Songs that Bring Back Memories

Ten on Tuesday

Ten Songs That Bring Back Memories (and why)

1. "The Old Gray Mare", a folk song. Why: My grandma used to sing that song to me a lot and she'd joke and say she was singing about herself. I couldn't imagine why she'd compare herself to a horse that "ain't what she used to be" until I hit 50 and nana-ing. Now I get it. I sing it to my grandson and I'm sure he wonders the same thing. :D

2. "Red Rubber Ball" by the Cyrkle. Why: After we moved to Maryland, it was a wonderful treat when we'd go back to LI and visit relatives, especially my grandma, aunt, uncle & cousins. We'd pile into two cars and go to Robert Moses State Park and us kids would have a sort of competition of Top 40 radio stations. When we'd get to the parking lot, we'd compare which songs we'd heard and whoever heard the more popular songs "won". Hearing "Red Rubber Ball" was a winner in those days.

3. "San Francisco (Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" by Scott McKenzie. Why: it's not because it defined the Summer of Love. It's because my profoundly deaf father loved the song so much he wanted to know the words to it. I played my 45 over and over as loud as it could go and he'd feel the vibrations with his feet and cup one hand over his ear. I would listen for the lyrics and wrote what I thought I heard which included "Summertime we'll be in loving there".

4. "In A Gadda Da Vida" by Iron Butterfly. Why: What a cool song to listen to when we were in junior high! We'd walk down the hall imitating the guitar riff--is that what it's called?

5. "Five Hundred Miles" by Peter Paul & Mary. Why: In high school I joined a folk guitar group called the Ethnomusicological Society. I loved it, loved the songs we'd play, performing, playing the guitar.

6. "O Holy Night". Why: Also in high school I joined the concert choir and around the holidays we'd go to a few places to sing. One year we went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and went caroling through the halls. Then we gathered in the foyer of the old main building and there was this grand staircase we were standing on. Patients, doctors, nurses, visitors and what have you gathered to listen to us. We'd always had trouble hitting the right notes in "O Holy Night" but we'd gotten it right the last couple of times. And with the echoes in this cavernous building, we could sound beautiful...or hit a wrong note and screech. Which is what we did. Oh well, it was just one song.

7. "The Hustle" by Van McCoy. Why: Okay, I know that disco fell out of favor but I enjoyed it. I learned dance steps for the first time since learning how to square dance in junior high and that was yukky. The dances we did in the '60s and early 70s wasn't like real dancing...not to me. It was fun to dance with a partner.

8. "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds. Why: Every time I hear that song I just automatically think of The Breakfast Club

9. "God Bless The USA" by Lee Greenwood. Why: It brings back the days right after 9/11 when we all pulled together in our communities

10. "Grow Old Along With Me" by Mary Chapin Carpenter. Why: it's a song that TB and I both love and when I hear it, I remember our wedding. I also have a flash forward type of memory to us being together in our little cottage by the ocean.