h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It was early 1962. I was not quite 14. My musical world, like ancient Gaul, was divided into three parts. In my case, the three parts were:

1. Church music. My mother directed the junior choir at my church. I was intent on helping in any way I could. My voice had begun its descent from soprano realms, but wasn't ready to settle into tenor territory yet, so I was the mainstay of the alto section. We would sing carols like "Silver Bells" at Christmas, and appropriate anthems at Easter and Children's Sunday. Still, just being in church meant that I would hear pieces like "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and "If with all your heart ye truly seek me" and Handel's "Messiah."

2. "American bandstand," with its dancing teenagers and just-for-fun rock music.

3. Show tunes. The previous year, as a 6th grader, I had graced my school's stage as a gondolier of the Gilbert and Sullivan variety. It was my first (and only) starring role. I'm sure I must have been insufferable for a while, but no Hollywood offers came in, and soon I was back to shovelling snow and mowing lawns. Still, this early dose of fame seemed like a sign that musical theater must be the way
to go.

Just as ancient Gaul found itself blown to smithereens by Roman legions, so my comfortable world was also blown asunder. My older sister decided to introduce me to folk music. On my 14th birthday, she gave me two phonograph records: "Peter, Paul and Mary," and "The
Clancy Brothers With Tommy Makem." I was blowing in the wind in no time. Folk music as practiced by PP&M was intense and passionate and deeply committed to all sorts of noble goals. Okay, so the "Lemon Tree" song maybe got a little unrealistic [just add sugar to your lemons, and they taste a lot better!]. And if the flowers have all gone away, just plant some more. But it was still a heady experience to listen to these albums and the ones I bought as PP&M released new ones and I discovered more folk artists...

My favourite artists in the 60's were Clodagh Rodgers with Jack in the Box, Mary Hopkins with Knock who's there, and Yoko Ono with Remember Love. I also liked the Beetles, Give Peace a Chance, All we need is love and Yellow Submarine.

I love "Yellow Submarine," but I didn't get around to seeing it until it came out on videocassette in the 1990s. I can't claim it as an early influence on my musical tastes.

This doesn't mean that the Beatles didn't have a big influence on me. From their 1964 appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show" on, I heard their songs pretty much everywhere. On long trips, my sister and I would sing Beatles songs. The minister in our church used a Beatles song as the basis of one of his sermons [in a positive way]. Even when I was in a double-decker bus in the Alps, on a college chorale concert tour, the bus driver played Beatles songs most of the time.

Here's a question for you, Thinker: Do you like the Beatles' constant tinkering with their older recordings? A lot of remastering and rechannelling has been going since about 1990. The "Yellow Submarine" CD that I have has been remastered/rechannelled many times.I have the most recent one. it's controversial, because it cuts out some of the instrumentation that was in the original film soundtrack. How do you feel about this?

I have not heard any of the remastering of the Beatles songs but I am very sad that they took some of the instrumentation from the original film. I will think I will have to check it out and see if I can listen to it online and see what changes that have been made.

Thank you for sharing your wonderful golden memories and how the Beatles music influenced you and that the minister in your church used a Beatles songs as a basis of one of his sermons.

I have only seen a few clips of the old "Ed Sullivan Show" on TV but what I saw was very enjoyable.

Ed Sullivan was notable for giving many of the early 1960s Rock n' Rollers their first exposure on national television.

Elvis Presley was also featured on Ed Sullivan.

My father listened to classical music, so my mother did the same. Not that heir backgrounds were very different, but unlike my mother my father had the chance of becoming a student, which he did, and go to university, which he also did, until he settled for a career as a librarian, while my mother became a hausfrau with five kids - both of which were very respectable jobs at the time and still is, if you ask me (povided of course that you choose for yourself)

I still love classical, but rock, folk, folk-rock, jazz, blues and some pop also mean a lot to me.

I mean who can resist a song like "Be my baby" by Ronnie Spector?

If I really had to chose I would name Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Marrison and Roger Waters and the Pink Floyd as my favourites

But if I only had to listen to them from here on an til eternity ends I would go insane from missing all the others, like Procol Harum, Moody Blues, Colloseum, The Animals, Stones, Beatles....

*Elvis Presley was also featured on Ed Sullivan*

Only from the waist up, his suggestive hip movements were considered too riske' for the 1950 television audience.

On the subject of 1960 American folk music, have you noticed how closely it is related to classic Celtic? A few years ago we had an excellent Irish / Scot pub in the area who brought in some major US and a few UK entertainers. Great experience

FS

"On the subject of 1960 American folk music, have you noticed how closely it is related to classic Celtic?" [Florida Sailor]

I've definitely noticed that. Millions of settlers came over from Ireland, Scotland, and England, bringing their fiddles and their memories of songs with them.

"If I really had to chose I would name Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Marrison and Roger Waters and the Pink Floyd as my favourites. But if I only had to listen to them from here on an til eternity ends I would go insane from missing all the others." [Pierce]

"Pink Floyd The Wall" was used as the soundtrack for a movie that I saw. I'm planning to get representative CDs of all the major groups between now and the end of the year. My first stage will be to focus on the solo artists. So far my to-do list includes Sarah Vaughan, Della Reese, Cab Calloway, Sammy Davis Jr., Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Edith Piaf, Judy Garland, Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck,
Johnny Mathis, Mel Torme, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee, and Barbra Streisand. I just received Cds for Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. A few of these artists are still giving concerts. Mel and Perry and Peggy kept performing until not long before their deaths.

