Friday, April 26, 2013

"My Life"...The Musical

So, here I am just chillin' on a Friday night. Spending some quality time with myself listening to music.  Like it or hate it...good or bad...music tells my story. Actually, music tells everyone's story. Some of us are just more aware of it than others. My earliest memories are of family gatherings in which someone always had a guitar with them. At some point in the night they would grab it and the pickin' and singin' would begin. I recall them singing everything from old hymns to popular music. This would go on for hours. It really wasn't a proper family get together if the pickin' and singing' didn't happen. My parents used to have a huge bon-fire every fall and to this day I can remember the singing (and the little boy who put a melted marshmallow in my hair). My grandmother always knew where there was going to be an all night (or what seemed to be all night to a 7 year old) gospel singing. Those were the best!! My grandparents went to a small country church where my grandmother sang in the choir and when we would go to visit she always let me sit with her. It was there that I learned every word to "Stepping on the Clouds." My grandfather was very musically inclined. Though he never formally took music lessons, there weren't to many instruments he couldn't pick up and in a few minutes figure out how to play them, especially the piano. He would play for hours when he and my grandmother would come to visit us. He would just sit down and decide he was going to play a song (never read music...just played) and would.  I remember being just a tiny kid, my dad had a roadster and Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" was the song. To this day, I associate that song with my daddy. My mother used to have a picture of me standing next to that car with pink sponge rollers in my hair. I suppose she still has it somewhere, I hope. I could not have been more than 3 years old (and who says little kids don't have memories?) 

I could go on and on and on but I think you get the idea. It is my goal to, one day, put "My Life"...The Musical on a CD or two. Thanks to itunes I'm slowly collecting the material as I pull it from my memories.