Music from high school
I still prefer to listen to the music that I grew up with. I listen and re-listen to all the tunes I loved in high school. That’s true of everyone. Certainly, my parents and their parents before them always preferred ‘their’ music, the music that was popular among their generation, the music that shaped them. Their own parents, in turn, denounce the depravity of the young, or the depravity of their tastes, or the depravity of the culture that dared to produce such cacophonic sounds. My parents grew up listening to a young Frank Sinatra and his peers. Rather than blaming them for their perversity, I just tolerate it.
Now, I certainly do listen to today’s new music. But I definitely prefer what I liked as a teenager and young adult. I was a Beatlemaniac. Several years after the Fab Four broke up, I absorbed their albums and their lyrics like a sponge. Even today I can remember and sing the lyrics to almost every Beatles’ release. That’s a measure of my gravity. I listened to other bands of my time as well and I was struck both by individual songs as well as entire albums. If was asked to name one single song that dominates my memory of youth it would have to be the1981 “Tainted Love / Where did our love go?” extended mix cover by the British Duo Soft Cell. Critically speaking, it’s synthesizer gay disco music, not the rock ‘n roll I usually advocate. However, it’s a powerful performance, and when you add it to the 1981 context of my life … well, it reigns supreme. More than any other song, it’s the one that I’d turn up the radio volume for in the car and sing along.
When there is too much to feel, it is better to sing.
These songs and albums instantly recall to mind faces, places, times, odours and ambience. “Instant Karma” by John Lennon, for example, instantly recalls Grade 11 History 301 with Mr. Patton, and my classmate, Vicky B. “Should I Stay or Should I Go” summons the ghost of John D. George Harrison’s “Blow Away” recalls an autumn Saturday afternoon with the smell of Mom cooking chilli sauce in the kitchen. Pete Shelley’s entire “Homo Sapiens” album recalls the worst moment of my life, and following close behind it, Soft Cell cemented the association in my memory for all time.
If I was asked to name the single most memorable album from my youth, it would certainly be the 1973 soundtrack to Norman Jewison’s film adaptation of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” starring Ted Neeley, Carl Anderson and Yvonne Elliman.
Why is music so important to people - to young people especially? Because when there is too much to feel, it is better to sing.
Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go? Extended mix (Soft Cell)
The entire Beatles discography
Heaven On Their Minds (Jesus Christ Superstar)
Bat Out of Hell (Meat Loaf)
Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen)
Solitary Man (Neil Diamond)
Yesterday’s Not Here (Pete Shelley)
The Voice (Moody Blues)
Take It On the Run (REO Speedwagon)
Instant Karma (John Lennon)
You’re So Vain (Carly Simon)
It Ain’t Me Babe (Bob Dylan)
I Wanna Be Free (The Monkees)
Stand Tall (Burton Cummings)
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot)
Time Warp (Rocky Horror)
Takin’ Care of Business (BTO)
Trouble (Cat Stevens)
Angie (Rolling Stones)
Solitary Man (Neil Diamond)
Diamond Smiles (The Boomtown Rats)
Time (Pink Floyd)
Bastille Day (Rush)
My Sharona (The Knack)
Every Breath You Take (The Police)
Anarchy in the UK (The Sex Pistols)
Love Reign O’er Me (The Who)
I Want You to Want Me (Cheap Trick)
Dust in the Wind (Kansas)
More Than a Feeling (Boston)
Blow Away (George Harrison)
Don’t You Forget About Me (Simple Minds)
We are the Champions (Queen)
Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits)
Leather and Lace (Stevie Knicks and Don Henley)
Should I Stay or Should I Go? (The Clash)
Here Comes the Rain Again (Eurythmics)
The Boys of Summer (Don Henley)
Quand on n’a que l’amour (Jacques Brel)
Ne me quitte pas (Jacques Brel)
Je t’aime (Serge Gainsbourg)