Melody of a Life

Some time in nineteen seventy: I was born! Whether or not this was the beginning of a new decade or the end of an era depends on whom you're talking to. I was a rather cranky baby, and prone to being sick. I can't sugarcoat this; I read my mom's diary. Mom had to stay in the hospital for three days, where the night nurse would forget that Mom was still nursing me, and we'd both fall asleep in exhaustion. When Mom got back home (her brother drove us), Dad swooped me up, plopped in the rocking chair, and said she had dishes to do. Little paternal bleeper didn't do his dishes the whole time she was gone!! He has less than zero excuse; he was an Army cook! So Mom went from birth, to post partum with infection and recovery, to being driven home, to doing dishes. While Dad got a chance to cuddle me. He evolved, I swear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T3cfafQ8t0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0nc-hh9viQ

For real, my poor mom had to read me National Geographics to get me to zonk out. Even in utero. It got me to stop kicking her ribs and diaphragm.

My first music memories are of Dad's old reel-to-reel setup. I didn't know it at the time, but he'd use those songs to get Mom in the mood. (Which explains, of course, why when little ol' me would ask him to get out the reel-to-reel and play them, I was always denied. Ah, childhood innocence.) These remain some of my fave songs, but not for the same reason. I'll give you some my own "in the mood" songs later, in due time. But these were my parents' songs, and I was privileged to catch a glimpse of their love life and dating through the music they loved.

Maybe they should have used this one for a lullaby for me instead? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuiBqrcwxN0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NAU1MnOTvU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu26InG0bmE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofEdoggWr-s

Mom had such a crush on Bowser! Well, who didn't? I'd say "don't tell Dad," but honestly, we all knew. Especially when he'd flex those guns at the end of the show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbF1tBzOukk

(If this were a full-spectrum playlist, snippets from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and Disney's Sunday Night Movie Features would be added. Like Escape From Witch Mountain, The Cat From Outer Space, and The Apple Dumpling Gang. And TV show intros - Greatest Anerican Hero, Welcome Back Kotter. And Schoolhouse Rock. Moving right along...)

Mom finally got a record player. I had two Wonder Woman follow-along records with storybooks. We had a few Broadway vinyls - Grease and Xanadu spring to mind - but what caught my ear was when Mom bought a few very popular records and sat there, in front of the speaker, patiently extracting lyrics. It would take multiple listenings to get all the words. Mom was a smart teacher. Why not use song lyrics to teach vocabulary, grammar, syntax?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU_4-5RaxU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKDT58JRgWA

Oh, you gotta love early eighties videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAb8Q9X2xAc

Our local radio station played a mix of popular songs, but also threw in country crossover tunes. Did I know what I was singing? Nope, no clue. But would I try to belt them out in the back seat of the Dodge Dart anyway as we went on trips? You bet. I went for ballads, mostly. I think because I could hear the lyrics better. And as you can see, I went for songs that had a cohesive story. But I still have a list of My Lyrics Are Cooler, because yeah, my little ears that didn't grasp all concepts or words that I couldn't see, and I'd make up the ones I couldn't hear properly. Early talent? Perhaps, or just a search for comprehension. Love songs were far beyond me (yuck!), but I could kinda get heartbreak and fear and death. My daycare was my grandparents' farm and I had pets and lots of family; I saw those things play out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSZwEwl_1Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1e9p6J89rQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDR247fmhnc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ukE3jwmOcA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4RvskuFnPY

With those, I could dimly grasp the shape of love. What it should be, what it shouldn't be, and where some of the lines were. I loved ballads that told a story of love - denied, achieved, lost, longed for, familial, friendship, of an activity like dancing or running. Barry Manilow taught me more about love than I ever thought would happen through music, and I had such a huge crush on him. It took me till my late forties to understand the term demigender and how it applied to me. If you look at my star crushes over the years, you'll see a pattern. (Except David Hasselhoff. Well, there's always one you can't really explain. No, his songs will NOT show up on my playlist.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdDwm3QIwfg

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGAeI5KODLA

This one made me cry the first time I heard it, because it was so beautiful, and I thought I would never hear it again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BgNVW4T1eo

I am of the firm opinion that your teen years have the most effect in shaping your music tastes. Love songs, breakup songs, inspirational songs, it's all there in your teens. Emotions are fresh and young. Well, the hormones are new too. Freshly minted by glands saying, "Did we warn the being that we flipped the switch? No? Oh, well, too late now!"

I went a different route, because this is me we're talking about. As my mom says, I didn't come with a manual. I also gravitated towards the absurd. I was active in my church, and that translated into my music taste as well. Contemporary Christian music was making a comeback, and though it's mostly trailed off into mealy-mouthed nothingness IMO, I preferred the artists that had songs with a bite. Steve Taylor, Michael Card, and Rich Mullins remain my favorites to this day. The people who had the guts to call out the hypocrisy within the faith, not point fingers outside. (Michael W. Smith used to be a favorite. As a politician, he should have stuck to his singing career in his prime.) I will not bore you with a genre that most are completely uninterested in, but if you feel like a listen, check out the album Squint by Steve Taylor, the albums Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth and The World as Best as I Remember It Volume I by Rich Mullins, and Scandalon or The Final Word by Michael Card. Even when I don't completely agree with the message, these are songs that are clever and are designed to make you think - not just emotionally react to pressure.

