Music and Lyrics

What song could you not live without? OR The songs that made us

If you were on the Langdale to Horseshoe Bay ferry on May 25th, you might have spotted me, laughing, crying and humming to myself in a seat on the forward port side. If you did notice me, you probably moved slowly away, trying to avoid eye contact, just like you’d do on boarding a bus. Well played.

The reality is, I was enjoying the fruit of one of two ideas which surfaced recently, both creative ways to share stories about ourselves and where we’ve come from. Although we all love to tell stories about our childhoods and earlier years, it often feels enormously self-indulgent to do so. Eye rolling and eye glazing usually result. These particular projects, however, give you absolute permission to indulge away.

My friend D admitted to reading the Guardian, from whose pages he hit upon the inspiration to issue a challenge to several of us, instructing us to honestly answer some musical questions such as:

• First record you ever bought

• Song you know all the words to

• Song that makes you cry…and so on.

So…results in hand, earbuds in, I sat on the ferry, reading the stories and clicking through to the links to hear the songs. Most of them I knew but learning how and why they mattered to my friends was an immense joy. Hence the laughing, crying and humming along. I highly recommend doing exactly this exercise with your friends or family. Our results were so entertaining I have sought permission from the group to share some of the insights.

The first song I fell in love with, according to D:

Although I have very fond memories of some Coasters, Everly Brothers and Elvis, the first song I LOVED, and still do, is Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing". The long version, labelled as Christopher Columbus on the B-side because it was too long for just one side of a 78. It was always out, in heavy rotation, until I sat on it when I was about 12. I spent the next 30 years or so looking for it on various compilations (Goodman recorded it over and over again) and finally found the right version on cd in the 90s. It's easy to find now on the internet and has shown up in commercials and movies. The different themes in it are basically always in my head.

In answer to The first record I ever bought, C says:

Probably a Beatles 45 although I had mostly albums back then. I didn’t really have any of my own money.

I was making 2 cents per paper per week, delivering the Montreal Star and I usually entered up spending that on pinball or cigarettes. Yes, I was smoking at 13.

The music I owned usually came as birthday and Christmas presents.

My parents had a collection of classical music, flamenco guitar and French singers.

When I got my own record player at 13 or 14, the hitmakers were singers like Bobby Vinton, Johnny Tilotson, Dean Martin , Frank Sinatra.

There didn’t seem to be the kind of compartmentalization in the top 40 that developed later, at least not on Montreal AM radio.

But I did have a complete collection of Beatles, Stones and Beach Boys albums. They all got stolen in a break-in while we were away on summer vacation. Must have been kids. They left the Bobby Vinton.

To the same prompt, M says:

"Walk, Don't Run", by The Ventures. 45 rpm, cost about 50 cents, from James Radio & Electric in Ponoka, Alberta, probably 1960. Turns out to be a rock cover of a tune by one of my favourite jazz guitarists, Johnny Smith, something I learned about 50 years later.

On The song that makes me cry, D says:

For a guy with a reputation for being weepy, I don't think there are many songs that make me cry. The exception may be songs that remind me of live concert experiences that were especially moving. Probably the biggest is Paul Simon's "Cool Cool River", which was so transcendent and powerful when I saw him perform it live in 93 (?) that I remember suddenly weeping uncontrollably.

M says:

"The Messiah Will Come", by Roy Buchanan. Live version. Not cry, but shiver; this is pure pain put to music.

In answer to The song I can no longer listen to, T writes:

During my brief, teenage stint as a country music disc jockey, I had to play a song called “You’ve Never Been This Far Before.”

About as sexy as a porn-stache full of biscuit crumbs and sausage gravy, a forty-year old Conway Twitty serenades a woman he’s about to deflower.

This song was Bolero with a bolo tie. And it was the stickiest kind of ick. The lyrics stopped only one step short of rhyming “astroglide” with “naugahyde.”

No, I’m not including a link.

We all had variations on a sad theme in response to The best song to have sex to.

