Music from my Childhood

[pegkerr]

I went out this week and bought four CDs, an odd mix but I know them all by heart: Peter Paul and Mary's Album and Moving and Jethro Tull's Songs from the Wood and WarChild.

I have my dad to thank for Peter Paul and Mary, who adored them, but we all listened to them. I would have snaggled several others if I had found them, and I will still look for them. The next one I want to get is In Concert, which was probably the one we listened to the most. There is a very important reference to Peter Paul and Mary in The Wild Swans: after Sean blows up at Elias in the bookstore and disappears, he is playing "Tiny Sparrow" in the middle of the night when they reconcile again; this is the day before Sean tells him he has AIDS. The lyrics were pretty spot on. (I never did get permission to quote them in full; they weren't traditional, although they sound like it, and I wasn't sure I wanted to interrupt the flow to print them in full. I'm still not sure whether that was a mistake or not.) I hope the girls will fall in love with them, too. I'll give them plenty of chance to do so. I did manage to get them hooked on Godspell.

I have my brother Chet to thank for Jethro Tull. He came home every afternoon from school when he was in high school, threw a hamburger under the broiler for an afternoon snack (he had the voracious appetite of a teenage boy) and he would listen to Chicago or Moody Blues or Jethro Tull while doing his homework--he had a lot of it; he was in all AP classes, like I would be when I got to high school myself. (My mother would take it as long as she could, but when she started cooking dinner, we would hear her exasperated admonition "Turn it down!" floating to us from the kitchen.) Chet particularly loved Aqualung and Thick as a Brick. Oddly enough, I don't think he was the one who bought Songs from the Wood; I think I bought that when I went to college (I still have it as an LP down in the basement somewhere). I started wanting to listen to Songs from the Woods again because I've been reading so much about Tolkien the last couple of years. I don't think Tolkien would have listened to Jethro Tull in a million years, and he probably would have thought the band unspeakably vulger, but Ian Anderson feels the same way Tolkien did about hating modernity and the preferability of the distant rural past. I think Tolkien would have loved the title track. It's one of the most hobbity songs I know.

What are some of the essential albums of your childhood that you just had to go out again to purchase as an adult?

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Nothing from my childhood, which was all 78s. Well, I take that back, kind of: my parents' record of "Mule Train" by Vaughn Monroe was probably a factor in my lifelong love of cowboy music, although I don't think I actually have that particular song by that artist.

From my teens, most of the early Kingston Trio stuff. I'm too lazy to go look up the original album titles, but I got most of the songs I wanted on the 4-disc set "The Capitol Years." I still need "South Coast" ("The lion still rules the barranca, and a man there is always alone") and "Guardo el Lobo" ("Riu, riu, chiu").

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I also like those Tull albums a lot.

B

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Most of the essential albums of my childhood are Beatles, with some Paul Simon and Don Henley tossed in. But the Mamas and the Papas too; the song "Dancing Bear" frequently gets played on repeat when I'm trying to write.

I have a Peter, Paul and Mary favorite, too: "Day is Done." That's the song I listen to whenever I really need to believe that the world can be made into a better place than it is.

(I sat next to Peter Yarrow on a plane once, or more accurately next to his wife while he slept in the window seat. She and I chatted up a storm; I only found out later who they were, which is perhaps just as well!)

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

Songs from the Wood is one of my favorites. As far as ones from my childhood, they fall into a couple of camps. Kingston Trio & Burl Ives and Flanders & Swann from my dad, and Queen's The Game from my brother. Oh, and things like Free To Be You and Me, which were mine but I never saw again....

[harpie84.livejournal.com]

Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed; a smattering of Beatles, the Mamas & Papas, Chicago and Simon & Garfunkel. And Led Zeppelin. Some of this is actually albums that I've kept over the years; a few are CDs that have been re-released and I just had to have them.

[redbird]

I love Songs from the Wood, though I think I was in my late teens by the time I found Tull.

Some Peter, Paul, and Mary in my childhood, though more Pete Seeger and Weavers and Paul Robeson. (And now I'm listening to Tull while I drink my morning tea--thank you.)

[kokopoko.livejournal.com]

I wasn't allowed to listen to music or the radio when I lived at home. I found music in college. But my dad did have original Beatles records hidden in the basement and I'd sneak them out and listen to them in high school.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

You weren't allowed to listen to music or radio??? Good heavens. I want to ask why, but I'm almost afraid to know.

[kokopoko.livejournal.com]

My mother thought rock music was evil. She liked country music but never had it on either. My dad gave me a decades old radio when I was in high school and I was forbidden to listen to rock music on it. I'd sneak it into my bed at night and try to get in a rock station.

[kristenj.livejournal.com]

Everything by Simon & Garfunkel. I got this from both of my parents. We used to have a pool table in the basement; I can vividly remember stacking the LPs on the turntable and laying under the pool table to listen and sing along.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My parents had an agreement that my dad was not to play Aqualung for me when I was small, because they knew I listened to lyrics and did not want to have to explain...um, the entire first half of the album, I think. (The angry theology was totally fine for discussion, but "Cross-Eyed Mary," for example, is not a song they wanted to explain to their 6-year-old.) Then I started playing the flute when I was 10, and Dad could no longer hold himself back. I was relieved to hear flute-playing that "isn't all nicey-nice twittery birds," as I described it at the time. We still had a few moments my mom didn't like with Tull lyrics: at 14, I solemnly explained to her that "Roll Yer Own" from Catfish Rising was about how much Ian Anderson liked burritos, but she knew full well I was yanking her chain. Also Dad got a death glare the first time she came home from work and heard me picking out the flute bits from Thick as a Brick.

