The Playlist

James Taylor and me circa 1970

I’m listening to my Spotify “starred” playlist on shuffle through a bluetooth speaker propped on my kitchen counter. This is all thanks to my son, Zach, who got me an ad free premium membership and the speaker last year for my birthday and I’ve been hooked ever since. It was a little bit of a learning curve for this old girl who’s just figuring out her IPOD, but I’ve enjoyed being able to find all the old music I used to listen to as a kid as well as a good deal of new stuff that really is quite good. I know I’m betraying my generation by saying this, but there is some pretty brilliant music that was made after 1975 and I’m fortunate to be in touch with younger people, like Zach, who point me in the direction of stuff that appeals to me.

I don’t remember a time in my life when there wasn’t music. Starting with my crazy grandfather playing Beethoven symphonies loudly on his RCA console stereo when we visited, to my very young parents introducing us to vanilla early 60’s music, like Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checkers. Yes, I grew up on songs like “Swingin’ School” and “Wild One,” as well as “Twist Again” and “Ballin’ the Jack.” My parents also listened to Barbra Steisand and I learned to comically lipsinc to “People” and “Don’t Rain On My Parade” in an effort to lift the spirits of my often depressed Mom.

But the music we first took ownership of came from Broadway musicals which topped the charts in that era and while we loved “The Sound of Music,” “Oklahoma,” and “My Fair Lady,” our favorite musical was “Oliver!” and we listened to the Lionel Bart version repeatedly until we learned every line of every song. We even invited neighbors to an evening of “The Parkwood Summer Theatre” which featured my sister and I, the Franks, the Creans, or basically anyone on the street who thought they could sing and dance. For fifteen cents we treated or annoyed them with our special renditions of “I’d Do Anything,” “Where is Love,” “As Long as He Needs Me” and Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walking” performed by my sister, Terri, who I don’t think sang as much as wore really cool boots. The money we made (I think $3.15, we also sold popcorn) was donated to charity which assured that our picture got in the local paper. I don’t think anyone has this picture, or any evidence of our remarkable productions, as this was not the age of selfies and cameras on everyone phone or phones on every person, thank heaven for small favors.

Then came “The Monkees.” While teenagers listened to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, us younger kids (let’s say 10 and under) listened to this thrown together boy band (with grown men) that wasn’t assembled for its talent as much as its appeal to young girls. Apparently, I fell victim to this marketing ploy, watching their T.V. show religiously each week(sometimes twice when we would go to a neighbor’s to see it on Canadian T.V.) and buying albums which featured songs they mostly didn’t write with instruments they couldn’t really play and singing well enough to fool ten year olds into thinking they could sing.  I am still proud to say that I traded my “Meet the Beatles” album for “Meet The Monkees,” which says a lot about my musical taste then and now.

My real musical awakening came in 1968 when I was eleven and was asked to babysit at the home of my neighbors, Doug and Barbara Hunter, who were totally into the folk rock scene exploding at that time. While their darling little boys, Gerry and Geoffy slept, I was REQUIRED to listen to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel and anything that was played on the F.M. radio station then called “WYSL.” Upon their return, I was asked to critique the music they’d left me and I can only imagine how intelligent my eleven year old response to “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” must have sounded.

But they started me on a path, so by the time I hit twelve, I was sitting in my room listening to EVERYTHING, mostly folk music but also blues and southern rock, all of which felt like it was written specifically for and about me. Hearing “hello darkness my old friend,” and “how terribly strange to be seventy” has an even more haunting effect on me now than it did when I was still a young girl.

I’m skipping a lot here about how music has influenced me in every way imaginable but it’s hard to summarize how having music that spoke to me on an emotional level added to and in some ways saved my life. I honestly don’t know where I would have been without it and even now, some days, all it takes to get me out of a funk is hearing a really good song.

 So whether I’m bopping along to Robin Thicke and Pharell Williams singing “Blurred Lines,” or screaming along with John Mayer's “The Real World” or swirling into the romantic orchestration and lyrics in Judy Collins’s “Albatross,” the playlist takes me forward and takes me back, lifts me up and centers me. It’s the greatest thing ever to be able to connect and reconnect and know that no matter how old and feeble I get, the music will always be there for me.