Music and Maturity

When I was a kid, I had this idea that being grown up was marked by two things: paperback books that were small--you know, that grown up book format, not the oversized Children's style paperback--and owning a record collection. I really aspired to these things. When the scholastic book order came one year, maybe when I was in seventh grade or so, one of the books looked exactly like a grown-up novel, and I can clearly remember sitting on the front step at home, reading and just dying to have someone notice that I had my nose in a book that was clearly not for kids.

Music was kind of like that to me. My older siblings had record collections, and I remember a house filled with music growing up: Joan Baez, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, The Beatles. And then there were my brothers, Chris and David, who formed a series of bands that practiced in our basement, amplified music rattling the pictures on the walls. Owning my own music seemed like a clear way to identify myself as grown up and cool. I started with 45's, and my very first one was "Good Morning Starshine" by Oliver, circa 1969. I would have been ten or eleven when I made that momentous purchase, and I remember playing the thing over and over again. My first album was The Monkees by the group of the same name. Yes, I was deeply and truly in love with Davy Jones, and I loved that album nearly as much, until my brother, David, was reading the liner notes one day and propped the whole album, record and all, against a heat vent on the wall beside the couch. By the time I found it, the album was warped. I was crushed, but I never replaced it. I just moved on to James Taylor and Jim Croce and Gordon Lightfoot and Harry Chapin and Elton John and every other version of a singer/songwriter I could find. In 1978, I was in my parents' car, driving to class one day, when I tuned in to a station from London, Ontario, just across the lake, and I heard a song called "Wondering Where the Lions Are," and I was addicted. Bruce Cockburn has been one of my number one favorites since that day thirty plus years. I like to refer to him as my second husband. Its just a matter of time until he finds me and proposes. Have a listen:
ago.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4FEn-ZKdDg

I received an Amazon gift card for Christmas, and I bought myself some new music that I've fallen in love with this week. I was driving home from Christmas in Erie, and I tuned into the fabulous World Cafe, just in time to hear an interview with a group called The Decemberists, an indie folk-rock band from Oregon. They played two songs, and I bought the album as soon as I got home. It's one of my new things for January. decemberists.com/

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad