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

He was a wise man too: "You are not drunk as long as you can lay on the floor without holding on"

1969 and I was still a school girl, but this is when I guess I was most influenced by music, as up until then music was either my own childish piano playing, or church music, or something heard on the radio. We weren't a musical family.


I seem to remember that this was the year of Woodstock, and so the music my friends bought reflected this. We had an odd set up in our village at the time, for the reason that my friends and I had all grown out of the Guides and Scouts, we were given a room in the vicarage to do with whatever we wanted. It was one of those big old villas with extensive gardens, and the curate ( who we never clapped eyes on) lived upstairs. Officially I guess he was supposed to be supervising us, but I think he was terribly shy and just let us to our own devices.

We were there from the moment we'd finished our homework each afternoon until the time when our parents expected us in at night. After our exams in the summer, we were there all the time. We painted a vast mural on one of the walls, much to the horror of the adults when they found out. But as nobody had told us not to, nobody got into trouble. I think it was the life-size naked mermaid that I'd painted that provided most of the shock. Graffiti didn't exist in those days as far as I remember.

I remember we didn't have carpet on the floor, but we did have an old sofa or two, and an old radiogram. If you've never seen one, it resembles a sideboard and combines a radio and a stereo-gramophone. Probably with valves. Not being terribly rich kids we didn't have many records, but people brought their favourites and we played them constantly. Some of the girls were into soul and Motown, and some of the boys were more into the bands such as Cream, the Doors and the Who.

We had the run of the kitchen - a big old place - where we could make coffee. We smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and dressed like beatniks, all in black and levis. The girls taught me to dance, as there were 'types' of dances you did to soul music in those days. They were always so much cooler than me!

The boys had cars and so were able to drive us to live music gigs, and often these were lost on me, and the mists of time - but I distinctly remember watching The Who in a tiny club somewhere - standing just a few feet away from the band and being shocked at the guitar smashing at the end of the performance.

I bring you, from 1969, the piece of music most welded into my soul.

Going Up The Country by Canned Heat 1969

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWRK_zQdCC4

[Although it came to be a favoutite, I bought the entire double album 'Living the Blues' because I was so impressed by a single note (somewhere on Parthenogenesis) - it moved me as much as the note that signals death's triumph in Strauss' 'Death and Transfiguration'.]

Thanks Rudest Elf! I am so glad you read this.

I've met people like you before, who've bought something just for a single sound. ( wonders whether you were the same person)

Oh, where did our youth go? I didn't value it half enough at the time.

Every period of our lives has its advantages but when we have learned to value them it is usually too late

Canned Heat, yeah, I remember them well (and still play their greatest hits on my hard drive from time to time)

Back then we were amazed when we heard The Bear drank - was it 20 bottles of cola every day?

I once imported a double cd from the USA just to get one song

Think I need to play a little T-Rex now

I've never even heard that song before (I was 2 in 1969). It's...interesting.

I loved your post, though, Lanza. It did a great job of conjuring up a mental image of what it must have been like. How fantastic that you kids were given a place to go like that. Like a 24/7 youth club with no supervision, it must have made you all feel very grown up.

Deb

Thanks Deb!

I guess we were the first teenagers who were actually 'teens' - some of this crowd were just leaving school and finding jobs, at 16. Some of us were just enjoying a summer of freedom, before more school or university.

I've got my next record lined up, but it is from a couple of years later. I'll keep you in suspense.


I think I chose the Canned Heat for this period, because it was played so often, we probably wore the grooves out.

You could have been given Cream - Sunshine of Your Love - but that was from 1967.

I'll add it here though, just for the blast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhzF2K2b7Xo&feature=related

I spent the early sixties with folk music and "American Bandstand, and the rest of the sixties with musical theater. After about 1970, I ignored popular music for the most part. Obviously, though, I've sometimes wondered who wrote and performed the songs that I heard on the public-address systems in the supermarkets as I was shopping.

Oh dear, paulh

I can't imagine where I'd be today were it not for rock music (in all its shades and aspects), blues, jazz, folk, classic - that almost covers it, doesn't it?

Pop music comes from many sources. There are movie hits, which I hear because I go to movies regularly. I go out of my way to learn all the musical theater tunes. I've spent some decades patiently sifting through pre-20th Century music. There's so much of it that I'm still far from done. There have been cases where rock composers were stuck for a chord, so they borrowed from Bach or some other classical composer. I often hear familiar themes even in movies with rock scores -- just try "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Night on Bald Mountain" in the the soundtrack for "Saturday Night fever."

All I'm saying is that I haven't been listneing to radio stations that only play contemporary rock music. The music gets monotonous after a while. I want the variety that I can get by alternating styles as i put CDs into my CD player.

I wish I had a time machine paulh. Then I'd whisk you back in time to the live concerts of the early seventies, when rock music was really something ground breaking.

Listening to it via a radio is just *not* the same.

I was performing in a lot of live concerts then, Lanzababy. Since then, I've sung music in 15 different languages, toured several times in Asia, Central and Southern Europe, and enjoyed the bounty of musicmaking that was the late 20th and early 21st century.

As for what I "missed" in rock music of the 1970s and beyond, they're going to be recycled as show tunes. I kid you not. "Jersey Boys" is a recent show about franky Valli and the Four Seasons. "Forever Plaid" is full of classic rock songs from the early 1960s. "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" is also full of classic rock songs. "Mamma Mia" used songs that were sung by "ABBA."
I listen to CDs of three of the four shows, and intend to get "Priscilla" soon. Movies? I could get the soundtrack for "Pirate Radio." "Fame," "Burlesque" and "Rock of Ages" are movies with rock scores.

Rock music is as ubiquitous now as jazz was in the 1920s through the 1940s. Wouldn't it be boring to listen to just one style and pretend that there were never any others?

Lanza, I have that problem with Star Wars. I saw so much other sci-fi first that when I finally watched it it seemed one giant cliche. But Star Wars came first!

As an aside to this, can I just say that "Priscilla Queen of the Desert"* is a fabulous stage show that left me & my mum grinning from ear to ear from the opening song til bedtime?

Deb

*thank bob for preview - Priscilla Queen of the Dessert would be a whole other show!

paulh

Here's a list of popular music genres - which includes the musicals you so love (and rock): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popular_music_genres

Are you surprised that some of us consider your musical tastes to be extremely limited?

Does anybody listen to all the styles listed? I have a feeling that most people, if they care about any music at all, choose something they like and stick with it. That's pretty much what I did, after genre-hopping in my teens and early twenties.

The concerts I sing in attract good-sized audiences. In the Spring, I sing in a Pops group that entertains at rest homes and nursing homes. This year, we sang a couple of Whitney Houston songs and some Monkees hits, plus medleys from classic Hollywood movies and Sondheim shows.

Vip, Star Wars was already a giant cliché when they made it. It was like every space opera book and every science fiction TV show ever made.

I like variety Paul, so yes, I would say that I listen to music from as many origins as possible.

When I feel in the right frame of mind again, my next selection for this journal ( which I'd like to remind you is my Create challenge, not a discourse on whether classical is the only sort of music you like to hear ) is a piece of music which is a hybrid of psychedelic rock and New Orleans rhythm and blues.

I also have some Ska lined up for a few years later.

But I think I need to walk away from this journal for a while.

" I think I need to walk away from this journal for a while"

Me, too. I'm pretty sure I put my foot in my mouth big time.

paulh, just listen to what you like best