THANKS TO MARION, I’m facing a challenge this week: to put together my own personal playlist, a measuring out of my life in coffeehouse tunes, if you will. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds. Nowadays, I am so easily distracted by children, my own thoughts, and the details of life, that I forget that turning on music will make it all a bit easier. But when I was young, I operated with a constant soundtrack.
Not since we all decided to make our lists of 25 things have I struggled so much to define myself. I listen to all kinds of music, save, perhaps, polka, and have for most of my adult life. Even so, the first track was an easy pick.
In high school, my taste, though somewhat diverse, always came back around to the early 70s flower-child music that was the default soundtrack at every American boarding school in the 1980s. Though I was never a Deadhead, I did buy Grateful Dead records (how hopelessly uncool; bootlegs were the ONLY way to go) in the hope of gaining sufficient knowledge to impress a sophisticated Manhattan boy, who was the first of many unrequited high school crushes. (By the time we went to college, he had become a good friend, and he once made me the best carrot cake I’d ever eaten. So all was not for naught.)
Luckily, my mooning infatuation didn’t maintain control over my musical taste. No, at 14, the key influences on my record choices (remember records?) were my sisters, my sweet friends, the dorm girls who helped with English papers and listened to my loopy recitations about crushes 1-100 of those heady, hormonal years. The soundtrack? Joni. Always Joni, and I have the high school yearbook page to prove it. I could drink a case of those sister friends, and over the years, I have.
My tastes broadened a bit in college. The Dead were still the high water mark of preppy cool, and I even went to a few shows. But I liked to dance, and whatever unkind thing you want to say about late 80s music (oh, and there are a lot of them!) there was some pretty fabulous dance pop being recorded then. Madonna was at the height of her popularity. INXS, fronted by the late, lamented Michael Hutchence, was definitely able to mystify.
But the Number 1 album and song for me back then had to be Peter Gabriel’s So, a perfect compendium of songs. The song that best epitomizes that time for me is arguably not the best one on the album. But the big time is exactly where I wanted to be headed when I was 22.
After college, I moved to New York, and then Washington, DC, and then finally to Los Angeles. The constant in those years was one of my dearest sister-friends, Leslie. (You’ve read about her and her famous sweet potato pie before.) To say that our musical taste differs is to put it mildly. Kiss? Not so much my thing (much to my son’s dismay) while Leslie has not just all their music, but T-shirts and action figures. (Go figure.)
But Leslie and I both loved, loved, loved (and still do) the incredible British singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading. Those post-college years were in many ways kind of lonely and blue, and Joan was the soothing soundtrack whenever I needed to be lifted out of the gray mists.
I could go on, and on, and in future posts, I expect I will. But meantime, tell me: what’s the soundtrack to your sisterhood?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, I knew it!! You *are* my sister under the skin!
My single favourite defining artist was Peter Gabriel. The album though, was Melt. Biko got me going on the anti-apartheid movement.
Apart from that, (old) Genesis, Supertramp, Bowie, Chris de Burgh (the early albums, not the pop stuff)…
I didn’t have any sisters, only six brothers, so my girl cousins and BFF’s were all like sisters to me. In the 70′s we all signed our letters with either this: “And, remember, You’ve Got a Friend” (by Carole King) or, with just about any line from the song: “Lean on Me” (by Bill Withers). We were SO melodramatic back then.
And if you want to talk about 1-100 crushes, we girls used to lie on our backs on the jetty, and watch the fireworks every Fourth of July. Just before the fireworks would explode, we’d say something like, “Judy and Mike” or “Marion and Tommy”. If the display was glorious, that meant a positive crush outcome. If it was a dud, we’d move onto the next crush.
I look forward to seeing everyone’s favorite songs… then I’ll go to itunes!
My sister Susan (older by 4 years), had a great record collection, she introduced me to Joni Mitchell, and I can still smell the Scotch fan cookies she also taught me how to bake. My sensory memory hits 5th gear with strong buttery smell while Joni sang “Chelsea Morning” or Bob Dylan taunting me to grow up fast, “how does it feel,” or Cat Stevens “on the road to find out.” Ah yes, that smokey poetic Leonard Cohen, the Blues man John Mayhall, Janis Joplin, my sister’s playlist goes on and on. Today we still share music. Some: we both love Keb Mo and Shelby Lynn too.