Older than dyrt
Sep. 9th, 2005 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaThe Friday Five is all about music! Sounds good (pun intended), for we just got finished watching the Concert for the Gulf Coast (we ran it back on the TiVo and rewatched several performances) and enjoyed that immensely. Man, some of my old favorite performers are olde, too.
Oy, I am older than dirt. Yet not quite as old as my mother, who remembers listening to "Little Orphan Annie" and "Inner Sanctum" on the radio! And Fireside Chats by the only president she knew in childhood, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1) What was the first song you remember hearing and enjoying on the radio?
Okay, well, I remember a particular summer, probably 1965 or 1966, when I was in a convertible with several of my cousins and they had KLIF-AM (the big top 40 station in Dallas) on the radio, and Herman's Hermits was singing their NEW RELEASE, "I'm Henry VIII, I Am," and "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter." Around that same time, my dad got a transistor radio (everybody was getting one! amazing, the size of a cigarette pack!!), and I remember hearing Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walking." All of the kids in the neighborhood got those white vinyl cropped boots with the white tassel and the zipper up the back starting at the heel and marched around doing that song. We had seen her on Dean Martin with the Golddiggers on TV! We got the boots at KMart, which had JUST opened in Houston that year!! Older than dirt, I tell you!! AM radio, indeed!
My first stereo (a teenage Christmas gift to replace all those tinny phonographs I had over the years) was an AM/FM tuner and stereo speakers that we plugged the record player into. At that time, KNUS-FM was the pop/top 40 station, and KZEW (The Zoo) was the album rock station. That year, probably around 1971 or thereabouts, "Band on the Run" by Paul McCartney and Wings was popular, and I think it was the first song we tuned that setup in to.
I'll bet y'all don't even remember those little yellow things that you popped into the center of the 45RPM single so you could play it on the record changer's skinny spindle. . . oh, never mind.
2) If you could only listen to five CDs for a year, which five would they be? (Boxed sets can count as one CD. Sigh.)
Well, I don't know what I'd pick. It depends on my mood. I can tell you what has been sitting in our 5-disc CD changer (one of the first Sony models) for some time:
Vince Guaraldi, "A Charlie Brown Christmas"
Bobby Darin, "Swingin' the Standards"
Paul Simon, "There Goes Rhymin' Simon"
"The Great Concerto Elvira Madigan and Other Timeless Classics," which has a rendition of the Mozart Piano Concerto #21 played by Uchida with a REALLY great cadenza that I haven't heard elsewhere, as well as Beethoven's Sonata in C#min ("Moonlight") played by someone else I can't remember
Peter, Paul, and Mary, "In The Wind"
The classical CD is the most recent insertion in the player; I just recently swapped out a mix CD that kicks off with Floyd Cramer ("San Antonio Rose") and has a bunch of random other stuff including Doc Watson, Patsy Cline, R. E. M., and Neil Young. I now have the mix CD in the van.
3) What was your favorite year, music-wise?
Some wag who did the meme before I did it named 1750. I think he was citing Bach, but I think his timeline was messed up (I could look it up, but I'm thinking J. S. Bach is the 1600s, and Mozart is there by 1765.)
For general listening, though, I prefer the classic rock years and the Big Band era. I can listen to Big Band-era stuff for hours. And I consider classic rock to have begun around the time of the British Invasion/the Beatles and ended in the mid-1980s. Let's say from 1964 with "Twist and Shout"/"I Want to Hold Your Hand"/"Love Me Do" to late 1985 or so.
4) If you could witness one historical music event through all time, what would you pick, and why?
Oh, Woodstock, for sure. Summer of Love and Peace. People didn't feel the need to conform and weren't materialistic. At least it's pretty to think so. And of course who wants to miss Hendrix playing the national anthem with his teeth?!
Though the idea of watching the opening night of "Cosi Fan Tutti" at the opera house in Salzburg or Vienna, whichever one it was, holds appeal.
5) Do you have a song that never fails to cheer you up? What is it and why does it do that for you?
Kiss, "Rock and Roll All Night." Ha! You drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy.
