Music in my Formative Years

I am taking a bit of Lone Grey Squirrel's last two blog concepts and using it for this blog. Hmmmm..come to think of it, the last two of my blogs and much of what I put on my side bar probably is a reflection of this already.

What is "this" ? It's how much music is a part of me. Music has always been very integral to who I am, and at various periods actually helped me to define what "who" is. Music: I have played it, listened to it, sung it, danced (in many dance forms) to it, and even written it.

Anyhow -

After reading LGS's blogs, I thought (actually it hit me right between the eyes) of two groups and two song that I can clearly attach to specifics of "me" in a five year period of my life, aka my "formative" years.

Blondie was one. The music is already blogged. She came into my life as I was trying to define myself in terms of my awakening, that 15-16 year old time of life. Listening to her made me believe that I could be like the stories she portrayed; that I could oooze sensuality. In fact a couple of here songs were my anthems for specific episodes of life.

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With the next group, when ever I hear their music I go back to a place of comfort. Believe it or not, it is the Doors.

My first memory of hearing them is from an event at 3 am one morning, in the middle of no-where. I was in the military reserves at the time, and we were nearing the end of our basic training phase and mid-way in completing our first foray into field training.

We had arrived at the location a couple of days previous and had done a bunch of mini-exercises to prepare for the next three days. We were all hyped-up in that we knew something "big" was going to happen, but the details were being kept quiet. All we knew, this one particular evening, was we had to be ready to go at a moment's notice. Needless to say, no one got any sleep that night.

We were "woken up" at about 2:30 am and told to be ready and to meet at a particular location by 3 am, where trucks would pick us up. We did..... and we waited and waited and waited.... the now familiar "hurry up and wait" scenario.

I was sitting with my small band of "brothers" ; we were a group of 6, very close, and very comfortable with each other. It was that quiet time of day - between night and first break of light: no birds, no wind, lots of forest, a bit cool... it was beautiful. To stave off monotony, and partial jitters about what might happen next, JL put on some music (he had brought his tape recorder) and it was the Doors. I can't remember what the songs were, but the scene if you were an observer, probably had had a very "Apocalypse Now" quality to it.

When ever I play the Doors I go to a warm happy place where one has good close friends, and to a time where you are fearless and have no cares in the world except being very loudly yelled at by the big scary Sergeant.

I was 17-18 at this time.

In looking for some Doors videos, I found this video and it it priceless because it combines Jim Morrison and Blondie. How "sweet" !!!



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This next is a contrast.

It was the first music video I ever saw and totally changed how I enjoyed popular music. Blondie slid me into this phase of life, but this group and song solidified it for sure; I was (still am) a "child of the '80's".

Why the contrast? I was working for the Canadian Coast Guard as their summer sea- lift cook, in Frobisher Bay (now Iqaluit)on Baffin Island. So here I was in working in a 3000 people town, cooking for a ragtag team (and they truly were), when one day on HBO (we had cable *lol*) I saw "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow. Watch the video and you can imagine the interesting contrast of reality versus pop culture at this point of time in my life.

I was 19 years old.

I hope this video works as they pulled the original from YouTube.



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This last is another bit of contrast and it defined me during my year at College.

I had just finished my two months up North. Being up North makes it very easy to forget that there is a big bad world out there; you become focused on your small little world. I got home the Sunday night and was starting College the following day. So I had to quickly re-assimilate myself with family, the real world and get a bunch of stuff ready for school (review all the paperwork Dad had done for me, etc.). My head was really spinning with reality .........

The next morning the radio turned on (I hate alarms) and the following video's music is the first sound I heard that morning. Can you imagine how weird it must have been given everything else. However it stuck (I won't even get into what I wore to school that day) and to this day I hum the crazy little song every now and then, and when ever I hear it(Volkswagon used it in one of their commercials for awhile) I think of how much fun I had at College and with life that year.

I was 20 years old.




Okay - enough music. I'll start more Tiny Pill Tales in a blog or two