“It’s not a Song till it touches your heart

It’s not a song till it tears you apart

After what’s left of what’s right and what’s wrong

Till it gets through to you

It’s not a song.”

(It’s Not A Song, Amy Grant 1985)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuIgy1NHaWk

            Music has this way of creeping up on you. It can play like it is the soundtrack to your life. We can travel with it if we care to pay attention. It seems we have no choice but to let the Music play. Almost every event in our lives is accompanied by this song or that song. When we look back, those songs play in our head, over and over again. We associate our lives with the euphony. There plays a symphony, a melody, a parade of note after note. Some love you like a love song, others scream like it’s a hard song. Some tell a story while some just linger, both ever associated with one thing after another. We collect each tune like comic books or silver spoons. Each song we encounter takes its place on the list. When we close our eyes and focus, we can hear them. Sometimes they flow in the background, a subtle reminder that, at times, the brain really is little more than a cerebral version of YouTube. Some are fierce, their volume is often more than you can handle. Just let that music play. As life goes on and our collection grows and grows, so too does the affiliation. I got into Radio Broadcasting for just that reason. Songs become our friend, we rely on them in the end. I think music is as important to our lives as the lessons that we learn. Everything has an underscore. Every note of music is more like God humming along than anything else.  

There’s no telling where love may appear

Something in my heart keeps saying

My someplace is here”

(Everybody Loves Somebody, Dean Martin 1964)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-2_OstpR5c

            I remember it like it was yesterday. The first time I actually recognized music for what it is stands out as one of my strongest memories of my childhood. My father and I were both working in the basement, it was just the two of us. I can see the turntable, sitting on a small table just inside the rec room door. I can see my father switch it on, reaching for an LP jacket and then he quickly removed the black disc from within. I thought to myself that it would make a grand Frisbee or a ninja weapon, whichever. He placed it on the playing pad, engaged a button or lever, then walked away as the song began to play. I can still hear that singing in my head. My father has always liked the older stuff. At the time, most of his listening pleasure was new stuff. Charlie Pride, Waylon Jennings and even Dean Martin all mixed in some cacophony, a blaze of scales and vocals and performance anxiety. As “Everybody Loves Somebody” played in the foreground, I first joined into the singing. This memory is strong within me. I have to admit that the idea of a Dean Martin song left me confused. No country backbeat, no mandolin or banjo reached out to greet me. I believe it was the Tin Pan Alley sound that most garnered my attention. It was an introduction to music outside my listening pleasure. I’d heard the sounds before but this time I noticed. My Mom only added to the mix. The Mamas and the Papas, John Denver and Judy Collins danced with George Jones, Charlie Rich and Dolly Parton. These variables well blended, leading me, I dare say, to appreciate much more than a mere artist. It was the sound that attracted me the most, although the lyrics always paced close behind in the running. When I stop to think about it, Dean Martin and that silly song helped to begin my musical definition. The song has become a touchstone of sorts, despite the fact that I just cannot stand it. It did me well at the time. Any future orchestrations would consist of the same concoctions, a potpourri of varying styles, and motifs and genre. My tastes are quite diverse, just as experience has taught them to be. It can be heartwarming, almost comforting, to see how it all began for me. It is better to just listen, to let the soundtrack lead the way. The music has a way of telling the story for you.

“High on a hill was a lonely goatherd

Lay Odl Lay Odl lay hee hoo

Loud was the voice of the lonely goatherd

Lay odl lay odl loo

Folks in a town that was quite remote heard

Lay odl lay odl lay hee hoo

Lusty and clear from the goatherd’s throat heard

Lay odl lay odl loo”

(The Lonely Goatherd, The Sound of Music Soundtrack 1965)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za7dAJtYXwo

            I have to admit that as a homosexual, I find it awkward to like something that is stereotypically gay. I don’t care if people know I am but sometimes I don’t necessarily want to be associated with certain behaviours. I am a little embarrassed to admit that my greatest musical influence came quickly after Deano. I discovered the LP mixed in with my mother’s musical treasures. The soundtrack to “The Sound of Music” remains one of my favourite exposures. Most of the mid-70s found me dancing around the living room thinking I was a “lonely goatherd.” I abducted it, took it to one of my hiding places, then signed the front cover so everybody knew. My Mom just let me have it. I still have it to this day, name and all. It hangs safely, on a wall, deep in the basement. I have another copy of the same LP, for my listening pleasure. The original is not in mint condition like the newer. Few things rarely are when you use them like I did. The music still plays well but the sleeves are withered and browned with age. The 1965 album has decayed right along with me. We share the same birth year, yet have other things in common.  I am also worn and ragged. My edges have softened and my spine has frayed and faltered. I look older and I sound older. Unfortunately, I would assume for some, I still work as well. I do not hang on the wall like my old friend does. I am not worth more now than I have ever been.  I am always affected. No matter how much times passes. No matter the melodies that came before and since, “my heart wants to sing every song it hears.”

“Do you get

What you’re hoping for

When you look behind you

There’s no open door

What are you hoping for?

Do you know?”

