Memories with their own Soundtracks

My week of October vacation started off pretty tense and difficult (we figured out how to deal with the issue at hand, albeit in a round-about way) and then by Thursday, I kicked into Getting Stuff Done in a big way — garden/yard work, laundry, writing, webstuff, and other things. Yesterday we took a much-needed day-trip over to the mainland hitting our three fave shopping haunts in Richmond: IKEA, Daiso, and T&T Markets.

Through all of it I haven’t had any inspiration to blog so thanks go to the most recent podcast at LoveHateThings, “Life as a Soundtrack,” for breaking my writer’s block. Even before I listened, I was transported back in time with my own memories of moments that were highlighted if not defined by music.

The first albums I got were two by Shaun Cassidy, followed by Andy Gibb, the Beach Boys, and the self-titled Kristy and Jimmy McNichol album which was filled with “rock and roll” cover songs and easy disco tunes like Go For It. I sang along with all of these as they played on my flimsy little record player in the basement. My musical taste was formed by watching Donny & Marie  and The Muppet Show (the first place I saw Alice Cooper but it also introduced me to Crystal Gayle and John Denver), oh, and my parents’ record collection — an odd assortment of ABBA, Boney M, Herb Alpert and the Tiajuana Brass and a huge swath of Time Life boxed recordings of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. All things considered, I think I did OK.

In the 80s  I started asking for my own music, music that was different, starting with The Who’s  Face Dances and Queen’s The Game — I clearly remember sitting in our living room, on the red shag carpet, with my big stereo headphones strung out of the giant chest-freezer sized console stereo, blasting Another One Bites the Dust and You Better You Bet, trying to kick-start my pre-teen rebellion. Years later, watching CSI openers, I was transported back to that console and red shag.

Just a couple of years later, I had my own Walkman — only it wasn’t a real Sony Walkman but some sort of store-brand knock-off the size of a trade paperback and with only three buttons, play, stop and fast-forward. Junior High started in the era of the cassette tape and in a short time I managed to gather a box full of music. The first cassette I bought was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I really can’t listen to most of his music now but around Halloween, I’m guaranteed to hear that title track a few times and how can I not love Vincent Price? Besides which, when I hear it, I am slung back to my early teens, a time I often wandered around exploring my neighbourhood on my own. I remember most distinctly one weekend afternoon, wandering along Colquitz Creek not far from my house. They’d recently designated it a park, cleaned up the creek (and renamed it a river) and added chip-trails. It was on one of these chip trails that I stood as I heard that song for the first time and needed to hear it again. I ejected the tape, flipped it over, and fast-forwarded to the point I thought it should start, ejected it, flipped it and played it again. And again. Sat down and listened a few more times while sitting at the edge of a burbling creek, watching dragonflies zip between the cat-tails on the banks.

After that a lot of the music gets mixed up with relationships, school dances, early MuchMusic veejays, and so on, but the memories are no less vivid. My life most definitely is full of soundtrack moments but the early ones are easier to isolate.