Tagged ~ My Top Ten Favorite Albums

Here's the thing ... I just could do a list and leave it at that.  But I can't.  And you know why too; I'll be the first to admit it:  I'm a little verbose.  Or some days, a lot verbose.

I checked into Facebook on my lunch today and saw that I was tagged to list my top ten favorite albums (Hmmm, thanks Alexis!).  No time then to consider it and I worked straight through dinner until my evening meetings which ran until after 10:00.  That meant I had all day to ponder the question in the back of my mind and what could have been a list turned into a post.

Here's another thing ... I love everyone's lists on Facebook:  the albums, the books, the movies, the vacation spots, etc.  But what I really want to know is why?  Why is that book so important to you?  How did that movie affect you so deeply it made an indelible impression?

So here's my list ... plus a little more.  Feel free to read just the large print (the list) and skip my inevitable ramblings ....

These are in order--chronological order.

Pete Seeger, Children's Concert at Town Hall, 1963.  I actually wrote about this record recently.  A classic, the recording had a profound influence on my childhood and provided a framework, I think, for how my brain became wired for certain kinds of music--music that makes a statement or tells a story of some sort.

The in-between years:  The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bobby Sherman, The Osmond Brothers, David Cassidy

John Denver, Poems & Prayers and Promises, 1971.  When I looked up the date of this record on line, I was surprised it dates back to 1971.  I think I listened to John Denver during my high school years (a little after 1971).  There are so many songs on this LP that I can still sing and that folk-rock-pop thing has stayed with me forever.

Seals and Crofts, Summer Breeze, 1972.  Love songs. Lovingly written and lovingly performed.  

Rick Wakeman, The Six Wives of Henry the VIII, 1973.  I played this album until the grooves were gone.  This is the first solo project of Rick Wakeman, a composer and keyboardist who may be best known as a member of the band, Yes.  It's an all-instrumental collection (in the classical world we would have called it a suite) of his musical interpretations of the personalities of King Henry VIII's wives.  As a pianist, my most successful performances were always of pieces by one impressionistic composer or another.  This album is very impressionistic.

Barry Manilow, This One's For You, 1976.  We played it to death on my floor of the dorm at my college--an all-female dorm.  On any given day some one (or more) of us was breaking up or making up with some guy (who probably didn't deserve us) and this was one of our soundtracks.

Willie Nelson, Stardust, 1978.  Thus began my love of both country singers and old standards ... an unlikely combination but if you listen to this record, you'll get it.

The other college stuff:  Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, The Eagles

The '80's:  Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, more Bruce, more Billy

Garth Brooks, No Fences, 1990.  What Garth says about the 8th track, Unanswered Prayers: "sometimes happiness isn't getting what you want ... it's wanting what you've got."

My lost years:  Stephen Curtis Chapman, Soundtracks from Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail and not much else.

Gavin DeGraw ~ His Whole Catalog (2003-2014 but not discovered by me until 2012).  This is what I call a phenomenon in my life.  I can't explain it.  I just continue to ride it and go wherever it takes me.  And I can't pick just one record.  I play them all--all the time.

Michael Franti and Spearhead, All People, 2013.  I first heard of Michael in the context of a Gavin DeGraw concert and was immediately a fan of not just his music but his very ethos.  A force for good, a champion of justice, a poet ... when you hear him live, you fall under the spell and he makes you want to be a better person.

Sara Bareilles, The Blessed Unrest, 2013.  Every song reminds me of a prior chapter of my life or points me to the future I hope to have.

There are so many other recordings that belong on this list, chief among them the Horowitz live recording of the Rachmaninoff 3rd piano concerto with the New York Phiharmonic.  Unspeakably beautiful.  The Mozart and Durufle requiems belong somewhere here too.  And don't get me started on cast albums ... Les Mis, The Man of La Mancha, Chorus Line ...

I need to stop.  This was a fun exercise but I'm sure I'll never be tagged for one of these lists again.  Thanks for indulging me!

