Musical Memories
8.4.21
C. Derick Miller
Head Writer
Your Stories On Video
Being one of the older individuals in my office, it seems as though I have total control of the radio. Radio? Who am I kidding? I’m showing my age, aren’t I? No one listens to the radio anymore. Let’s start this blog over.
Being one of the older individuals in my office it seems as though I have total control of the music app being played. There. That’s more like it!
Maybe it’s because no one else has yet to challenge me or maybe they’re all just letting me have my way until I retire. I was always taught to respect my elders, but I can’t honestly say that this is a saying taught to many modern youths.
I, being a child of the eighties, play a montage of songs from morning until afternoon comprised of the MTV pop hits from long ago aka my teenage years. I’ve noticed that there are many great songs by talented artists I avoided in my younger days because I had a reputation to uphold. In my group of friends, it was heavy metal or nothing. In retrospect, I missed out on several amazing musical groups like The Cure, Depeche Mode, and the B-52’s! And let’s not forget, you can’t be my age and not get incredibly hyped when ANY Run DMC song begins.
Now, most of my coworkers were either very young children or not even a twinkle in their parents’ eyes when these songs and musicians were considered popular. They look at me the same way I looked at my parents when a song full of memories would come on the radio. I remember them well. We’d be in the middle of nowhere mountains of Colorado on a family vacation, a familiar song would come on the radio, and my folks would sing along, swaying back and forth until you thought for certain you’d plummet from the mountain highway you were hugging! I have these moments daily at the expense of the younger people in my office and find it humorous. I wonder if my parents felt the same way as me and my brothers shoved our fingers into our ears in an act of defiance.
The truth of the matter is, just like coffee, baseball, and several other memory triggers I’ve discussed in these blogs, music is one of the most important memory makers of all! I was recently working on a Your Stories On Video script and looking for the perfect narrator opening. I decided to Google search the client’s date of birth for special events which occurred on that particular date. Luckily, that search uncovered a song that was on everyone’s tongue that day. If I recall correctly, it was “How Many Times?” by Benny Krueger and his Orchestra. Personally, I’d never heard of this musician, so I looked him up. Strangely enough, it couldn’t be found on Spotify, so I dove deep into the depths of YouTube. You’ve got to check this out!
The year was 1926 and this was the jam on the day my client was born! Ninety-five years ago! Even though I wasn’t alive then, I can imagine the Model T Roadsters weaving in and out of traffic through the streets of Manhattan and this music pouring out of someone’s open window from a phonograph record player. That’s the thing I love about music the most. Even though you weren’t there when the artist envisioned the work or performed it, your imagination takes over and it’s almost as though it was a past reality of your own!
Me? I recently said the name of a band to some of my coworkers and they all looked at me as though I’d invented them. It was the hair metal band known as Tesla and they were quite popular during my teenage years. No one else in my office ever heard of them and I had a hard time understanding how this could be so. Didn’t any of them have cool parents? Here is their most popular song. Do any of you remember them? Please say yes.
Ah…
I could almost feel my hair growing while I listened to that song! Through a combination of research about my client and my own curiosity, I decided to see what the most popular song on the day of my birth on December 18th, 1973 was. I had no idea!
Ironically, I have a habit of singing this song all the time and never imagined it was the # 1 hit on my birthday! Now it all makes sense! I always found it strange because I don’t recall ever listening to the entire song or knowing any of the lyrics other than the chorus. Maybe I heard it a lot as a baby, and it subliminally snuck through the bars of my crib and into my brain. Who knows? Music is strange…and we love it.
What wonderful memories do you have associated with music and what was the number one song on the day you were born? Do you have any special connection with that song? Do you have what some would consider to be odd taste in music or were you and all your friends mainstream listeners? Here at Your Stories On Video, we want to know! We love your memories just as much as you do! Why not make a film about them? We can definitely help with that!
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