I’m sitting in a
café in Fitzroy, and a beautiful song has just come onto the sound-system. I'm jealous I didn’t write it, but also happy someone else did (see previous post ‘I hate you, Regina
Spector'). I don’t know who it is,
but if there was a soundtrack to my life, I’d like for it to be in the mix.
I write music and
play it. I also sing it, dance to it and generally enjoy it’s being
around. Like most people, I
associate bands, songs and albums with the people and events that have populated my
life. Like any good soundtrack, they have enhanced these experiences and
relationships.
And they are
mostly folk-pop (kidding… maybe).
Since I was very
little, the soundtrack to my life has been quite nice. I can remember watching my anonymous
mother Susan dancing around our lounge-room to Paul Kelly’s ‘From Little Things
Big Things Grow’ (there were many large and repetitive arm movements involved).
I knew dinner was ready when ‘Passionate Kisses’ by Mary Chapin Carpenter came
on the stereo (a great dinner song, I swear).
To me, home sounds like Paul Kelly, Bob Dylan, The
Beach Boys and The Indigo Girls. Family holidays sound like Crowded House and Things of Stone &
Wood. Holidays with friends sound like Paul Simon, Flight of the Concords, and the Big M ad (“Amy
was a girl on the side of the road, I picked her up and away we go, I 'm
leaving home without you I know…”). Trips overseas sound like Bon Iver. Ex-boyfriends sounded like Ball Park Music, Laura
Marling and Vince Jones. High
school sounded like
Harvey Danger, Blink 182 and Something for Kate (maybe just a smidge of cheeky
Hanson for good measure).
My liking of nice music (please ignore earlier Hanson reference) (…actually stuff it, they
were awesome - you know it and I know it) was largely influenced by my anonymous
father (my mother’s only record being the Beaches soundtrack). He regularly
sang to my two sisters and I at bedtime, in a vocal style that I thought was purely
‘Dad’ until I released it was mostly ‘Neil Young’. Our favourite lullabies were
James Taylor’s ‘Sweet Baby James’, Jefferson Starship’s ‘The Baby Tree’,
Donavan’s ‘Circus of Sour’. And strangely enough, ‘Big Ted’s Dead’ by The
Incredible String Band. It wasn’t until I got a little older that I realised
that these were interesting choices of lullaby. My sister even had a Big Ted. Must’ve been tough to sleep
after that…
He also played
guitar (though mostly this was limited to The Beatles’ ‘Rocky Raccoon’), which
I thought was pretty darned-freakin’ cool until the 'my-dad’s-a-rock-hero' illusion was recently damaged when, while “jamming” (and I use this term so so loosely), he shared with me his theory that all
songs are made up of just two chords: G and C.
They are not.
But apparently
Rocky Raccoon is.
I was surprised,
in 2005, to find out that my father was a music-bully (MB). I was visiting his
brothers and sisters in the US when they decided it was the perfect time to
tell me about this One story
(told with not-just-trace amounts of real bitterness) involved him
chasing his younger sibling with a chair, threatening her safety should she
attempt touch any of his records, with particular emphasis on his Bob Dylan
collection.
I can relate.
My relationship
with music, particularly CDs (I know I know… ‘streaming’, ‘internet’,
whatever) is quite emotionally
charged (though perhaps not ‘chair-wielding’ charged). Many of the bands and
CDs that I have mentioned throughout this post are ones that I now own, simply
because home doesn’t seem like home without them. And so I feel pretty lucky
that home was filled with such great music.
But then again,
quality is in the eye of the be-listener.
…because no matter how
hard I try not to, I freakin’ love Taylor Swift. Freakin’ love her.
She can be in my
soundtrack for sure.
Passionate
Kisses, Mary Chapin Carpenter
Private
Helicopter, Harvey Danger
Circus of
Sour, Donavan
Rocky Raccoon,
The Beatles
No comments:
Post a Comment