My Independence Seems to Vanish in the Haze
When I was a little kid growing up, my mom used to play the same set of Beatles CD's in the car. Being small and naturally traveling with my mom everwhere she went, I unknowingly exposed and submitted my memory to all of her music, and have realized this in the past couple of days. Whether I was talking, sleeping, or reading in the car, her music played and somehow worked itself into my brain, sticking there and never leaving. My brother, who was subjected (and still is - I escaped the day I bought my own car!!) to the same music, and I together discovered that we can call up from memory any Beatles song on record on command.
That goes for all CD's and stages of the band - we know lyrics, word for word, from Hard Days Night up to McCartney's recent stuff. From Sergeant Pepper's to Wings (ok, technically not the Beatles..), from Tax Man to Strawberry Fields, from Help to Here Comes the Sun. We know their history, the drama, the publicity, the hype, and more, thanks to books of the band and videos that are kept in a sort of shrine to them in my household. It seems like we have every book ever written, every documentary ever produced, and even sheet music - at one point, I could play a simplified version of Revolution on the piano. It's a scary thought.
My brother and I made the discovery while flipping through stations on our way to swim practice in my car. We stopped upon "Help," and, without realizing it, started singing along. We finished the song without missing a beat, stopped, and looked at each other, both shocked and amused. What vault of information had been locked away in our minds? Could we call upon this storage at will? We tried it, with me saying the first line to a song and my brother saying the next, until we had completed the song flawlessly.
Everybody knows all the words to at least some songs, but the knowledge that my brother and I had seared in our minds the lyrics to every song of just one group against our will (neither of us are extremely fond of the Beatles.. probably attributed to overkill) was and is a crazy revelation to the both of us. Why couldn't my mom have played tapes of the periodic table? Just think of how much smarter I could be right now. My brother suggested that she should have played books on tape, which was a good idea, too.
I don't know; being able to hear entire album after album in your head is weird but cool, and at least it's not one of my mother's other musical obsessions like Bread or Simon and Garfunkel..
On a side note - same thing happened to me the other day when I dug up an old tape of SNL sketches from 2000. I needed some skits of Will Ferrel as George Bush and Darrell Hammond as Al Gore from an SNL presidential bash to show to Young Democrats last Friday, and finally found it. Surprisingly, I was still able to quote most of the lines to the sketches, even though I was ten when I had taped it and had seen it last. I remember watching the tapes and then watching the actual debates and researching the candidates on my own to decide who to vote for, eventually realizing that I sadly could not vote. My parents let me vote for them that year though (and since have) and I remember angrily arguing with my dad to change his vote from Ralph Nader to Gore. I won. He (I) voted for him. And then I played Al Gore in my fifth grade play alongside Jon Walsh as George Bush with a scipt I wrote as an insert to our "America's History" production at Capitol Hill. I remember it came after the song about electing the president via the people's vote and then after the song I walked out on stage saying how I didn't think that song was correct (popular vote....haha).
Oh what a tangent!
That goes for all CD's and stages of the band - we know lyrics, word for word, from Hard Days Night up to McCartney's recent stuff. From Sergeant Pepper's to Wings (ok, technically not the Beatles..), from Tax Man to Strawberry Fields, from Help to Here Comes the Sun. We know their history, the drama, the publicity, the hype, and more, thanks to books of the band and videos that are kept in a sort of shrine to them in my household. It seems like we have every book ever written, every documentary ever produced, and even sheet music - at one point, I could play a simplified version of Revolution on the piano. It's a scary thought.
My brother and I made the discovery while flipping through stations on our way to swim practice in my car. We stopped upon "Help," and, without realizing it, started singing along. We finished the song without missing a beat, stopped, and looked at each other, both shocked and amused. What vault of information had been locked away in our minds? Could we call upon this storage at will? We tried it, with me saying the first line to a song and my brother saying the next, until we had completed the song flawlessly.
Everybody knows all the words to at least some songs, but the knowledge that my brother and I had seared in our minds the lyrics to every song of just one group against our will (neither of us are extremely fond of the Beatles.. probably attributed to overkill) was and is a crazy revelation to the both of us. Why couldn't my mom have played tapes of the periodic table? Just think of how much smarter I could be right now. My brother suggested that she should have played books on tape, which was a good idea, too.
I don't know; being able to hear entire album after album in your head is weird but cool, and at least it's not one of my mother's other musical obsessions like Bread or Simon and Garfunkel..
On a side note - same thing happened to me the other day when I dug up an old tape of SNL sketches from 2000. I needed some skits of Will Ferrel as George Bush and Darrell Hammond as Al Gore from an SNL presidential bash to show to Young Democrats last Friday, and finally found it. Surprisingly, I was still able to quote most of the lines to the sketches, even though I was ten when I had taped it and had seen it last. I remember watching the tapes and then watching the actual debates and researching the candidates on my own to decide who to vote for, eventually realizing that I sadly could not vote. My parents let me vote for them that year though (and since have) and I remember angrily arguing with my dad to change his vote from Ralph Nader to Gore. I won. He (I) voted for him. And then I played Al Gore in my fifth grade play alongside Jon Walsh as George Bush with a scipt I wrote as an insert to our "America's History" production at Capitol Hill. I remember it came after the song about electing the president via the people's vote and then after the song I walked out on stage saying how I didn't think that song was correct (popular vote....haha).
Oh what a tangent!