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Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Music moments that change your life
Yesterday I read a very good and touching status update from Todd (a great photograph, awesome coworker and dinosaur artist): ": great moments of music changing my life: part 1 in a series: Dad buys me "Abbey Road" my junior year of high school."
To which I commented that my earliest memory was Mom singing me Bob Dylan as a lullaby. Actually it's untrue after checking upon that with her, but it's true that my lullabies were not your regular lullabies.
Even if Bob Dylan wasn't sung to me as a toddler, I do have fond memories of moments that shaped my musical cultural, and a fortiori my personality.
This post is about them.
When I was 9 and in the 5th grade, the two most popular bands for kids my age were 2B3 and the Spice Girls. Not the greatest bands of all time. My then 15 and 17 years old brothers, probably ashamed of their little sister's musical tastes decided for my 10th birthday to offer me "(What's the Story) Morning Glory", third album of Oasis, and not the least of them since it featured to almost-too-famous track "Wonderwall". When I write "offer me" I really mean they bought it for them and allowed me to copy it on a tape with my tape recorder. While Oasis are not the greatest band and are far from being a good representation of my current musical tastes, we all agree it saved me from the Spice Girls and are a pillar of my musical formation. Thank you Edward, thank you Galien. (They also offered me Mmmbop from Hanson but I won't hold them accountable for it)
Moment #2
I don't remember what my parents would listen to in the evening when they came back from work. Maybe they didn't listen to anything but I highly doubt it, seeing how big a Beatles fan my Mom is (but we'll come back to that later). However I do painfully remember Sunday afternoons, Dad's nap time with bagpipes blasting in the apartment.Yes it probably was "Amazing Grace" on repeat, but all I could remember is that nasty sound that the 6 to 15 years old me hated. Somehow, today, I enjoy bagpipes more than many other instruments.
Moment #3
Trips to Switzerland. I had a discussion about that with my parents last time I was home and neither of them could remember the artists. All I know (or think I know) is that I'm pretty sure we always had one tape in the car for the 7+ hours drive to spending a full summer in Leysin. The songs? Some of what constitutes a major part of my musical tastes: 50s to 60s pop. By that I mean The Supremes, Dion and the Belmonts and most importantly "Runaway" from Del Shannon... but probably one of the many French covers. 15+ years later, it still brings me back to happy memories of childhood, summer fun and family love.
Moment #4
The Beatles. I have many, many, memories of the Beatles at the apartment. I had probably heard A Hard Day's Night and Please Please Me a million times by the time I turned one. I don't remember the first time I listened to them, I don't remember the first time I appreciated them for something else than being my parents' music. I don't remember the first time I accepted them for being something ELSE than my parents' music. What I do remember though, is lecturing my Mom on how those two albums she loved the most were nowhere near the best of their work. She didn't care, for they were the ones I fell in love with. Thanks Mom.
Moment #5
My brothers are not musicians. They never learned any instrument, never were singers in a band or what have you. I am. Or at least I try to be. However I do remember when I bought my first guitar at 14 and my Galien taught me "Walk away", a.k.a. "the easiest song ever to play at the guitar from Ben Harper". I still know this song, and I still remember learning it.
Moment #6
Freshman year of college, my friend Simon sending over the Bluetooth from our Mac laptops in class the songs "Sleeping In" (The Postal Service) and "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Others" (Of Montreal). I listened to these songs probably 40 times that day and the list of bands I discovered "by association" or thanks to Simon is probably endless now (Fleet Foxes, I will never thank you enough Simon!).
Moment #7
When I made the guitarist and the singer of my band listen to Nirvana for the first time in their lives. And when subsequently for 6 months Nirvana songs were all we played at rehearsals. I cannot listen to more than two Nirvana songs in a row anymore.
Moment #8
The fact that when I like a band I listen exclusively to it (and sometimes only one of their song) for a long period time is not a trait foreign to the Gavignet family. This is something I got from Edward, which led to a long period of my life where I hated Bob Marley. I don't know what I was thinking.... Thank God I went to High School after.
Moment #9
Piggy-backing on Moment #8. Surprisingly it didn't have the same effect when he became obsessed with the Doors. Eventually he got tired of it and my fondness for them grew. By age 15 I knew more about the Doors than anything else, and a my bookcase still shows proof of this by the number of books I own about them. This year, if we had blogs I would have probably written a post about how poor the movie was. I could go on forever about my Doors moment, but this post is not about that.
Moment #10
Pete Doherty. High School memories are very very fuzzy, probably because my idol at the time was Pete Doherty but I remember it opened my eyes to Brit Pop. I remember skipping work to see him live at a show case, being the first in line to get my album signed and I still remember drunk Pete Doherty kissing me on the cheek that day. It still played a very important role in my life, I almost moved to England instead of the US because of this music, I picked up a British accent and spent most of the money I had traveling to London back and forth.
Moment #11
To be honest with you (whomever is reading this...) I don't remember the firs time I listened to Bob Dylan. I know both my brothers and my parents liked him which means I probably had listened to a fair amount of Bob Dylan before I knew how to walk too. I remember I never listened to him from Elementary (2B3 time!) to Middle School (Oasis and Blur time.. oh and Eminem too) but some episodes in my life deeply contributed to my love for him. My guitarist's mom offered me his Chronicles when I was around 15, she saw damn right that day!! Learning the guitar at this time meant I learned some of his songs (well, hoped I would but I really sucked at the guitar back then and couldn't distinguish a G from an Am). I think it become that important when I moved here to the US. Bob Dylan is famous everywhere in the world, no lying about that, but I think he is even more important here. I may have discovered songs I didn't know about, or I read books about it... Eventually I took a few Music class centered around him and I guess that's when his music became so important. August 22, 2010 I got my first tattoo, representing the most important moment in Folk Rock history, when Dylan went electric at Newport Folk Festival, July 25th, 1965. A few months later I got the chance to see him live and in spite of what everybody says, it was the best concert of my life. I could write a whole book about my love for Bob Dylan, which I won't start here. But of all my Bob Dylan moments? I think his concert. If one can sit through a Bob Dylan concert these days and appreciate to the point that you feel alone in the room with him and can almost here his 60s-70s voice, then you know it's for life.
Moment #12, 13, 14.
First time I listened to the Shins. Watching Garden State.
The Smiths. I used to baby sit a kid whose last name was Morissey. My brother mentioned the Smiths, hooked ever since.
Simon & Garfunkel, the song 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night probably froze the blood in my veins for how genius and horrible it was. It also was the first time I actually paid attention and understood lyrics in English.
Soldat Louis. Their songs really are not good, but their song "Du Rhum, des femmes et d'la bière nom de Dieu" will always remind me of my late Uncle Berny and countless evenings at Brunissard with the full Gavignet and Berny Kaeuffer's clans, where the only two albums we listened to were George Brassens and Soldat Louis. Those memories are priceless and this song always brings back the smell of the fire in the chimney, the cold outside when we would have to get more wood, the smell of cheese with the fondue, gratin dauphinois, raclette, the odor of the fuel we'd put in the heater, evenings playing Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk, Trivial Pursuit or Cluedo, kids bringing back (and proudly showing off) their medals won at various ski competitions, lunches at the Baracon and happy times generally.
Posted via email from Jay Gee
