Martin, whose Substack Notes from My Burrow I follow, talks a lot about music--concerts he goes to, artists he admires, music he collects. As I read his essays, I realized that music hasn't played much of a pert in my life for a very long time--partly because my bad hearing doesn't allow me to fully appreciate it, and also because I really enjoy listening to audio books or reading, rather than music.
But then I started thinking about music that I have loved.
Here, in semi-chronological order are some of the artists/pieces that stick in my memory:
Home on the Range (I was very young.)
Bolero (it was the finale of Holiday on Ice and I was mesmerized)
Harry Belafonte (the first LP I ever purchased)
Mariachi music (summer school in Mexico)
Joan Baez (first year of college)
Piaf--especially Non, je regretted rien
Leonard Cohen--Suzanne
Red Clay Ramblers- esp. Merchant's Lunch
Reggae-Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff By the Rivers of Babylon
Jacques Brel
Yo Yo Ma and the Bach Cello Suites
Ashokan Farewell- Ungar and Mason
The Pizza Tapes - Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, and Tony Rice
Oh, dear-- I keep thinking of more. Of course I was a fan of Elvis when I was in my early teens. And The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary. And the Beatles and . . .
What about you? What are your musical memories?
7 comments:
I miss having great classical music over the radio. Traveling through Cincinnati this week I enjoyed just finding their classical station for a while.
I think Paul Simon is our greatest writer of popular music, and I love his songs as much now as I ever did. I still enjoy listening to Joan Baez and Judy Collins.
Back in gr9 our music teacher would play classical music for us. The boys would always ask for the Bolero. When I tired to learn the fiddle in old age, one of the first tunes I was given to desecrate was Ashoken Farewell.
With a few exceptions, your list could be mine. I saw Joan Baez in concert my first year in college.
My earliest memory is of the classical music that my dad would put on the phonograph to wake us in the morning when we first returned to the States after living in the The Philippine Islands for 5 years. The record was Great Moments in Music.
Peter, Paul and Mary, Kingston Trio, early Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, Yo Yo Ma, Beethoven (especially the 9th symphony), Andy Williams, Nat King Cole ... music has always been a part of my life. To this day, I ALWAYS wake up with some random song playing in my head!
Won't bore you with a catalogue of my favourite music or music memories, but I'm now at that dreadful age when people are forever telling of the days of auld lang syne, whether their audience wants to listen or not. So: here are two music + vivid memory incidents I would lke to share. Forgive me, feel free to skip or delete.
Close to the DC Beltway, in Kensington Md, stands the Washington DC [Mormon] Temple, a majestic structure clad in white marble with golden spires, especially impressive illuminated at night. Forever clear in my memory is that midnight when, rounding a curve, I suddenly saw the Temple arise out of the dark, seeming to float above the Beltway straight ahead of me like a glowing magic palace -- just as, on the radio, the Prelude of Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor reached its climax ... Even now, decades later, I hear that passage in my mind's ear every time I see the Temple, day or night.
Back in 1967, long before the magic Temple moment, I was driving along listening to the local rock music station when the DJ announced in a rather hesitant voice that he'd just received a recording he'd been told was rather different from the norm. And then he put it on ... The song was "The Great Banana Hoax" by the Electric Prunes. To say it was different from the (in retrospect) conservative pop songs of that time (and that station) is an understatement. When the song finished, there was a moment of dead air before the DJ softly said, "Wow." And "Wow," I echoed, restarting the car where I'd pulled off the side of the road to listen. New era of rock, at least in that corner of the south.
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