The Sound of Music

I was thinking the other day, while I was doing something mindless at work like stuffing envelopes, about music. There are some songs that immediately take me back to a particular time and place. Here are a few...

1. Tie a Yellow Ribbon by Tony Orlando & Dawn. I was 8 or 9 years old, maybe younger. I was in our family room/dining room (depending on what year it was) and I had my little portable, orange record player. I would play a little bit of the song, then pick up the needle and stop it, and write the words I remembered. I did this until I had all the lyrics written down.

2. Daybreak by Barry Manilow. My mom would get up with us in the morning, wake us up and fix our breakfast. Generally, this song was playing on the radio on the counter in the kitchen, on WTCM Radio from Traverse City, Michigan.

3. Brothers and Sisters of Mine, a hymn. I was at Senior High church camp, and Lester Ford was drawing the cover page for our camp log (kind of like a yearbook, only for camp). He was a great artist. We were sitting on the picnic table, under the big pine tree in the middle of the campground, with a bunch of other people.

4. America by Neil Diamond. In my friend Laura's living room, playing it over and over on her parents' big stereo, because we thought it was a cool song.

5. Forever in Blue Jeans, also by Neil Diamond. The sixth grade, at some class party or another. I thought he was singing Reverend Blue Jeans, and so did Tony Buffman. He was a kid who always tried to make everyone feel important and valued, even at his age.

6. Afternoon Delight, by someone whose name I can't recall. We were in our camper, in a campground somewhere in southern Michigan, near Ann Arbor. My sister drank lye when she was 3 years old, and for over a year we had to take her to Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan every other week to dilate her throat, which had to be replaced. During the winter we stayed with my aunt who lived near Ann Arbor; in the summer we camped. That was the campground where I learned to swim (there was a lake).

7. Kiss You All Over by Exile. There were a group of us who made it into the spelling bee, and we were in the back of the principal's van, headed back to school after the bee, when this came on the radio.

That's all I can think of now; though I know there are more. I'll share others in a different post.