Songs I listen(ed) to

30 days of me:  day 10:  Songs you listen to

To be honest, I don’t listen to that much music, at the moment.  I do like to listen to Randy Bachman’s Randy’s VinylTap on CBC Radio, Saturday nights.  Each week Randy and the crew choose a theme, and then search through all those old time vinyls (from when I was young) for songs that relate to the theme.  What’s cool about the show is the history and stories Randy tells about each song – and what’s especially cool is that Randy knew and worked with so many of these artists, and he tells really interesting personal anecdotes.  He also from time to time plays a few riffs on his own guitar and/or sings a few lines.  Great show, great songs!

Of course there have been times when I listened to songs a lot more.  First time I clued into listening to recorded music, I was about 8 years old, and my parents boarded a grade 12 student whose parents had to move mid-year, and they wanted him to graduate locally.  This was my first introduction to rock-n-roll, as he often had the radio turned up loudly enough for us all to enjoy (well, my parents’ reaction to the music maybe was not best described by “enjoy” but us kids liked it).  We’d moved into a new house not long before, and there was a dead tree in the back yard that had been cut down to make way for the construction.  I remember a bunch of us young ‘uns clambering into the dead branches, and wildly shaking that ol’ tree.  And hollering, “Rock ‘n roll!  Rock ‘n roll!”  And then singing, “She loves you, ya ya ya! She loves you ya, ya, ya!”  Yep, the Beatles were the big thing back then, and I’ve loved them ever since.

When I was about 12, my friends would come over to our place with their record players and records, set up on our patio, and we’d turn up the music, dance to the tunes, and pore through the teen music magazines, oohing and aahing over our favorite groups and/or singers.  Still remember, in particular, dancing (if you could call it that) to the Monkees (yeah, well, kids that age don’t have well-developed taste in music, right?)

Back to the Beatles soon enough.  I remember in grade 8, our girls grasshockey team loved listening to them.  When we won the finals, we had a big party.  We kept phoning the radio station and begging them to play “Hey, Jude.”  They must have played it 4 or 5 times that evening for us!  That 45 became The Beatles biggest single ever.  Many years later it resurfaced in a big way when my own kids were teens.  I sang along with it every time it came on.  Moms can be very embarrassing.

When I was 15 or so I remember sitting doing math homework, and listening to the radio.  The DJ announced a contest.  Write a letter telling what you would say to David Cassidy (of The Partridge Family) if you had a chance to speak with him.  First prize was a chance to speak to him live on radio.  Second prize was 3 albums, a 45, and a personally signed autograph.  Bored out of my mind by the math, I wrote the letter and mailed it.  Some 10 year old won first prize.  Ten year olds loved David Cassidy; I didn’t.  My friends all started telling me I’d won 2nd prize.  Phoned the station; yep.   How embarrassing.   Had those albums for years, but they finally warped when I left them in the sun for too long.  Still have that personally autographed photo somewhere, though. 

When I was maybe 14 or 15, our school band went on a trip to a school in Vancouver.  They hosted a dance for us after the band concert.  Being the “big city” they were a bit more “advanced” in their musical interests than us small-town kids, and the band they chose for the dance played nothing but psychedelic music.  We all stood around dazed, wondering how one was supposed to dance to music like that.  Of course we went home and started to pay more attention to the psychedelic music scene, and the eye-opening experiences that attended the music.  Hm.  Anyway, I loved Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album, Santana, Black Sabbath.  And yes, I remember the Woodstock Festival, though from afar.  I was too young to be there, and we didn’t have TV at home…

A lot of that music had come out of the folk rock movement, and folk rock also became a popular music style in the Jesus People movement.  I grew up in a very church-oriented culture, and our youth groups were big on popular songs like “If I had a hammer” as well as the Jesus movement music that came out of that.  In the mid 70s, mostly in senior high school and later, I enjoyed listening to Larry Norman, Keith Green, Love Song, and others.  

Once I got into university, and then started teaching, and got married, and had 5 kids in 8 years, I didn’t have much time to listen to music.  It kind of sailed past me, although my high school students were constantly amazed at how I knew the lyrics to the latest songs (so many of which were remakes of songs from my youth, of course).  

As my own kids got to the age where they started to listen to music, I couldn’t help but listen to their music, which was played non-stop in the house, in the car, and wherever we went as a family.  I found myself enjoying a lot of their generation’s music, because when it wasn’t a remake of songs from my generation, it had clearly grown out of styles of music I had enjoyed.  Alternative, heavy metal, and so on were oddly familiar!  And I liked listening to the music my kids played, even though they thought it strange (and embarrassing sometimes) that such an old lady would enjoy it. 

Now my kids are grown and moved away, and again I don’t listen to songs so much, except on the car radio now and again.  

I never really got into listening to the “worship CDs”  that became so wildly popular among the “evangelical” church folks.  I enjoyed live “Christian” music, especially if it had a good rock beat, but was never very interested in the recorded stuff.  I am definitely not into watching those worship videos. 

Most of all, I never, ever got into country, western, or Elvis for that matter.  Though I have enjoyed listening to blues and jazz and classical from time to time.

Okay, this is way too long!  Nuff said!