I've seen movies that used music by Pink Floyd, The Doors, Madonna, Alice Cooper, and others in their soundtracks. Recent rock musical movies include "Burlesque" and "Rock of Ages." My favorite rock movie was "Get Crazy," which came out in 1981. For a while, I tried watching videos of rock concerts. I saw the Woodstock concert that way, and also a performance of a Talking Heads concert.

Hopefully I can manage to be systematic and end up with a CD collection that covers the major groups. I have a list of the top 200 rock albums that I got from a website. I'm *not* going to buy 200 rock albums based on one person's opinion of what is important.

My early musical memories were of what my parents listened to, so it was popular stuff on the radio; the Sundays were Billy Cotton Bandstand, Family Favourites and Winifred Attwell in the evening(boogie woogie).
My friend and I "discovered" Folk music and we became hooked on American Folk. We used to trawl the record stores for Woodie Guthrie, Cisco Huston, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, the list goes on.

Bob Dylan was a revelation and nothing was the same afterwards. Pop music was ok but just audial candy floss. Along came Hendrix and again everything changed.

Eventually I ended up with a head full of earworms so I turned to Classical music as an antidote. Ah, why didn't I find you earlier?

Classical music can get boring after a decade or so if you only play the instrumental variety. At least, that has been true in my experience.

What I'm doing now to counter this is to alternate between instrumental music and vocal music. Alternating among different genres also seems to help. I'm listening to Schubert lieder now. My next CD could be Locatelli concerti grossi, followed by the soundtrack to "Evita," and then some Brahms string quartets, and then maybe some Bach cantatas. I'm sure a Van Morrison or Michael jackson could fit in there somewhere, assuming that I had such discs (which I don't, at least not yet. The concert that Michael Jackson was working on at just before his death was filmed and released as a movie. I happened to see it.)

Fate had it that I came to w*rk for a company that gave me huge discounts on among other stuff a selection of vinyl records from Deutsche Grammophon, a highly respected company which only produced class A stuff. These discounts were so huge they made me buy 4 records with Herbert von Karajan conducting The Berlin Philharmonics playing Händel's Concerti Grossi.

I would *never* have bought these by chance, but now that I own them I am so very very fond of them

Handel's concerti grossi sound great to our ears, but for reason his contemporaries in England seem to have preferred Corelli. people are
fickle!

I've bought many Deutsche Grammaphon recordings over the years. I don't play vinyl discs any more, just CDs. When I got rid of my vinyl collection, I only kept the ones I doubted CDs would become available for. A lot of those works *have* come out on CD.

I agree, instrumental can get a bit boring after a while but a night at the opera can change that. Much as I like live performances it isn't always possible to attend them. Thank goodness for BBC Radio 3 which provides such a rich variety of music.
Something that continues to puzzle me though is that Radio 3 plays jazz but never blues. Jazz on Radio 3 but blues on Radio 2 as if jazz is culturally superior.

There are probably people who think jazz *is* somehow superior. Another interpretation is that blues is more likely to be vocal and less likely to be just instrumental. Jazz has its instrumentalists [Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, etc.] and its vocalists [Ella Fitzagerald, Sarah Vaughan, Della Reese, etc.]. There are many well-known blues singers [James Brown, Bessy Smith, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, etc.], but is there enough of an instrumental blues genre to furnish a radio station with enough music to play? Just wondering.

There is no jazz without blues

Good points, instrumental jazz can have a complexity that blues might lack. I'm aware that quite a few classical musicians like jazz's free form. Yet, the boundaries between jazz and blues are blurred, I'm thinking back to Jesse Fuller who sang and played the blues yet his recordings are categorised as jazz. Are the blues guitar solos less worthy. Nigel Kennedy recorded Jimi Hendrix music, where does that fit in?

All music is standing on the shoulders of s that came before

Fusion of African and European music lead to the emerging of blues, jazz, gospel, rythm and blues, rock etc. (not necessarily in that order)

I like "the second fusion" a lot: Osibisa, who took their African music to Britain

Also the fusion of South American/Caribian and European music (mr. Marley), Indian and European - oh, I could go on and on

But there isn't much fusion between Asian and European music, is there

"All music is standing on the shoulders of [music] that came before" [Pierce]

So it would seem, though every 80 to 100 years a group of young mavericks rises up and tries to do something completely different. In modern pop culture, though. radical change can be attempted every 10 to 20 years. [Sadly, I can't keep up with such rapid change. ]
Still, you can see a few old things carry over into new forms each time. Syncopation has been a prominent element in ragtime, jazz, swing, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, reggae, disco, and probably everything since then.

"But there isn't much fusion between Asian and European music, is there?"

I'm no expert. I didn't even know there was much instrumental blues music. I can think of one extremely obscure example of Chinese-Russian fusion [assuming that Russia qualifies as "European," which may be stretching it]. Taiwan-born composer Chiang Wen Yeh studied music with Russian composer Alexander Tcherepnin. Later in life, he moved to Communist China, and was castigated for writing "Western" music. All of you who have heard of Chiang Wen-Yeh, please raise your hands.