A Time to Mourn

My parents had a huge stereo when I was a child.  Back then, it was a large piece of furniture and people called it the hi-fi.  I think that meant "high fidelity" which was probably a pretty fancy thing at the time.  They had a lot of records but I don't remember many of them.  There were probably lots of classical albums and opera, jazz for my Dad, Broadway shows.  And a few things for the kids.  Our favorite was Pete Seeger (live) Children's Concert at Town Hall.  We played it all the time.

I remember being fascinated by the live aspect of it.  I can hear the recorded applause, the families laughing at his stories and singing along.  It made me want to participate too.  It represented everything that childhood was supposed to be about:  learning to get along, appreciating other cultures, not being afraid to work hard at something, dancing, being silly, making friends and story telling.  It was all there.  Twenty four songs, a whole concert, on a black vinyl disc.

We each had our favorites.  Mine were Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal, Be Kind to Your Parents (still cracks me up) and Michael Row Your Boat Ashore.  And then there was Abi Yoyo.  Abi Yoyo.  Not exactly a song, Abi Yoyo is the tale of a town that turned its back on a magician and his son because his special talent of making things disappear was aggravating to its citizens.  (Well, you'd be aggravated too if you went to sit on a chair and it suddenly disappeared.)  But when the giant Abi Yoyo comes down the mountain to threaten the town, the magician's son plays the ukele and sings a song just for him. Abi Yoyo dances to his song to the point of exhaustion and falls down whereupon the magician instantly causes him to disappear.  "Zup. Zup."  He is, of course, a hero.  Abi Yoyo.  Never turn your back on someone; you never know when you'll need that special talent.  And we all have a special talent.  Thanks Pete.

I was a Brownie and a Girl Guide back in those days.  We ended our meetings sitting around a really good fake fire (logs with a light bulb and fan and colored tissue paper that we plugged in; you'd never see such a contraption today).  We would sing for at least a half hour, maybe more, every week--we met every week without fail.  And I mean we really sang.  Real songs.  One of my major (and only) complaints about my Girl Scouting that I so dearly love is that today's girls don't know how to sing.  They prefer only silly songs that have little meaning and mostly they kind of holler them rather than sing.  We really sang.  Canadian sea shanties, patriotic songs, popular songs of the day and loads and loads of folk songs.  Some of my fondest memories of being a Guide were sitting around that fake fire with the lights turned low and singing Where Have All the Flowers Gone, If I Had a Hammer, Turn! Turn! Turn! and We Shall Overcome (it was the sixties, after all).  No one ever told us that Pete Seeger wrote them; they were just the songs of the times.  Our youthful, idealistic times.  We could harmonize and did so really well.  

We frequently ended up with one of Pete Seeger's favorite songs to sing:  Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land.  But we sang the Canadian chorus.  Yes, there's a Canadian chorus:

This land is your land,

This land is my land,

From Bonavista

To Vancouver Island,

From the Arctic Circle,

To the Great Lakes waters

This land was made for you and me.

We sang harmony on that too.  Thanks Pete.

Pete Seeger was such a powerful voice for those who couldn't find theirs and causes that needed to be brought into the light.  He used his music, like many back then, to try to affect change.  I was probably about 13 when I saw him perform  Bring 'Em Home on television.  I remember being completely blown away by the rawness of the lyrics and his boldness at singing right at government.  It may have been the first time I realized the power that music has to unite, to stir people and to radically proclaim truth.  Thanks Pete.

When I woke up to the news this morning that this gifted man had died, I flashed back through all these memories in an instant.  I could hear him pounding the stage while he told his youngest audience the story of Abi Yoyo.  I could see 35 young and innocent girls sitting around an electric campfire harmonizing "a time for every purpose under heaven." I saw him singing truth to power, standing for labor and fighting for the Hudson River.  What a remarkable life.  What a privilege to have this thread of his example and music woven into the cloth that is my own.  

~~~

Abi Yoyo

Be Kind to Your Parents

Bring 'Em Home

Everyone will be posting the video of Pete and Bruce Springsteen singing This Land is Your Land from Obama's first innauguration but I was a Willie Nelson fan before I fell for Bruce so I offer you this from last year's Farm Aid in Saratoga Springs, with John Mellancamp, Dave Matthews and Neil Young.  A frail Pete Seeger, still protesting.  New York was meant to be frack free.

This Land Was Made for You and Me