I feel the need to post a diary to lighten the mood a bit. So, I’m going to do a little experiment. Let’s do a music and story diary. Here’s the rules, such as they are:
First, pick one song — for this diary, only one, please. If your favorite song is “anything by Led Zeppelin,” choose one particular song. No cheating.
Second, write a bit of a story about why you picked that song. Not just “because you asked me to, dummy,” but where were you when you heard it? What were you doing there? Who were you with? Why this song and not another song played that day?
And of course, I’d like to see other people’s reactions to the stories.
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I’ll start.
The year was 1969. Back then we still had three-year high schools, and I was fresh out of junior high and trying my best to fit in. I was a drama geek — in fact, I still do the occasional community play almost forty years later — and was tapped to join the Thespian Society, the national high-school drama organization. We had a sorta hokey initiation ceremony, and then we went to the chapter president’s apartment for a party.
So there I was, sitting on the floor eating Rice-A-Roni (which I also love to this day), and the chapter president, whose name I can no longer remember, put on an album by this guy I’d never heard of. Arlo Guthrie. He started doing a little song to a skifflish guitar accompaniment:
“You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.
You get get anything you want
At Alice’s Restaurant,
Walk right in, it’s around the back,
Just a half a mile from the railroad track.
You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.”
And then of course this guy proceeded to recount a shaggy-dog story about getting arrested for littering, followed up by his encounter with the draft board and how his fingerprints are enshrined in a little folder in Washington, D.C.
Well, I’d never heard anything quite like it before. I’d been exposed to folk music for years, starting with the tamer Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary stuff my parents played on our stereo and moving on through Shindig and Hootenanny to a weekly CBC Radio show titled something like “Folk Music Across Canada.” But this was my first personal exposure to anything anti-war.
I did a diary not too long ago about how you can’t expect a tree unless you plant a seed, and if you expect political results you need to plant a seed first too. The seed that got planted that afternoon didn’t really come into full blossom for many years, but looking back on it, that was as good a place to as any to point to and say, “That’s when I started being a liberal.”
And please, if you think this is a good idea, say so. If you hate the idea, go ahead and say that too. I’ll try not to show that I’m crushed beyond recognition and that you’ve just squashed my ego to where it’s lower than an anaconda’s belly-button. Honest.
I don’t remember the year… it was in the mid 80’s somewhere though.
A pretty blah day… I was taking a short cut though the parking lot of a strip mall on my way to somewhere or other, thinking about whatever worries and cares I had at the time. From the faces of the people around me, they were pretty much doing the same… everyone in their own little world, sometimes making eye contact, but mostly just rushing by.
There was a construction crew doing some sort of renovation on the face of one of the stores, a bunch of guys up there painting and stuff.
Suddenly, one of them turned on a radio or tape player and out booms “Groovin’… on a Sunday afternoon…” and all the painters start singing along with it (and actually in harmony). Better yet, they started dancing along the wall with their paintbrushes while they sang…
I looked around and some of the people rushing about started to slow down a bit, and there were smiles at one another and attempts to sing along as well, with some few dancing away in the parking lot.
I continued on my way with a smile on my face and a song running through my head, and the day seemed much brighter after that.
Nothing political or deep or anything, just… a pretty neat moment.
I’ll bet that was a sight to see! Thanks Nanette!
It was pretty fun, and obviously stuck in my memory.
I think this is a great idea, by the way, and it’s caused me to start searching my memory for other song/event related things. I have one all ready (not written, but at least remembered) for the next time you do a music one.
Are you going to do other things? Sounds, smells and all that? ;). It’s funny how so many things connect.
Anyway, good job, and it’s a pleasure reading the memories people have come up with.
Thanks
Smells are a little harder to describe. There are other story possibilities, though. Things like: What made you a liberal? Where were you when . . . (Kennedy was assassinated, John Lennon died, Challenger exploded, etc.)
But really, one of the main reasons I posted this was to find out what kinds of music other Bootribbers listen to. Maybe the next one will be, “What are you listening to right now?” or “What’s on your iPod/CD player/computer/whatever?”
Nanette, you reminded me of one of the sweetest memories!
