Saturday 20 March 2010

Music of our lives


Isn't music amazing? There you are just toddling along, when on the radio comes a piece of music that just makes your heart smile. Doesn't have to be a particular favourite, just one from your past that has good vibes.

I was as always, half listening to my fav radio station... Smooth Radio, which does what it says on the can and plays loads of cool music, especially Motown. And if there is one thing that makes me smile, it's old Motown records from my youth.

Natalie Cole (Nat's daughter) came on with her first and probably biggest hit, 'This will be' and I just stopped dead in my tracks as the music worked it's magic and I found myself just grinning like a loon feeling good with the joy of the music.

There are so many pieces of music that are important in our lives. The ones that mean the most attached to particular times in our lives. So a crucial year for me was 1968..... All you need is Love, The Beatles, Procal Harem, Scott MCkenzie and my all time fav- Albatross by Fleetwood Mac and all the stuff on the Woodstock movie which I saw that year. Any time I hear music from those formative years I am immediately transported back to that 14yr old who was on the cusp of life.

There are others throughout my life that hit the spot, Vidor's wedding march is a real tear jerker. Carmina Burina is one of those 'lose myself totally' pieces. The hymn Jerusalem reduces me to tears and I know all the words!

I can hear anything of Marvin Gaye's over and over and never get tired of hearing.

I think our love of a particular era's music is age dependant. In that I believe it is our formative years that make the music special, from say 13 up to mid 20s. We are finding out about ourselves and the world. Everything is new and never before experienced, from that first tentative kiss to love to heartbreak. And music heard at these times forms the backdrop to our history.

So although I can really like some music from the late 70s and in to the 80s they weren't the songs of my life in the way that 'I heard it through the Grapevine' was.
Or Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers, which I feel in love to for the first time at 17, when I David the man I had fancied for a while asked me to dance at the disco.
Or Shaft by Issac Hayes the piece that was playing, when we asked his sisters friend we were staying with if she was okay with us sleeping together.

And on and on.... Then there is the music that represents our childhoods. My Mum singing Magic Moments or Catch a Falling Star, songs that I still hum to myself, and did to my children when I was trying to get them to sleep all those years ago.

Whether it is the lyrics or the tune doesn't matter, as all these songs whatever they are have a direct line to our hearts within the first few cords. We never forget them, even if we don't remember them every day. It only takes The Happening by the Supremes to be played and I'm internally bopping round by handbag and feeling oh so good.

And as for hearing Frank Sinatra singing New York New York, that memory is just one of the best.

So what music does it for you? What makes your memory banks go into overdrive?

11 comments:

Merry ME said...

Trisha Yearwood sings a one called, "The Song Remembers When." It's true. You can be in one place, hear a song and literally be transported to another place and time.

Maybe smell is like that also. I can't catch a hint of Johnson's & Johnson's baby lotion and not think of the time my babies were little. I was the center of their universe and they made my world spin.

Ah, memories.

Helen said...

Hi there!
Do you think it's possible we were separated at birth? (though I AM older than you!)

I'm pleasantly surprised when a piece of music I love pops up on the radio or on my CD player ~~ and my emotions come bubbling to the surface. My grandchildren love to witness that ~~ and I don't hold back.

For instance .. my 16 year old granddauthter called me this week. I could faintly hear a song in the background playing on her car radio. It was Hoobastank singing 'The Reason' ... she knows me well.

Music feeds my soul. Music from the 40's through today. From country to jazz to classical to rock.

Thank you for writing this!

Paula said...

Love the outlook of your blog. Their the color of nature have arrived already. Makes me feel good. Surely i remember many classsical peices due to dancing. The two which I connect with my greatest success dancing: Giselle and Bolero. besides of that: not really anything, I react muchs tronger to scent. Scent brings back so many memories. Let talk soon. Hugs across the channel

Rach said...

I have so many too Mandy, My childhood was Jim Reeves, Marty Robbins and Neil Diamond, My teen years was Abba, Slade and late 70's disco and as I have gone through life there hasn't been a year without a song that reminds me of something.

Dad dying was Mike and the Mechanics The Living years, first thing I heard the morning he died and it's still gets me..xx

Zan said...

Music.. one of those things you can't live without. I have many songs that do stop me dead in my track, some makes me smile, others make me bend over in pain. Interesting really how music can affect you so much.
Faith Hill.. There you'll be, from Pearl Harbour...
A song I dedicated to my first love, so sadly it doesn't make me smile, it tears me apart, yet I still love the song so much!
And scents.. works the same magic really. Like whenver I smell anyone wearing 'Clinique Happy' I feel like throwing up.. it was my favourite perfume when I got pregnant LOL

Von said...

"If music be the food of love, play on."
I was just in time for the birth of R&R and everything else since.Al Green "Together" and on and on through Motown, Folk,Classic, there's a place for it all.My daughter has a huge repertoire of songs all learned in childhood because music was always present.

Mel said...

Oh gosh--Glenn Miller and my step mother and father jitterbugging in the kitchen. LOL

Amazing how that works, eh? I'm a fan of the Big Band Era as a result.
And how could I not enjoy Frank and Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole.

Yeah, yeah--I have my own 'stuff' attached to R&R.
But himself is a lover of WWII 'stuff' so you can guess what we have for noise around here.

Well, that and the Llama Song. LOL

I do hope you're enjoying the weekend, ma'am!

Lori ann said...

I do know just what you mean, music is completly attached to memory, i don't even know where to begin! I loved to go to concerts when i was young (still do, we have tickets to U2 in June!!)

every song or band reminds me of some person or place in my life. these days my ipod plays jack johnson or james taylor or jason mraz on repeat.

Miss Robyn said...

sometimes when I hear music from my teenage years, my heart aches. from the memories of teenage angst that I went through.. the songs really hurt my heart when I hear them and have to turn them off...

who was on the cusp of life. these words grabbed me.. 14yrs old... where did that time go? it is scary how it disappeared so quickly.

Anonymous said...

Agree with another comment, Mike and the Mechanics The Living Years only gets more poignant as the years go by for my husband and his immediate family and me (as the daughter-in-law).None of us can listen to it. Heaps of songs make me burst with happiness, but The Living Years is too painful.My daughter was so little when her grandfather chose to leave us all.

nitebyrd said...

Ave Maria and Amazing Grace (bagpipes) will always make me cry and think of 09/11/01. Any "Who" song brings back teenage years as do "Rolling Stones" songs.

Yes, Ms. Byrd, the list could go on forever ...