Anybody that knows me is aware that I am a musical onmivore. There is only one genre ("rap") to which I steadfastly refuse to listen and one that I need be be in exactly the right mood (opera) to do so. Everything else is fair game. Being a baby boomer, I grew up with a variety of songs on the "soundtrack to my life." Rock and roll, for sure, but also "50s pop" (think Pat Boone, Doris Day etc.). There were Broadway show tunes as well as classical muisic. There were TV and movie "theme" songs and advertising jingles. Let's not forget folk and protest music too. But rock and roll dominated.
First it was the seemingly bland commercial rock of the late 50s and early 60s. Then The Beatles changed everything. People besides teenagers started paying attention. The music morphed from "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to "She's Leaving Home." Instead of telling us what we should be feeling, it told others what we were feeling. The Viet Nam war had a lot to do with that. So did drugs. But no matter what your views on either, there was still the music.
To this day, I will hear an "oldie" (meaning a song contemporary to my lifetime) and I will be transported back to a time and place that are inextricably linked to that song. "MacArthur Park?" It is spring 1968 and I'm in my friend's 62 Chevy on our way to high school. "American Pie?" 1971, driving in my Triumph from Ohio to Michigan. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?" I'm listening to the first Beatles album I ever purchased in my bedroom in N.J. "Que Sera, Sera?" It's at my cousin"s house in Canada and I'm 6 or 7. I'm sure you get the picture, and I'll bet it happens to you too.
Don't get me started about concerts. I've been to a few. Any music from any of those groups that I've seen is hard wired into my memory of those events. Rock, jazz, pop or classical, it does not matter. Some were great, some were just OK, but they are all there.
These days I listen to a lot of vocal jazz, especially The Manhattan Tranfer (my all time favorite, thanks to Thom Cannell way back when) and the "great American songbook" (vocal "standards" of the last century). But I still love Rock and Roll. Especially if it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.
