First Song You Loved Meme--now with navel gazing!
Wow there are scary things happening all over the world all at once right now. And I'm removed enough from all of them that I can focus on a meme that jlh tagged me with:
What's the first song you truly remember loving? (Don't worry if it's a little embarrassing; you were just a kid!) Then tag as many friends as you like to do the meme as well!
Hard to remember, but ones I recall in no particular order...
I remember loving Monster Mash not so much for the song but because it had monsters in it and who knew you could have that?
One of the first albums I was really into was the Broadway production of It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman. Like Clio's, my parents were on the older side so I listened to a lot of pre-rock music. I probably went through the whole score where at different points I was all about a different song. I distinctly remember a time when I would sing the line "It's a satisfying feeling when you hang up your cape to know that you've averted murder, larceny and rape" and knowing what murder and larceny were but not rape. Which is strange because...larceny? Apparently, yeah.
The first song I remember my parents commenting on me performing at odd moments was Lois Lane's defiant I'm Not Finished Yet, which started with a whole monologue where she woke up in an abandoned powerhouse surrounded by Chinese bad guys. (It was an early 60s musical with the casual racism and totally not so casual sexism that that implies.) My favorite part of the song was where Lois (I) would sing with my arms pinned to my sides: You've tied my hands but you can't tie my spirit! You'll find we journalists are hard to scare!
But probably the most important song was this. I'm not sure how old I was. It feels like I was really young. My sister (who was a teenager) used to play a song a lot--I didn't know what it was. But in my head what the song was about was this young woman who had no family, like she was an orphan, and she got a job as a paid companion to a lonely old lady who lived in a scary house on a hill. No, I didn't actually call her a "paid companion" in my mind but that was basically what she was. A young woman paid to keep this old lady company--I must have seen the idea somewhere. Anyway, she drove up the twisty road to the house in a black horse and carriage etc. She also wore a long black dress and had her brown hair up in a bun. But little by little she figured out that the woman was a witch. Like when she had to play cards with her in the evening the companion always got all black cards and this was somehow ominous. And once she drank from this perfume-looking bottle the old lady kept by her bed and it made it so that she could see through her stomach.
So eventually she tried to escape but she couldn't. Like, in my head she ran out of the house and down the twisty hill, but then it was like the camera pulled back and the old lady was looking at her in a crystal ball like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. And the girl was basically trapped inside it and would never get any further than the bottom of the hill.
Every time my sister played this song I would sit up at the top of the stairs to listen to it. Thing was, afaik I never knew what it was called. I still don't! For a while I was pretty confident the song must have been Hotel California because the imagery and some of the lines eerily fit my narrative, but I feel like I was younger than I would have to have been if it was that song. It isn't a Star Wars-era memory. I tried to ask my sister about it once and as soon as I mentioned a song she always played that I found scary she immediately said it was Sympathy for the Devil. But sometimes I think it could be Paint it Black because that also has some imagery that fits the story. And the emotions fit too.
So in conclusion, the first song I was probably the most obsessed was That Song I Don't Know The Name Of Now. It could have been Hotel California. It could have been Sympathy for the Devil or Paint it Black. Or it could have been another song entirely. I feel like I must have been pretty young to jumble up words and images and narrative that way, and my memories of sitting on the stairs feel earlier than 1977. Also the card-playing scene seemed to take place in my sister's bedroom before it was redecorated and that was pre-1977. So I lean more towards the Paint it Black side. If it was Sympathy for the Devil I feel like the devil should have appeared at some point...granted, he doesn't identify himself in the lyrics but still, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole reason I found that song scary was because my sister made sure to tell me the devil was singing it, thus tapping into the Exorcist panic in which children my age were marinated in those days. She would have been remiss as an older sister not to do that and that was one way in which she was never remiss. In general I feel really lucky that I had those kinds of trippy, image-laden songs to eat my brain at that age.