And there are silly ones within the genre that still make me laugh to this day. "So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt?" by Keith Green, "Meltdown" by Steve Taylor, "Screendoor on a Submarine" by Rich Mullins, "American Fast Food" by Randy Stonehill.

Did I mention I love the absurd? I have loved Weird Al from the beginning, and he helped shape my sense of humor more than I will ever admit...er, outside this article. Right. Mandatory Fun is amazing, and "Word Crimes" should be deified. Fight you on that one. I have been privileged to catch his Ill-Advised Tour both times, and loved every second.

If you want a Weird Al break, here's his official channel on Youtube, of all his videos. It may be a permanent bookmark in my files:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcJjMnHoIBI&list=PLs47-_7pQr-hxk0_qmR3jURhGi5QEU0lH&index=1

Songs just celebrating music - those still tend to be my secret favorites. And those that are full of longing - for nostalgia, for a place that never was but you still remember it, for youth, for the thrill of going fast, for a pure state of being lost in the music. Retrospectives? You bet!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loLUXPVt4LY

This one's for Mom, who used to do this with hers, that she bought with her own money and smuggled home. No video for this one, you need to listen and imagine it yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGg3MMlIET4

But this one deserves the radio, for the homages to other videos!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K38xNqZvBJI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ln4Fass7Tw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQM9tChA1z4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RUIeX6UCT8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GfhQ0Dzfms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbtae2LKo8

This one just made my husband cry when I played it. It's one of his songs too:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7JVlpm0eRs

It took till college for me to fall in love, and it took years. I was scared; he was burned already with dysfunctional parents and an ex that dropped him hard. He was looking for someone to help him escape, and I was looking for a partner to have deep conversations in the middle of the night. There was many a morning we watched the sun rise over the campus. We brook stomped the rivulet, we talked in the strip of trees, I saved him from the monster snapping turtles in the lakes. He watched me raise orphaned goslings and ducklings. He saved me from myself and overthinking and petty politics. We took care of the bio department's boa constrictor, who tied us together with a very expectant look on her scaly face. She was very disappointed when we didn't oblige her. And we've adopted many love songs over the years. We made the campus radio station deejays sick with our dedications to each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhsnd7tAm1c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJzidZ1q7Uk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yscnV11bwhI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQFIQwfxja4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTUhnIY3oRM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL12z7vHWn0

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

One of the defining pieces of my life with my husband are our trips. I didn't realize till decades down the line that he's followed me because I see interesting things, I have interesting thoughts, I notice interesting stuff. We've driven each other to the brink of despair and madness and anger, because we know how to push each other's buttons. But we've also pulled each other back, at least so far. But the journey is so important, not just the destination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Z7AUBLQ1A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IDxJwU2ZQY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVzY9QP1u4s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cBsnopTVmo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zkjQVh5KmQ

As you've seen, I've segued from decade to theme. Lives are like that - you start out in chunks of years-of-ten, and then the years accumulate. Do those "years come around, like buzzards on a kill," as Steve Taylor so eloquently sings? Or do they touch you lightly? After the age of thirty, if Life doesn't try its best to crush you, you're lucky. I'm starting my sixth decade, and though my hair hasn't turned gray yet, I'm approaching the redhead phase, soon to be followed by "dyspeptic skunk" phase, where the white streak will start crosswise and take over my head sideways. Because genetics. I've had my share of heartbreak and despair along the way. Health issues, money issues, faithless friends and narcissistic types stealing my time, energy, emotional bandwidth. I won't share my heartbreak file, because right now I'm dealing with a lot of friends who are going through some serious stercum. Love lost, divorces, child abuse, death of significant others. It hurts, and I've worn an electronic groove in some of the tracks. You don't need that right now. When we're really in the dumps, my husband and I look to Broadway tunes. Spamalot, Hairspray, Something Rotten, Chess, Big River, Newsies, Cats, Les Mis, Civil War, Rent, and so many more. My first birthday present to him was taking him to see Les Mis in Philly on tour. He cried when characters died, and I cried when the other characters would sing about the deaths. Still do. The music keeps us grounded till we can find our way again.

And now? Ed Sheeran can do no wrong in my book. He had me at "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill." His new album should be on its way as I type. Others have caught my ear, so I'll leave you with three of the newer songs I listen to often. Because I'm also a sucker for an awesome dancing beat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8aRJ6-Kmpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KBFD0aoZy8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH1RNk8954Q

You're not dancing on your own!