My dad and I have nearly identical taste in music, and not just in the "he taught me"/nostalgia direction: he has liked almost all the new stuff I've played for him. So it's hard to say what I have from childhood nostalgia, because I got a lot of the stuff my dad and I listened to together as soon as I got a CD player. I should probably get a Gordon Lightfoot album out of childhood nostalgia, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough, Songs From The Wood was one of the essential albums of my young adulthood. :-) As a child, there's an Oingo Boingo album, also one of the early Yes albums. One by Manhattan Transfer. Beethoven's 5th.

[pameladean]

Peter, Paul, and Mary, definitely, all of it. Also the entire oevre of Simon and Garfunkel and all of Bob Dylan up to "John Wesley Harding," which I never cottoned to.

P.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes, we were heavily into Simon & Garfunkle, too.

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

The albums I miss most are audio recordings of stories, fairy tales and, in particular, a dramatic version of Treasure Island. I doubt they've ever been reissued, and the originals were given to cousins we've lost contact with. I used to stack them on the turntable and listen to them for hours on end, as enthralled the umpteenth time as the first.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes! We had a dramatic reenactment of Cinderella that was set to the music of Swan Lake. I adored it, and I'd give anything to be able to play it for my girls now. Alas, it is long gone, probably when my parents sold their home in Chicago.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I'm only familiar with Aqualung; now after reading the lyrics I may need to go buy Songs from the Wood. (Unfortunately, I see iTunes, my most instantly-gratifying source of music these days, doesn't have any Tull.) I do have PPM.

We didn't listen to music all that often in my childhood. I have Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music; the only other things I ought to get are Free to Be You and Me and a collection of Sesame Street songs.

But I do have the experience of buying music from someone else's childhood. The first time I heard Kenny Loggin's House at Pooh Corner I was in with my college roommate, the summer after freshman year. She was transfixed. I think they'd sung it at her summer camp and so hearing the song brought out vague, evocative back-of-the-head memories. That drew my attention to the lyrics and I fell in love with them. (I was just the right age for childhood nostalgia, the same age Loggins was when he wrote the song. I still love it, though.)

Do you remember the old Lip Quencher lipstick commercial in the late 1970s? That one set up echoes in my head til I finally found out what the song was. When I was two or three I used to love the Andy Williams show, and he sang Moon River at the end of every show.

[aome.livejournal.com]

Free to Be, You and Me, definitely. Also, Mozart's "Jupiter" and "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" which my father used to play a lot in his car. But none of us really listened to a lot of music as a child, so I don't have specific childhood associations other than the typical camp songs/nursery rhymes, etc, and a LOT of Polynesian music from my days with the dance troupe. And some of the more standard musicals - Sound of Music, Oklahoma, Brigadoon, etc. I did learn some PP&M, but didn't realize it was them until I was in college and my then-boyfriend was a huge fan. I love them, as well, and currently own a mix tape of PP&M favourites I gacked from his collection, plus "Lifelines". (I've been lucky enough to see them live three times, as well.) I really need to get some CDs at some point, though, before something happens to my tapes.

I used to own a tape of a woman reading a series of short stories called "The Little Green Dragon". I don't know who produced it, and I cannot find it anymore. But they were so cute!

[catmcroy.livejournal.com]

The entire Peter Paul and Mary catalogue
The entire Joan Baez
The entire Judy Collins
The entire Simon and Garfunkel

and

ABBA and the Beach Boys

My dad had some eclectic taste lol

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

My parents' music was Paul Simon, Indigo Girls, Stan Rogers. It's still comfort music to me. I got into the Beatles too, youngish, but was a fan independently of my parents.

[ambar.livejournal.com]

If you haven't experienced Jethro Tull's _Heavy Horses_, I highly recommend it.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

My childhood? If we define that as "pre-adolescence", then it's all Japanese music that was old when my mother was a child.

Jethro Tull, however, is the music of my sophomore year in high school, and my mad crush on Toby Smith, to whom I owe not only Jethro Tull and Iron Butterfly, but an understanding that the sort of coy "no means yes" games were stupid. He took me at my word, and went out with someone else who wasn't dumb enough to try silly games. I never said anything other than what I meant when asked about my level of interest again.

[mgs.livejournal.com]

Tom Lehr That was the Year that was (my parents had it on reel to reel tape), Flanders and Swan At the Drop of a Hat (the British Angel records version), Harry Belafonte's Calypso (his Man Smart/Woman Smarter is still the definitive version for me. Everyone else knows the Grateful dead version.)

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

I obsessed on In Concert as a teenager. Paul Stookey was the first person I ever saw in concert.

I had to have An Evening With John Denver, Elton John's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (along with all the other Classic Elton Albums), Paul McCartney's Wings at the Speed of Sound and Band on the Run, and Billy Joel's 52nd Street among countless others.

I love Jethro Tull. Their music (and much of Led Zep) evoke that Middle Ages Pagan myth stuff I loved before I ever knew Tolkien existed.