my friend Mitch (we are still friends all these years later) and I chose to do this duet. We decided that we wanted to make it a little more our own, so I sat down and did a new harmonic line for the melody. It was the first time I believed that I had a true gift for music. I still treasure that avocation.
"Carmina Burana" by Orff. I saw it performed live once, and got to perform it live once. It's just a piece that still gives me goosebumps.
Finally, The Brandenburg Concertos by Bach. I saw them performed live by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. It was a birthday gift from a boyfriend who hated classical music, but knew that I loved it. I will always remember it one of the most selfless gifts I have ever received.
"I'm Henry the VIII, I Am"...well, Peter Noone and his rotating backing band did "Hold On" for a while, there...charming thought that it would be a singalong favorite with your mother...
Post a Comment