J recalls:

The last time sex had a soundtrack was in the 70s so I’m going to give props to Genesis’ Supper’s Ready. The song took up one entire side of the Foxtrot LP so you had to be pretty inventive to keep things going until Peter Gabriel ran out of steam. Norah Jones hid under the bed for a brief time after the turn of the century but that’s far too obvious for this august company, barely worth a mention.

C says:

Really? Seems kind of vague. With someone else?

I guess anything less than 3 minutes could work.

The first song I fell in love with. T spins this yarn:

My parents never had much use for luxuries. So in the early 1960s, when Dad became interested in breakthrough technologies like “high fidelity” and “stereo,” the purchase of a Nordmende credenza was a very large event.

From the moment it arrived in our living room and began sinking into the cork tile, it was never referred to merely as “the stereo,” but always as “the Nordmende” – the way one might abandon the word “car” for the word “Mercedes.”

Over and above being a solid example of German audio engineering, it was the most elegant piece of furniture we owned. And there was no way on earth its rich veneers and mirror-like varnish were going to be defiled by the gooey fingerprints of a couple of pre-schoolers.

In an effort to keep my sister and me the Hell away from “the Nordmende,” Mom and Dad’s old “portable” record player was turned over to us, along with Dad’s collection of 10 inch bakelite 78s.

There, amid the Billy Eckstine and Jane Froman records, I found a relic of occupied Japan. Recorded by a Col. Richard Bowers, “Gomen Nasai” told of a GI’s regret over his own callous treatment of a Japanese girlfriend. It had been a North American hit, but it didn’t do much for me.

On the other hand, I LOVED the B-side.

Implanted in my five year old brain, "Tokyo Boogie Woogie"“probably explains a few things about the quirkier of my musical interests. Credited only to “The CBS Tokyo Orchestra” it was a Japanese take on American big band swing.

It was not until decades later that I learned the uncredited vocalist was a woman named Shizuko Kasagi. And unlike the entirely forgettable Col. Bowers, it seems that she was a singer of considerable fame. Just two years ago, Japanese television did a dramatic series based on her life. And “Tokyo Boogie Woogie” remains something of a classic in Japan.

For most of my life, this existed only in the realm of audio, so here’s a chance to hear it the way I did for so many years:

It was only recently that I first saw video of this. In looking at it now, the mock marching/saluting dance step at 1:39 seems more than a little subversive. But that may be reading too much into the work of Japan’s “Queen of Boogie,” who more or less owed her career to the music that came with the U.S. occupation.

And to wrap it up, The song I want played at my funeral. C says:

This got dark fast. I can’t decide if I want people to be sad or celebrating. Maybe both? But what one song to encapsulate that? This would obviously be for those left behind. They’ve already decided how they feel about me and who they think I am. One song is not going to affect that.

I suppose Blue Rodeo “5 Days In May” is as good as anything else. I like it although for me, like some of their songs it seems to get hung up lyrically or musically at some point.

Or maybe Joni Mitchell’s “River”, but the version by James Taylor.

D’s requests (3 at least, more like a concert than a funeral):

There's a bunch, partly because a few of us started planning our own funerals back when we were 19 and baked. I'll just include three though, so you all remember to insist on them should the tragic day come before yours. Procol Harum's "Repent Walpurgis" , for the over-the-top pomp of it; a new Robin Trower track, "One Go Round", for the lyrics and the spooky blues; and Jeff Buckley's version of "Satisfied Mind", although Dylan's would be good too. I'd like to also include a song I heard years ago about why there are no luggage racks on hearses, but I can’t find it anywhere.

J wants a singalong:

The song I want played at my funeral – Tough one: do I choose for me (I’m dead) or for the rest of you who have outlived me? Splitting the difference brings me to Jacob Collier’s "Little Blue". And I demand it be a singalong. (Because I’m such an awesome vocalist!)

More recently, I came across this article from the New Statesman, where people were asked to choose a photo from their childhood, and write about it. Another brilliant way to cultivate personal sharing of a type we rarely allow ourselves.