I used to listen to music more than I do now. The other day different songs popped into my head and I realized it was like a mental travelogue through the decades. Some decades are less defined than others. As a young person, my tastes were fairly vanilla…not Vanilla Ice, just drab vanilla.
Let me further qualify my blandness by confessing that I never played a musical instrument, other than the piano half-heartedly for a year or two. But, my brother was a musical whiz and could play the piano by ear. My grandmother was also an accomplished pianist. We had loads of records in the house…Broadway musicals, Big Band, Mitch Miller sing alongs, etc. So, even though I was never moved to play an instrument, I’ve been a consumer of music all of my life.
Playlists in my day consisted of a stack of 45’s that played one after another. And there was always AM radio. People of a certain age still remember scrambling to hit the record button on the tape recorder when a favorite song came on. There was a small shopping center in our town and one of the stores was Woolworth’s. We’d ride our bikes there to buy a new 45 and to pop a balloon at the lunch counter to see what discounted treat we might get.
Major tangent coming up relating to Woolworth’s…the summer of my 14th or 15th year I was in Woolworth’s with a friend. The style that summer was halter tops, a slightly dangerous tiny garment that was sexy in that it hinted at what was covered by the skimpy material. Both my friend and I were good candidates for halter tops. We filled them well. We were standing in an aisle looking at a display. I’ve always been an observant person and I detected some boys skulking about. Something told me to put my hand behind my back and over the string that tied the top shut. My friend didn’t notice. They untied hers at the top behind her neck. The material fell and the girls popped right out. An exciting afternoon for those boys.
Back to tunes. My first album was Honky Chateau by Elton John. I was a dedicated Elton John fan for a few decades. His best album was Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Most every song was good. I remained a pop music fan and never entered into the world of FM radio music until I was in college and never listened to college radio stations.
High school years were dominated by a variety of songs. School dances typically featured “China Grove,” “Jumping Jack Flash.” “Color My World” and “Stairway to Heaven” were for slow dances. “Suffragette City” was a required house party song. We always danced the 5-step or 7-step to that song. But I also remember “American Pie” and “Taxi” from those years. “Black Water” was popular during a dating situation and I have particular memories whenever I hear it.
That decade closed for me with the addition of the Eagles; Earth, Wind, and Fire; CCR; Boz Scaggs; Led Zeppelin; Springsteen; Peter Frampton, and some, but very little, disco. As I thought of different songs, I also thought of all of the lyrics we thought we knew but screwed up on a regular basis.
Unless you bought the sheet music, one learned lyrics by listening to a song over and over. Many times we “misheard” lyrics. I’m the first to admit that I thought Jimi Hendrix was singing, “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.” The real lyric is “while I kiss the sky” which makes far less sense than kissing a guy. Whatever. “Bad Moon Rising” was a popular song by CCR. Some fans thought a line in the song was “there’s a bathroom on the right.” Actually it’s “there’s a bad moon on the rise.” Makes sense given the title but the bathroom line works for me, too.
For the car fans, a cover of “Blinded by the Light,” by Springsteen, yielded the line, “wrapped up like a douche (deuce), another rumor in the night.” Doesn’t really make sense but I sang it. I think I just liked the sound of saying douche. The real line (the car guys know), “Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.” I’ll leave you with one more from the decade of the 70s. “Stairway to Heaven” was a bit of a conundrum. It was in English, but it was British English. Vocabulary doesn’t always cross over. “If there’s a bustle in the hedgerow…”. I sang it correctly but had no earthly clue what it meant until years later. The song starts as a good slow dance song but then goes haywire, leading to awkward dance floor moments. One classic misheard line is “There’s a wino down the road.” It’s possible, it could happen. However, the correct line is “and as we wind on down the road.” I rather like the wino line.
I could go on and on. But I won’t. I will tell you I smiled the entire time I wrote this. Happy memories are food for the soul. I apologize in advance for not properly formatting names of album (that’s for you, TGC). They should be in italics. But I’m typing on my iPad and it’s too much of a pain (see also, I don’t really know how). And always remember, “If it ain’t paradise, then put up a parking lot.” Even I know it’s “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Don’t be upset if random songs now run through your head. Go with it and smile 😊.
N.B. In making a correction, I accidentally discovered how to do the text formatting. Just pretend stuff is in italics for this one occasion.
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