Saturday, June 19, 2010
5:08 AM
Some of My Faves
Some of the most memorable 45's from my childhood. I remember seeing all of them in my record stack, just like it was yesterday that I sat in my room, listening to them on my little blue record player.
When I was a preschooler, there were a lot of Beatles hits on the radio but my hands-down favorite was this one. When you really think about it, the song was, lyrically speaking, written at age level:Oh yeah I'll tell you somethin'
I think you'll understand
And I'll say that somethin'
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your ha-a-a-a-aaand
I wanna hold your hand
So you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around
That's what it's all about.
But I digress. Again.
My cousin, Pat, forgot and left our first copy of this song in the back dashboard of her mom's car. The sun melted it quite nicely. We eventually replaced it though and that copy lived to experience about a million spins before cassette tapes and Yoko Ono rendered it obsolete. : )
Daydream Believer by the Monkees was the very first record I ever bought for myself, which means it was the very first record that I could put my name on because it was really, truly mine. I bought it with money I received for my 6th birthday. I had been wanting the record for weeks and had memorized what the label looked like so I could check every time we visited Ben Franklin's to make sure they didn't sell out before my special day arrived and I would be able to buy a copy of my own. I guess that's why that red and white Colgems label is still so vivid in my mind. My birthday fell on a Saturday that year so my mom took me downtown bright and early to get my record and spend my other gift money. I got other more expensive presents that day but I'm not sure I loved any of them more than I loved my new Monkees record. DB was my favorite song that year and I wore it out playing it over and over in the months and years afterwards. Besides, I was also madly in love with Davy Jones so I had to have the record because he was, without a doubt, singing that song to me. lol
Indian Lake by the Cowsills actually belonged to my brother but we lived in a fairly small house and he played his music loud so whether I wanted to or not, I listened to whatever he listened to. This is one that I came to love a lot. It takes me back to preschool summers in our house on Madison, when my mom was young and healthy, I was free of school-related self-esteem issues, and the days were ours to breathe in with abandon. The lyrics are kind of silly and the song structure is rather rudimentary but it's very catchy just the same and I can still listen to it over and over when I'm in the mood to just get lost in a song that I don't feel compelled to over analyze. I'm a trained musician but you know, sometimes the fact that a song brings you unexplainable joy is really enough.
We've already discussed the obsession that my best friend Reena and I had with Donny Osmond so I won't go into that whole background again. (You're welcome) But I would be remiss if I did not mention that Puppy Love was my all-time favorite D.O. song and every girl in my class dreamed of being the girl in the story. lol
In my 5th grade year, we had an unusual amount of extra cold, sometimes snowy weather which dictated that the schools hold indoor recess more often than they normally would. Mrs. LeFlore, our homeroom teacher, allowed us to play records during recess to pass the time away, something we loved to do. We all brought our favorite 45's and we had a great time listening to them, dancing, and singing along. Those times were fun, but largely uneventful. That is, except for when Puppy Love was spun. lol
Oh my, did that song ever bring out the drama queen/trying to grow up way too fast/girlfriend wannabe in all of the girls in my 5th grade class! We would sing that song with conVICTION, now! Let me tell you. And sometimes, we'd get so caught up in the pretend drama that we'd even squeeze out a tear or two. LOLOL Yeah. We were THOSE kind of girls. But don't judge us too quickly. From the beginning of time, ALL girls have been "those" kind of girls. Well, except for Reena, who dearly loved the song but just didn't have it in her to get all weepy over a make-believe love affair. That just wasn't her style. She has always been way too rational and mature for her own good. LOL
I also used to sing along to this song in my bedroom and when I did, I would pretend that Donny and I, who were dating (for REALZ, ya'll), wrote the song as a testament and plea to our parents who just didn't understand that in spite of our young age, we were deeply, passionately in love and destined to wed one day. In my retarded fantasy, I was also a famous singer, and Donny, as well as both sets of parents were in the audience watching my performance. He and I cried as I sang this song as an emotional statement to our folks who just didn't understand. At the end of each performance, Donny would leave his seat, come up on the stage, give me a passionate kiss, and then put his arms around me as we both turned to face our parents, all of whom were, by this time, offering a tearful, "now-we-get-it-and-you-have-our-blessing" standing ovation.
Oh, it was quite the dramz, my friends. Quite the dramz.