Musical High Notes

Yesterday's blog about music and Gram Parsons had excellent responses!  Unfortunately for my blog-only readers (Bueller? Bueller?  Anyone? Anyone?), all the discussion was on the facebook machine, but it was really a very interesting set of comments where people talked about their musical roots, and the varied types of music they were interested in.  I enjoyed it a great deal, and so I've decided to return to the musical theme and this time, instead of writing about what I don't like, describe some of my "musical high notes".

Again,there was not a lot of music playing in the house, and I don't recall my parents singing other than Happy Birthday.  My Dad did, when he was younger, play the piano and was in the school band.  By the time I was growing up, all that was gone.  He did have an older record player in the basement with some older records from the 30s and 40s.  I would play them on occasion and learned to appreciate some of the early crooners.  I remember Slow Boat to China and also some Andrews Sisters.  Then we got a big stereo unit upstairs, one of those huge box  consoles that took up half a wall.  Mt Dad was partial to those Reader's Digest collections that, as cheesy as they were, covered diverse era and types of music.  One had ten LPs each covering a different decade of music, starting with the 1890s.  I loved that set.

Like it or not, my musical tastes were heavily influenced by....the movies.  although they didn't play a lot of music, my parents did take us to the movies quite regularly, several times a month.  So my interest in music was quite heavily influenced by the movies I saw.  I loved the James Bond theme songs.  My love of classical music grew in part from Kubrick films like A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.  American Graffiti inspired an interest in early rock.  I grew to have a really strong affection for Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison.  Roy to me is The Voice, musical perfection, starting low and then soaring to the mountaintops, no one had a range like he did.

I came to like Motown, especially the Supremes.  I have always had a stronger affinity for female singers and groups.  I liked much of the British Invasion, including The Beatles and even Herman's Hermits. The Monkees were fun, and probably the first group whose records I sought out.  I loved comedic singers, particularly Alan Sherman (Hello Mudder, Hello Fadder , Here we are at Camp Granada).

Even with the disdain for the music of my peers, there were some singers or individual songs that I liked. Elton John (Crocodile Rock), Barry Manilow, Linda Rondstadt, Winchester Cathedral, Popcorn, Kansas (Dust in the Wind), Black Sabbath's I Am Iron Man.

For the most part music headed into a dark age in the 70s, and was led out by Modern Rock, which I really liked, led out of the wilderness by artists such as David Bowie and Blondie.

Well, work time is marching heavily towards me, so I must continue this at another time.  Until then, my blog army!