The other night my son rang up and, amongst other things, he was talking about how various songs reminded him of some of the road trips that we used to do as a family when he and his sister were growing up. He remarked, as I have noted here before, that certain songs always seem to be associated in his mind with certain places or incidents. Like most people, I guess (or maybe not, I don’t know) music has become the soundtrack to our lives.
That got me thinking about how many different types of music have made up the soundtrack of my life so I thought I’d try and put it down on paper (so to speak).
I grew up in a very religious family. My dad was an itinerate evangelist spending a lot of time on the road touring around country NSW. In spite of the fact that mum was an accomplished singer, my early memories of music in the home seem to be absent (perhaps we didn’t have a radio?). My exposure to music was mostly limited to Christian and gospel music and it was a rich field. I was fortunate to attend many meetings where accomplished musicians were part of the scene and I saw some wonderful singers and musicians. Perhaps it was this that helped mum and dad realise that my brother and I had inherited our mother’s musical talent because, from an incredibly early age I can recall singing in public.
This is not to say that we were insulated from other music. We saw the growth of rock and roll, but, like many Christian people at the time, some of the excesses of the early exponents of the genre were regarded with some suspicion.
In 1962 the family moved back to NSW from Adelaide and, for the first time, we had a radio. We started listening to the Top 40, with Gene Pitney, the Everley Brothers, Del Shannon, Bobby Vinton etc. The Beach Boys, the Atlantics and all the other surfing-style groups occupied centre stage for a while and then, the Liverpool scene arrived with the Beatles and the plethora of British groups followed them.
But another type of music started to intrude. Courtesy of a charismatic music teacher at school, I was exposed to classical music for the first time. I had been aware of it before, of course, but Bill Turner made it his business to indoctrinate his students into it in a way that made it appealing. Bill also ran a yearly excursion in to the Roxy Theatre at Hamilton, a suburb of Newcastle, where students had the opportunity to go and see a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. In 1963 the featured show was “The Gondoliers” and, when the curtain opened to show a stage filled with girls in colourful costumes, singing “List and Learn,” it was like a whole world had been opened to me.
From here and with a little record player that we had been given, we started exploring classical music and it was a great experience. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, we absorbed it all like a sponge and the complexity and intricacies of the genre showed me how much I had been missing out on with just a diet of 3 minute pop songs.
Not long after I got married a good mate built me a proper stereo and speakers and my record collection mushroomed accordingly. And I started again exploring different types of music. I had already done some folk music, performing in a folk group at school so I knew about Peter, Paul and Mary and the Seekers. It wasn’t much of a leap from there to get to Gordon Lightfoot, The Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio and many other exponents of the craft.
The along came Jimmy Buffett, Kevin Johnson, Jerry Reed, John Denver and, of course, Simon and Garfunkel.
So my musical tastes became quite eclectic. It wasn’t far to go then to get to all sorts of other country music, Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood and Suzy Bogguss.
And that is pretty much the soundtrack of my life, a mixture of classical, country, folk and old-skool rock and roll. And every artist, every piece, every song, is somehow related to and reminds me of an event or place in my life. To say that my life revolves around music would be a pretty fair way of putting it.
teza51 says
I was exposed to a similar range of music whilst growing up as we have discussed before however new fields come and go once i could never listen to rap but now i dont mind it now and then, Singers usually women with powerful voices do it for me like Adele,Carrise Eden to name a couple.By the way Phil i have about 6 months supply of motorcycle mags here if you want them wife wants them gone if you dont want them i will bin them.
Phil Hall says
Definitely interested in the magazines, mate. I’ll give you a call and arrange a pick up. Thanks.