There are a number of songs that can do this for me, but that one is pretty irresistible for anyone who came through high school in the mid-1970s.
Oy, I am older than dirt. Yet not quite as old as my mother, who remembers listening to "Little Orphan Annie" and "Inner Sanctum" on the radio! And Fireside Chats by the only president she knew in childhood, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1) What was the first song you remember hearing and enjoying on the radio?
Okay, well, I remember a particular summer, probably 1965 or 1966, when I was in a convertible with several of my cousins and they had KLIF-AM (the big top 40 station in Dallas) on the radio, and Herman's Hermits was singing their NEW RELEASE, "I'm Henry VIII, I Am," and "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter." Around that same time, my dad got a transistor radio (everybody was getting one! amazing, the size of a cigarette pack!!), and I remember hearing Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walking." All of the kids in the neighborhood got those white vinyl cropped boots with the white tassel and the zipper up the back starting at the heel and marched around doing that song. We had seen her on Dean Martin with the Golddiggers on TV! We got the boots at KMart, which had JUST opened in Houston that year!! Older than dirt, I tell you!! AM radio, indeed!
My first stereo (a teenage Christmas gift to replace all those tinny phonographs I had over the years) was an AM/FM tuner and stereo speakers that we plugged the record player into. At that time, KNUS-FM was the pop/top 40 station, and KZEW (The Zoo) was the album rock station. That year, probably around 1971 or thereabouts, "Band on the Run" by Paul McCartney and Wings was popular, and I think it was the first song we tuned that setup in to.
I'll bet y'all don't even remember those little yellow things that you popped into the center of the 45RPM single so you could play it on the record changer's skinny spindle. . . oh, never mind.
2) If you could only listen to five CDs for a year, which five would they be? (Boxed sets can count as one CD. Sigh.)
Well, I don't know what I'd pick. It depends on my mood. I can tell you what has been sitting in our 5-disc CD changer (one of the first Sony models) for some time:
Vince Guaraldi, "A Charlie Brown Christmas"
Bobby Darin, "Swingin' the Standards"
Paul Simon, "There Goes Rhymin' Simon"
"The Great Concerto Elvira Madigan and Other Timeless Classics," which has a rendition of the Mozart Piano Concerto #21 played by Uchida with a REALLY great cadenza that I haven't heard elsewhere, as well as Beethoven's Sonata in C#min ("Moonlight") played by someone else I can't remember
Peter, Paul, and Mary, "In The Wind"
The classical CD is the most recent insertion in the player; I just recently swapped out a mix CD that kicks off with Floyd Cramer ("San Antonio Rose") and has a bunch of random other stuff including Doc Watson, Patsy Cline, R. E. M., and Neil Young. I now have the mix CD in the van.
3) What was your favorite year, music-wise?
Some wag who did the meme before I did it named 1750. I think he was citing Bach, but I think his timeline was messed up (I could look it up, but I'm thinking J. S. Bach is the 1600s, and Mozart is there by 1765.)
For general listening, though, I prefer the classic rock years and the Big Band era. I can listen to Big Band-era stuff for hours. And I consider classic rock to have begun around the time of the British Invasion/the Beatles and ended in the mid-1980s. Let's say from 1964 with "Twist and Shout"/"I Want to Hold Your Hand"/"Love Me Do" to late 1985 or so.
4) If you could witness one historical music event through all time, what would you pick, and why?
Oh, Woodstock, for sure. Summer of Love and Peace. People didn't feel the need to conform and weren't materialistic. At least it's pretty to think so. And of course who wants to miss Hendrix playing the national anthem with his teeth?!
Though the idea of watching the opening night of "Cosi Fan Tutti" at the opera house in Salzburg or Vienna, whichever one it was, holds appeal.
5) Do you have a song that never fails to cheer you up? What is it and why does it do that for you?
Kiss, "Rock and Roll All Night." Ha! You drive us wild, we'll drive you crazy.
There are a number of songs that can do this for me, but that one is pretty irresistible for anyone who came through high school in the mid-1970s.