Oops, I forgot to tag anybody. I know it's a cop-out but I hope anybody who finds this idea fun does it!
What's the first song you truly remember loving? (Don't worry if it's a little embarrassing; you were just a kid!) Then tag as many friends as you like to do the meme as well!
Hard to remember, but ones I recall in no particular order...
I remember loving Monster Mash not so much for the song but because it had monsters in it and who knew you could have that?
One of the first albums I was really into was the Broadway production of It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman. Like Clio's, my parents were on the older side so I listened to a lot of pre-rock music. I probably went through the whole score where at different points I was all about a different song. I distinctly remember a time when I would sing the line "It's a satisfying feeling when you hang up your cape to know that you've averted murder, larceny and rape" and knowing what murder and larceny were but not rape. Which is strange because...larceny? Apparently, yeah.
The first song I remember my parents commenting on me performing at odd moments was Lois Lane's defiant I'm Not Finished Yet, which started with a whole monologue where she woke up in an abandoned powerhouse surrounded by Chinese bad guys. (It was an early 60s musical with the casual racism and totally not so casual sexism that that implies.) My favorite part of the song was where Lois (I) would sing with my arms pinned to my sides: You've tied my hands but you can't tie my spirit! You'll find we journalists are hard to scare!
But probably the most important song was this. I'm not sure how old I was. It feels like I was really young. My sister (who was a teenager) used to play a song a lot--I didn't know what it was. But in my head what the song was about was this young woman who had no family, like she was an orphan, and she got a job as a paid companion to a lonely old lady who lived in a scary house on a hill. No, I didn't actually call her a "paid companion" in my mind but that was basically what she was. A young woman paid to keep this old lady company--I must have seen the idea somewhere. Anyway, she drove up the twisty road to the house in a black horse and carriage etc. She also wore a long black dress and had her brown hair up in a bun. But little by little she figured out that the woman was a witch. Like when she had to play cards with her in the evening the companion always got all black cards and this was somehow ominous. And once she drank from this perfume-looking bottle the old lady kept by her bed and it made it so that she could see through her stomach.
So eventually she tried to escape but she couldn't. Like, in my head she ran out of the house and down the twisty hill, but then it was like the camera pulled back and the old lady was looking at her in a crystal ball like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. And the girl was basically trapped inside it and would never get any further than the bottom of the hill.
Every time my sister played this song I would sit up at the top of the stairs to listen to it. Thing was, afaik I never knew what it was called. I still don't! For a while I was pretty confident the song must have been Hotel California because the imagery and some of the lines eerily fit my narrative, but I feel like I was younger than I would have to have been if it was that song. It isn't a Star Wars-era memory. I tried to ask my sister about it once and as soon as I mentioned a song she always played that I found scary she immediately said it was Sympathy for the Devil. But sometimes I think it could be Paint it Black because that also has some imagery that fits the story. And the emotions fit too.
So in conclusion, the first song I was probably the most obsessed was That Song I Don't Know The Name Of Now. It could have been Hotel California. It could have been Sympathy for the Devil or Paint it Black. Or it could have been another song entirely. I feel like I must have been pretty young to jumble up words and images and narrative that way, and my memories of sitting on the stairs feel earlier than 1977. Also the card-playing scene seemed to take place in my sister's bedroom before it was redecorated and that was pre-1977. So I lean more towards the Paint it Black side. If it was Sympathy for the Devil I feel like the devil should have appeared at some point...granted, he doesn't identify himself in the lyrics but still, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole reason I found that song scary was because my sister made sure to tell me the devil was singing it, thus tapping into the Exorcist panic in which children my age were marinated in those days. She would have been remiss as an older sister not to do that and that was one way in which she was never remiss. In general I feel really lucky that I had those kinds of trippy, image-laden songs to eat my brain at that age.
Oops, I forgot to tag anybody. I know it's a cop-out but I hope anybody who finds this idea fun does it!