(Do You Know Where You’re Going To,Mahogany Soundtrack 1975)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DnxTvqOe-I

            If I wasn’t listening to Julie Andrews, I was listening to radio CFTR-AM out of Toronto, Canada. It was very much a Top 40 station, even before that term became all the rage in the 1980s. I would lie in bed listening for hours, absorbing each song as if it were my very own. I had never before purchased any form of music but when I first heard that song, I knew I had to have it. I had old 45s my brothers no longer used. I had LPs my mother or father had given me. I had a nice little collection for a 10 year old. When I initially engaged with the song, the sensitive child in me took over. I cried just a little when I heard her let it go. Still, I have never really appreciated the talents of Diana Ross. I’m not sure that in hindsight she had many to speak of. I was not a fan and, for the most part, I still am not. It was just the one song. With the theatrical release of Mahogany in 1975, came the radio release of “Do You Know Where You’re Going To,” in the fall of that year. It was a chilly and windy day when I grabbed my stash and headed out to find heaven. There was a loose baseboard at the top of the stairs. It moved just enough so that I could conceal my stash behind it, for no one else to know. I hid it in plain sight so no one else would see. One time, my Dad re-secured that loose board and I had to get a hammer for access to the $14.54 hidden just behind it. I would have stored my comic book collection there but there was no way they would fit. Even as a child, an exorbitant amount of my time and money was spent in the pursuit of comic book after comic book. The song itself motivated me out of the little otherland that I zoomed around in. I walked into the record shop, the one right behind the Dominion grocery store where my parents shopped. I walked in, spotted the section I was after, and I fell upon a new love.  I felt much glee, it was almost the same feeling I got when I discovered a new issue of the X-Men or the Avengers. I headed towards the checkout and had to stop myself from skipping. For the first time, I plopped down my cold hard cash for my very first 45. It was something other than a comic book (or candy). It was rare for me to spend my money on anything but comic books but when I first discovered the song, I was swept away. I remember how I felt such hope in the words and melody. It fit right in with my world at the time and seemed like destiny to my 10 year old reality. It was played over and over and not just up in my head. This was my first tactile experience with actually acquiring music. The 70 cents I paid seemed outlandish to me then. Music has evolved as the second-most collected item in my home. If only I could go back and reclaim my guiltless and unobstructed nature the way you can with music. We all know, deep down, we cannot. I still hear the music. I guess that underneath it all, she is still singing. I was quite innocent when the lady first sang the blues.               

“You got your passion

You got your pride

But don’t you know that

Only fools are satisfied?

Dream on

But don’t imagine they’ll all come true

When will you realize

Vienna waits for you?”

(Vienna, Billy Joel 1977)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wccRif2DaGs

            I assume that most people under 30 years of age don’t know what an 8-track player is. I will not get into the details other than to say they still exist in retro and the albums are like giant cartridges you almost have to slam into a large dock. My brother’s room was a bastion, a citadel of access. It was there that much of the music I craved dwelt. It was an otherland of LPs and 45s and the much exalted 8-track. It was a giant room of music to me, large and very forbidden. It was full of those songs which I could not afford. I used to wait until my brothers would leave then sneak through their collections, listening here and there or almost anywhere. I discovered the new album where it had not been before. I had no idea who the artist was or what they sounded like. I just liked the title of the piece, The Stranger. Although Billy Joel has become a staple in my musical universe, at the time I was a virgin. I listened to that album so many times that I can still sing every note, every word without pause. I bought a copy a few years later, on the standard cartridge that was so vogue in the 1980s and 90s. When I finally switched over to CDs in 1994, The Stranger was the first purchase I made.  It remains one of the top 5 albums of my all time. I still play it often, sometimes weekly, especially if I am heading off somewhere in the car. My favourite track from the work is “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.”  This was not always the case. I used to play and favour “Only the Good Die Young” but I lived with my family back then and my mother banished the song from being played in her home. I played it anyway, cursed from above as she screamed down the stairs at me. It was written as if the perfect accompaniment to my life, and still is to this day. There is something to be said about being able to go to “Vienna” anytime I wish or sitting in the front window of some place with Brenda and Eddy. There are times when I actually hear these songs like they are some music bed in my head. They play as I do. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, I rarely favoured any male artist as much.

“No one compares

You stand alone

To every record I own

Music to my heart, that’s what you are

A song that goes on and on”

( Love You Like A Love Song, Selena Gomez & The Scene 2011)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgT_us6AsDg

            My life has been like my taste in music. It is diverse, eclectic and, at times, very expensive. A mix of Tin Pan Alley, Country, Pop and Gospel, all rest with me still, even if only for a moment or two. My tastes have changed over the years. I no longer chase the meaning of a song, I just let it resonate with me. I have to admit, if not for radio I would barely venture outside my current tendencies. I find most forms of modern music nothing but noise with a catchy beat. In 2011, Selena Gomez released “Love You Like A Love Song.” I still love this ditty. It is the last contemporary hit that I even garnered with attention. It played like a theme song for me. So I sit with my old songs and some new songs and the songs I have carried with me. If I lined them all up, they would be one huge soundtrack to go along with my days and nights and everything in between. Along the way, my musical universe varied as I added new talent, as I discovered new songs. Artists like Lionel Ritchie come, then go. You try it, then you move past it and keep on running. Sometimes exposure shifts things, and it is like being given a new song. Everything evolved when I discovered Amy Grant.

http://www.tourisme-montreal.org/meetings/2016/01/28/songs/  

https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Loves-Somebody-Dean-Martin/dp/B00I5XHLE2

https://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=386178

http://images.45cat.com/diana-ross-theme-from-mahogany-do-you-know-where-youre-going-to-tamla-motown-2.jpg

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-stranger/158617952

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/File:Selena_Gomez_%26_The_Scene_-_Love_You_Like_A_Love_Song.jpg