Let's Do the Time Warp

Having seen a couple of these posts around I started working on my post of the soundtrack of my life. Whew! What a chore, but a chore I thoroughly enjoyed. I've probably worked on this post off and on for about two weeks now trying to get it right. Music has been and continues to be a huge part of my life. I love music and always have. Music was always around as I was growing up, probably because Mom was a music teacher. I can't remember far enough back to remember not being able to play the piano because Mom started teaching me when I was only three because she got tired of me just pounding on the keys. Anyway, all of this to say that this post could probably include 100 more songs, but I had to stop somewhere. Believe it or not each and every one of the following songs represents something very important to me.

The first song I remember singing is this one, when I was really young, preschool age I know. Mom and another man were rehearsing for a performance in church. She was his accompanist as he sang You'll Never Walk Alone. I was enthralled with the song (and I remember being enthralled with the gorgeous voice the man had) and begged Mom to play it so I could sing it. So she did, many times, over and over, probably until she was sick of it.

Also, when I was little the Beatles were the big thing musically, even having their own Saturday morning cartoon. I remember Help! and A Hard Day's Night being my favorite Beatle songs then. I spent a lot of time then contemplating how a person could have a hard day's night. In case you don't remember the old Beatle cartoons (or, gasp, you're too young to have seen them) you can see one here.

Moving on to grade school, I spent a lot of the time riding the bus to and from school. The bus driver always kept the radio tuned to WLS which at that time played the top 40 hits. It was also during grade school that I got my first transistor radio which I also kept constantly on WLS. If you don't check out any of the other songs I've included here you've got to watch and listen to this one. When this song first came out I was too young to really understand it, but I liked it even then. Once I was older and understood it better I liked it even more. I heard it a lot on WLS.


Of course what young girl's childhood would have been complete without the Partridge Family? I particularly liked I Woke Up in Love This Morning. I really liked David Cassidy's hair, but I had a huge crush on Danny Bonaduce. I always did like the bad boys.

Junior high makes me think of Seasons in the Sun. That and Billy Don't Be a Hero, but I couldn't find a decent version of that one to link to. As you can probably tell by these choices, I was quite the angst-ridden pre-adolescent.

Then came high school. The late '70s with disco and bell bottoms and platform shoes and Farrah Fawcett hair and the biggest afros on people of all skintones. I will always remember David Soul singing Don't Give Up on Us Baby because that was the song playing when Jeff and I first started dating. Of course, what would that era have been without Abba singing Dancing Queen? I danced to that one many times. Bohemian Rhapsody always reminds me of my boyfriend Bob because he loved Queen and playing their music on the piano. He also played a lot of Elton John, but I don't remember him ever playing my favorite, Don't Go Breaking My Heart.

I spent a lot of time in high school sitting in my room reading, studying, listening to the radio, not WLS, but some other top 40 station where we had moved. Cats in the Cradle always reminds me of those Saturday afternoons sitting alone in my pink (VERY PINK) bedroom with the pink shag carpeting. Another song that evokes strong memories is Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Picture show. I went to see it at a midnight showing at the Varsity Theater in St. Louis with a group of classmates when we were in St. Louis for a high school journalism convention. Our teacher went with us to make sure we stayed out of trouble. Words cannot describe the look on his face when a joint was passed down our row in the theater. Unfortunately It was being passed from his end of the row so he refused it and wouldn't let us have it either.

When I graduated from high school I used most of the money I got for graduation presents and bought myself a stereo complete with an 8-track tape player. I was so proud of my purchase. The very first tape I bought was one by Rex Smith that included You Take My Breath Away. I had heard the song on a TV movie and was totalled enthralled with it and with him.

Away I went to college, 8-track tape player in tow, where I listened to the likes of My Sharona by the Knack, I Love Rock 'n' Roll by Joan Jett and the Black Hearts and Hold Me by Fleetwood Mac. How's that for an interesting cross section of early 80s music? Yes, it was also during college that I became an avid Dan Fogelberg fan, but I've posted so much of his music already I'll leave that one alone for this post.

After college, I found the joys of LPs again as 8-tracks became scarcer and scarcer. Two of my favorite LPs were the one from Lionel Richie with Dancing on the Ceiling on it and the one from Chicago with You're the Inspiration on it. Both those songs remind me of a particular guy from my Texas days.

After moving to California I remember hearing We Built This City a bazillion times on the radio when we lived in LA. It always makes me think of our little apartment on Wilshire out by Century City. The other song I remember strongly from this era is That's What Friends Are For. It was the first song I heard after learning of the Challenger disaster so it has always brought back memories of that tragedy for me.

Sadly enough, that pretty much ends the soundtrack of my life. After that, I moved away from music and got caught up more in TV, and talk radio, and the internet. So I'm afraid my music is kind of stuck in a time warp, but that is the music that defines me, that evokes strong memories and feelings in me.

Whew! I'm glad I finally finished this post. Whew!