Music of My Time

I am feeling very nostalgic for the music that I grew up with. I don’t think rap is musically singing. I don’t particularly like the direction music is headed. Everyone sounds like they’re back in the 1950’s with the old mics that caused the sound to echo. This echo however is no accident, they use the echo to hide the fact that most of today’s artists can’t hold their notes properly. That’s not to say that I personally could sing any better even with an echo correction.

I long for the days that everyone had their own unique sound. I also long for the time when all genres of music were played on most radio stations. I remember that WHBQ radio station would play pop, blues, rock, Soul, Country and yes even some of the old standards from back before our day. I have called myself and others of my generation the Ed Sullivan generation and I must slightly expand on that statement. The Ed Sullivan show introduced us to all kinds of music not just rock, country or Motown but his show introduced us to Opera and even Broadway musicals with the cast of those musicals performing it. As a matter of fact a young teenage Monkee was in one of those Broadway casts, yes, Davy Jones from the Monkees was in one of the Broadway musicals that was on the Ed Sullivan show before he had ever even thought about joining a band called the Monkees. Now that I have established the fact that the band is called the Monkees,Renata Tibaldi, Joan Sutherland, Richard Tucker and Franco Corelli, just some of the great Opera stars that appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

I can still hear Davy Jones singing the song “I’d do anything”.

When there was something special at the Metropolitan Opera, Ed Sullivan would have the likes of,

Renata Tibaldi, Joan Sutherland, Richard Tucker and Franco Corelli, just some of the great Opera stars that appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

I guess it’s not really the bands themselves that I am nostalgic for but rather the happiness and the joy and, yes, even the adventure that music brought me. The rock stars that appeared on the Ed Sullivan show are just as unbelievable, Bill Haley and the Comets, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dave Clark Five, Elvis Presley, Jerry and the Pacemakers, Janis Joplin,

Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas, and of course many more artists than I can list that definitely deserve mentioning but I must at least name one group that made musical history by being on the Ed Sullivan show, none other than the Beatles. What more can I say about a group that changed our way of life.

With money from my first job I purchased a tape recorder “a cassette tape recorder”. The first cassette I purchased was Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple.however. My favorite album that I had of all times was Rare Earths Get Ready with the best drum solo ever. I have tried to find a recording of Rare Earth’s Get Ready that had that same drum solo. I don’t think it exists anymore. On some of them that drum solo isn’t the same and on others it has been shortened and doesn’t sound the same. I guess it could also be that an old man’s memory of what he heard back then was much better than it really was. I don’t want you to think that I was only into rock ‘n roll, folk music and Motown and soul, because I wasn’t. I listened to country and what I like to call clean jazz and New Orleans jazz that made reasonable musicality and melodic sense.

I also remember the first LP that I ever got for Christmas. I told my mother that I wanted After the Gold Rush by Neil Young and she came back to me after searching most of the department stores in Memphis at that time and she said she couldn’t find it. I told her there was a little record shop on the strip, “the Highland strip” near Memphis State University. She was very reluctant to go in there so she gave me the money and my father drove me there and I purchased the album, but she didn’t let me open it till Christmas day

I know you’re going to ask what made me so nostalgic for those times and, the truth is, I was watching CBS’s Sunday morning where they showed that the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art has a display now of all of the wonderful instruments that made those beautiful sounds into songs. Just as it took Masters to create the beautiful paintings in that museum it took Masters of those instruments to make those incredible memories come to life. Believe me I’ve picked up a guitar too and it’s not easy to make them sound beautiful and I must admit it’s extremely easy to make them sound horrible.

Everyone knows where they were at the most horrible times of our life and everyone knows where they were when they heard that special song or saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, 1964.

It’s the comfort that music brought us at the worst possible moments in our lives that is a testament not only to the music but to those that made the music. There are so many songs that remind us of the days of our lives as we struggled to become who we are. I am not proclaiming that music is spiritual because I don’t have to, the very basis of the Christian religion is the teachings of the Bible and it said in those sanctified pages “make a joyful noise unto the Lord”.

I know because I have listened to the beautiful noise that those artists made to the Lord that it was not only a blessing to Him but to us as well. We are coming to the age now where a lot of those artists are aging to the point that they are no longer making music and as I am getting older too, I understand that our capabilities are not what they once were. But I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that the music played in heaven is like those radio stations that used to play all kinds of music that we loved with endless music that we will hear when we enter our heavenly home. It will be some of the best sounds that angels have ever heard. We will miss those musical geniuses that have gone on before us and I can’t wait to hear the new songs and music they are making.

We grew up listening to the music of our time, we made friends and laughed and played to the music of our time, we fell in love with that special one with the music of our time, and I for one will be laid to rest with the music of our time.