When I was in high school, my first girlfriend was a wild child whom I loved dearly and always will. One day we were driving home from somewhere, I don’t remember where anymore, and got caught by a really long, slow-moving train. You know, one of those ones that creeps and crawls and then stops and goes backwards and you just know you’re going to spend the rest of your damn life sitting in that intersection.
We had the stereo on full blast, of course, since we were teenagers and never went anywhere without the stereo on full blast, and the afternoon DJ spun that song by The Hollies:
Saturday night I was downtown
working for the FBI…
My girlfriend proceeded to roll the windows down, and while she sang at the top of her lungs, she dragged my ass out of the car and started dancing with me in the street. I was much more uptright as a kid than I am now, but I got into it and we were having such a ball that by the time the song was halfway through, other people in the traffic had tuned their stereos in to the same station and were joining us out in the street for an impromptu dance party under the South Florida sunshine.
Stuff like that is why I still have any faith in people at all.
Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress occupies a special place in my heart as well, as do most of the songs that were popular in the summer of ’72. That was the year I graduated from high school, and I think those songs always stand out in our minds. For me it was the Hollies, and “Brandy” and “Without You” and even “Troglodyte,” just to name a few.
Thanks Indy!
Great story, glad mine reminded you of it.
Your statement above is so true… it’s almost as if people actually become people again when they feel it’s okay to release themselves from certain ideas of “proper behaviour” they’ve had put on them by whatever… time, society, themselves, etc.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend about The Gates in Central Park (which I only saw through pictures and was not all that impressed with) and the entire liberating aspect of them.
But that’s a whole ‘nother story and no music involved, lol. Thanks for sharing your memories and reminding me of more of mine š
Fan-Fuck’n-Tastic concept Omir, ; )
It’s great, and I hope it never stops, KUDOS
As for me, well too many songs, too many stories, but I truly love music, all of it, (real music that is, NO RAP )
Music, the rythmic stings of one’s heart & soul, the tone of our spirit, and the voice of our life.
Thanks so much Omir, I will return later just to read all the diaries.
No time now, but later for sure ; )
Maybe I’ll do this again sometime when it’ll get a little more notice. I just had to put something together last night to diffuse the tension I was seeing over the various anti-Kos diaries flying around.
Thanks for comin’ by!
Actually, I’m cheating…
Your Arlo reference made me think of my earliest musical memories…riding in my mom’s Valiant, listening to the AM radio with the shiny round buttons that you pushed in (almost like the cigarette lighter pushed in, except I was allowed to play with the radio). “The Train they Call the City of New Orleans” seemed like it was always playing in that car; I was probably about 3 or 4 years old and couldn’t even see over the dashboard, but I remember the details of the radio SO well…
Not musical per se, but memories of a car radio . . .
I was about 4 or 5 years old. We were driving from Walla Walla to the Tri-Cities of eastern Washington and I remember we were listening to “Gunsmoke,” so it must have been a Sunday afternoon, because by then that’s the only day of the week you could still hear radio drama.
Thanks for that memory!
I grew up near Schenectady NY. Winters there are cold often hanging around zero to ten degrees and much colder at
In the winter we woke up and got off to school while it was still dark. Often, if you were in school actvities you got home after dark too. As a matter of self defense I learned to love the moonlight and skated in the back pasture in the moonlight almost every evening.
But it was hard not to have a little touch of seasonal blues.
When I was in 8th grade I woke every morning to the clock radio, remember those? For several months that year, People Are Strange by The Doors was the song that played more often than not at 6:00 am. when my clock radio went on….. in the dark… in the cold of my room in my 200 year old farm house.
*People are strange, when you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly when you’re alone
People seem wicked, when you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven, when you’re down
When you’re strange- faces come out of the rain (rain, rain)
When you’re strange- no one remembers your name
When you’re strange, when you’re strange, when you’re str-ange *
BTW…just had a real strong memory attached to it.
I wasn’t looking necessarily for a favorite song, just something that was attached to a memory.
One of these days I may do one of these and ask people to describe a song they can’t stand. š
Thanks, Teresa!