Growing Up With Music

A few days ago I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s 1974 album ‘Sundown’ on cd, and it suddenly reminded me of my bedroom in Schenectady, NY when I was about 8 or 9 years old reading a Hardy Boy book with my parent’s stereo playing in the background.  I closed my eyes and I was there.  I could picture my bedroom near the top of the stairs that led down to the living room, my bed with the blue striped blanket, the thin green carpeting that I used to hide ‘Mad’ magazines under, the old brown tattered Hardy Boy book I was reading that was handed down from my dad when he was a kid, and the sound of ‘Sundown’ drifting up the stairs.  And actually, this Gordon Lightfoot cd I was just listening to was made from my parent’s original Gordon album that I listened to hundreds of times when I was a kid. 

I have a cd burner stereo component that allows me to burn albums to cd’s, so when my parents moved to California I took all of their albums as well as my albums and burned them onto cd.  I started with AC/DC and burned my way through to ZZ Top.  It took several years and I am still not done because I keep buying old used albums from our local record store that sells them for a buck apiece.  It’s cool listening to the cd of an album because you can still hear all the pops and hisses from the album…makes you think you are listening to an album.  I love albums and I miss the album era.  I have a few hundred of them stored in my basement, and as everyone says they sound more warm, natural and real than the cold hard compressed digital music of today’s world. 

Music was a very large part of life those early years growing up in my parent’s house.  My dad’s stereo components were housed in a big wooden cabinet that he made and had two large wooden floor speakers on either side.  It was the altar at which I worshipped for hours on end whenever I could.  In addition to the radio tuner, there was a mysterious reel-to-reel player that only my dad knew how to work.  There was also a cassette tape deck added in later years, but the key was always the cool turntable where you could stack about 10 albums or so on the post and it would play each album on one side, then you would lift the stack and flip them over and it would play all of the other sides.  I would sit on the rug in front of the stereo memorizing all of the words to all of the songs on the albums.  Mostly Beatles, but also Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Gordon Lightfoot, etc.

The Beatles were the most popular band in my parent’s house then, and in my house now.  Whenever I listen to the Beatles Anthology cd’s I always read the little accompanying booklet, and each snippet about each song as I listen to the song.  I always get sad when they get to the last song 'The End' where it says:  "No other group has delivered such an apt farewell as the Beatles."  Being born in 1966, I remember it being extremely traumatic for me in 2^nd grade when I overheard a teacher talking to another teacher about the Beatles no longer being around.  What?!  "Yeah, the Beatles broke up." I was told, not realizing that it had happened a couple years earlier.  I remember feeling incredibly sad that I was going to have to be the one to tell my parents.  So when I got home from school I solemnly took my mom aside, told her I had something to tell her, and then almost in tears said:  "Mom...the Beatles have broken up."  I expected her to start crying but instead she looked at my sympathetically and gently told me that they had been broken up for a couple of years...I was shocked and no less saddened.  It was hard to wrap my 6 year old head around the fact that they would not be making any more music together...it didn't make sense to me.

But what did make sense was vinyl in all its forms.  When I was really young I had a couple of albums, including a Beatles ‘Live At the Hollywood Bowl’ and a yellow-vinyl Elvis album that I remember in particular, but mostly I had 45’s.  I had a little blue plastic portable record player that I kept in my room to listen to them, but I could fold it up into a suitcase and drag it around and plug it in wherever I needed to listen to music.  The Beatles ‘Rocky Racoon’, and Peter, Paul & Mary’s ‘Puff The Magic Dragon’ are the two that I remember listening to the most.  Then when I was about 6 or 7 years old I got a total of $30 for my First Communion and I wanted a cassette tape recorder.  I do not know what they cost back then, but my dad told me $30 would cover it.  Then a few days later he came home from work and presented me with my new General Electric tape recorder!  It came with one purple 10-minute G.E. cassette, which I still have today pictured above.  I used to place the recorder mic in front of the stereo, record 1 or 2 of my favorite songs on each side, and then go listen to it outside in my tree-fort.  It was like magic being able to take the music out of the livingroom with me wherever I wanted. 

I moved to Wisconsin just before my 11^th birthday and the music followed.  My friends and I all collected 45’s and we had piles of them because they were only 98 cents apiece, but for my birthday and Christmas presents I would always ask for albums.  And if there was an album I really wanted I would save my allowance or paper-route money until I had the $5 or $6 needed, which was a LOT in the 1970’s.  Albums were big and exciting and I would look at the picture on the front and carefully pore over all of the details on the back reading every single word, as well as the album sleeve if it too had words or pictures.  And because each side was only about 20 minutes long, it was not like you would put it on and ignore it or walk away…you would sit there and listen to it for 20 minutes and then flip to the other side. 

It was an era when listening to music was more social…it was an actual activity that you would do with your friends.  You would sit and listen to an entire album…listening carefully to each song and talk about it and then put on another album and listen to that.  Depending on our age we may be doing something else while listening…like aged 5-10 we may be sorting our football cards while listening to the Beatles or K-Tel’s “Looney Tunes”, aged 10-15 playing ping pong while listening to Cheap Trick or Led Zeppelin, aged 15-20 smoking pot while listening to Pink Floyd or the Grateful Dead…but the main reason we were there was for the music. 

Like if my friend Gary got a new Rush album we would all go over to his house and sit in his room and listen to it several times over…or if I got a new Ozzy album my friends would come to my house and we would sit in my basement and just devour it.  My Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’ album still has all of the old ancient pot resin stains on it.  Remember sitting in your room with your friends cranking The Wall and using the fold out album to clean a bag of weed?  Watching the seeds roll down the center of the album into the mason jar FULL of seeds that you planned on planting some day.  I don’t know if music is like that these days as it seems like everyone just pops in the ear buds and listens to their IPods.  Not saying that’s good or bad, but ‘music’ was very different back then.  It was nice listening to that Gordon Lightfoot album and being transported back in time.