For as long as I can remember, music has been an integral part of my life. Two other posts in this space (here and here) offer some background. Because I’m also a product of the 1960s, there’s a certain genre of music that shaped my life just as it shaped the lives of most in my baby-boomer generation.
One of the things I love about YouTube is the availability of so many tunes from the 60s era. Somewhere in storage, we have an ancient record player/changer as well as a stack of long-play albums that we probably haven’t played in at least twenty years … probably longer! We’re unlikely to ever play the albums again (assuming the record player actually still worked) but disposing of the records won’t happen either. (Feel sorry for our heirs!)
But the music is still there floating around in our brains. My Beloved has an awesome knack of pulling out lyrics to one song or another that I had totally forgotten! (Though he’s not even a year older than me, he got an earlier start listening to pop music – while I was distracted by classical and church music.)
My youthful exposure to pop music was limited. When The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show (a Sunday night over fifty years ago), I was in church. In school the next day, all my girlfriends were absolutely crazy after having witnessed (via their small television screens) the beginning of the so-called British Invasion.
No matter my limited exposure … the music of my time permeated my experience. There are still certain tunes (all these years later) that draw me back to a certain place or to wondering about certain people. The light verse below came about as I began thinking about songs I loved from the 60s.
This was definitely a “walk down memory lane.” I’ve italicized the titles of songs I used. And just in case someone else is nostalgic as I am, after the poem, I’ve placed links to each of the songs. (I did fudge a little bit in the poem. The Righteous Brothers’ song was actually Unchained Melody, singular instead of plural and Neil Sedaka’s song was actually titled Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen.) Enjoy!
• Be My Baby
• Dancin’ In The Streets
• Unchained Melody
• Mack the Knife
• Hurt So Bad
• Where or When
• When I Fall In Love
• The Way You Look Tonight
• She Loves You, Yeah, yeah, yeah!
• Please, Please Me
• Love Me Do
• Yesterday
• P.S. I Love You
• Good Vibrations
• California Dreamin’
• Cherish
• Summer In The City
• Sweet Sixteen
Love it! We still have a record player that we USE to listen to RECORDS, especially at Christmas. My daughters have all been indoctrinated in the glory of the Beatles, Motown, the Beach Boys, The Mamas and The Papas, all the good ones. Erin has her own turntable with her own collection of albums found at antique stores and flea markets. We don’t have a working CD player at the moment, although I have joined the iPod crowd with a collection of oldies on mine for dancing while I do laundry and make beds.
You’re amazing. To have passed down the 60s music to your girls is a great idea … that we should have emulated!! Maybe they’ll take it into the next generation!