Music

I, along with pretty much everyone I know, have made music an integral part of my life. The raw passion and emotion it invokes in a person naturally leads them to tie lifes events with music. This holds true for the happiest of times and the darkest of times. I was just lounging around the other day and loading a new mp3 player I had just purchased, it seems I can no longer run without my mp3, I spent years running with just the music in my head and now that seems absolutely primitive! I digress, waiting I began to reflect on my lifes events and the music that seemed to help define those moments. Starting with my earliest memories I traveled down the road which is my life and found a diverse selection of tunes attatched to these memories.
My earliest recollection took place back in the mid to late 60s in Foxboro, Ma. I had a portable, read GIANT 45rpm record player that I would tote to a friends house and play records, the one I recall the most was the song "Mrs Brown you've got a lovely daughter". Next door to our little duplex lived my best friend in the world and he had an older sister, at least 14, and she was the love of my life. She knew it too! Well her mom was one of the greatest of moms in the world and realized what I was going through and kept my little phsyci safe from harm. I will never forget sitting around and listening to records with the kids in the neighborhood. You have to imagine the good old days now, the town common, everyone gathered on blankets, picnic baskets filled to overflowing, a bandstand in the corner and a real band performing. I think it was Wednesday evenings in the summer that the band would play, lots of marches, polkas etc. The one thing that fascinated myself and the rest of the kids was the tuba player. He was all decked out in his red and white uniform, gold piping shining in the evening light and blowing on his tuba like a mad man. The thing that amazed us most was that he had only one leg, he would rest his tuba on his good leg and somehow use the stump of his leg to keep time, not sure how he did that! There he would be bouncing his leg while 5 or 6 kids sat in rapt attention just outside the bandstand. Every now and then he would pause, turn his head to us, smile, give a wink and bounce his leg! We would roll on the ground and just loose all control.
Later in life, after the hormones kicked in. Music became synonomous with love and pain. My first real girlfriend was when I was just a freshman in high school. I had no idea what I was doing, how to behave or even speak most of the time. She was the first girl I ever took to a movie. Taller than me, long curly auburn hair, the face of an angel and the heart of a saint. I was head over heals in puppy love and the only thing that could express my deepest feelings was, music. The song that told the world how I felt is by Chicago and "Colour my world" said everything I never could. Unfortunetly being 14 the relationship lasted about a week before we moved on. But you never forget your first girl! The next musical interlude does'nt come untill my first year after high school. I had somehow fallen for my best friends girl and she for me. That is another story all together, needless to say girl gone, best friend is best friend again. We shared a passion and a love for the music of Harry Chapin. We spent many nights cuddled up on the couch listening to chapintunes, went to many of his concerts and was at his last concert just before he died. The man could speak volumes with a simple phrase, no better singer songwriter. Our song was "Dreams go by" the story of a couple and how they put their dreams on hold because life kept getting in the way, well life got in the way and our dreams went by.
I went on for far to long, 1500 characters to many. I will continue if no one minds, on a later blog.