8 Songs

Another meme because I think they are fun and I like to talk about music. Again, do play along if you want, as I'd like to see what songs about which other people are passionate!

Apparently the original meme called for 25 answers, but I am only going to use 8 answers. These are songs that you can listen to over and over and never get tired of. They don't have to be in any particular order. These are the songs that make you laugh, cry, think of an old friend, whatever the reason. I know it's impossible for many of us to narrow it down to 8. There are just too many songs. Instead, make a list of those 8 songs that move you personally and tell me why. What memory does the song evoke? What emotion? Where were you when you first heard it? Name 8 songs and discuss your emotional connection to the song.

Fair enough?

Let's get started!

5 O'Clock World - The Vogues

OK, first I am going to list an old song from the 60's called "5 O'clock World" by the Vogues. I first became aware of it in the 1990's when we tuned into the new season of "The Drew Carey Show". We were not at all expecting to see that the show's open had been changed to an unbelievably cool little dance number using this catchy song. I believe when it was done, Brian and I stared at the TV, open mouthed, then said, "what in the hell was that and OH MY GOD what is the name of the song???" I made it my mission to track it down that following week. It's the perfect song for an office worker; I know I can certainly relate to it. Plus it's just really, really good. After I heard it used for the show, I had a very vague memory of having heard this song a few times when I was extremely young, probably in one of my older cousins' homes, because they would have been more familiar with it being teens in the early 60's.

Ya just gotta watch it:

Midnight Moonlight - Old & In The Way

Although I don't like country music, I do love bluegrass. I'm talkin banjo pickin, washboard playin, moonshine drinkin hills music of Appalachia. In the mid-70's, Jerry Garcia (banjo/vocals), David Grisman (mandolin/vocals), Peter Rowan (guitar/vocals), Vassar Clements (fiddle) and John Kahn (upright bass) got together and formed Old & In The Way. "Midnight Moonlight" is 5 minutes of pure bluegrass fun. This is a live CD, so you can hear the audience clapping and hootin', especially as Jerry plays his smokin' banjo solo. It's freakin AWESOME. It was a real treat when the Jerry Garcia Band would play it. The Dead never did, though.

Little Willy - The Sweet

Ah yes. My very first favourite rock song. Up till I was about 7 or 8, the only music I was exposed to was what my dad listened to. My mom was not into music at all and never liked it being played in the house or the car. But dad would use his stereo out in the coop while he did the paperwork for his plumbing business, and I often hung out w/ him in there, doing crafts and whatnot. He listened to a radio station that played mostly music from the 1940's, or his albums like The Ray Conniff Singers, Bert Kaempfert and Los Indio Tabajaras.

That changed in the 3rd grade. My uncle, who owned a TV shop & repair service, gave me my very first transistor radio. It was tiny, like may 4" to 6" tall, white, AM only. 9 volt battery. Tinny speaker. Sharon & Diane were up from Long Island, visiting for February vacation. I remember this so clearly. It was snowing hard & we already had several inches. My dad drove me down the street to my aunt & uncle's house. When I went into the livingroom at my aunt's house, Sharon & Diane were sitting next to each other on the couch w/ their new yellow transistors. Uncle Dick handed me my white one. They were excited to see me and told me to tune my radio to WRKO in Boston, which is what they were listening to. My life was changed forever. "Little Willy" became my first fave song.

Sausalito Summernight - Diesel

First heard this one my sophomore year in college at St. Joe's, in Maine, in the fall of 1983. Michelle & I were doing homework in our dorm room, listening to WIGY and it came on. She exclaimed, "I LOVE this song!" and turned it up. For whatever reason, none of the Boston or Cape Cod Top 40 stations I'd listened to the entire summer had played it. Needless to say it became one of my fave songs too, and I made sure to get it on tape off the radio the next time it came on, so that we could add it to our 'party music repertoir'. Note the misspelling on the 45 sleeve. I believe Diesel was from Germany. This song is so much fun and reminds me of a really great time in my life.

Blow at High Dough - The Tragically Hip

This is the opening theme of the show "Made in Canada", about the TV and film industry. The show rain from 1998 to about 2003 or 2004 on CBC. It used to air in the early 2000's on the Bravo Channel & PBS but called, "The Industry". This is one of my fave shows in the entire world. I started watching the show since it was on right after "The Red Green Show". It is so incredibly accurate in its portrayal of the sex, drugs and backstabbing that goes on in the industry. It is also one of the funniest and most cleverly written shows I've ever seen in my life. Rick Mercer is a brilliant comedian and satirist, and Peter Keleghan is easy on the eyes. I'd never heard of The Tragically Hip till this show and I had to track down the CD cause it rocks. No idea what exactly 'blow at high dough' means, but I love listening to it, esp. when I'm on my way to, or in, Canada.

You've Got Another Thing Comin - Judas Priest

The "Screaming for Vengeance" album came out when I was at St. Joe's. Michelle & I used to party with our best friends Mark n Dave over in their townhouse. It was a very serious offense to break 'parietals', which were the college's strict rules about no inter-room visitation of guys and girls. If caught, you got kicked off campus for 10 days. It was also a rule that was broken by everyone. Me & Michelle would head over to Mark n Dave's room to drink heavily, crank tunes and dance, before heading off to the campus club, The Chalet, for more music and dancing w/ our friends. Mark was really into heavy metal and Judas Priest was one of our faves to just blast as loud as possible. It brings back awesome memories of hanging out w/ them, with other friends coming and going, Dave's neon beer sign which was the only source of light in the room. Memories of being stuffed into Mark's closet, Michelle hiding under a desk, the two of us giggling uncontrollably about how bad we need to pee, Mark n Dave trying to shush us, because the Assistant Dean was taking a stroll thru the townhouse, looking for parietals violations. We never got caught. Priest rawks. Ya gotta crank it to 11 and sing loudly!!

Magic - Pilot

My fave childhood summer was the Summer of 1975, when I was 10. "Magic" is among many, many songs from 1975 that I could listen to over and over and over again. There were very few songs that came out that year that I didn't love! Yeah it was a one hit wonder, but if you ask anyone my age about it, they'll all remember it and say it was one of their fave songs too. When I hear it now, it reminds me of that summer where everything just seemed to be right. It was the happiest summer of my life. Diane's too. She & I always wax nostalgic about the summer of 75. I think of her and Sharon a lot when I hear "Magic", and the fun we had that year building our forts & swimming in the pool. My parents & I going to the beach house at Spring Hill to see my cousins & friends of the family, who rented it during the summer. It reminds me of "Bonanza" & "Land of the Lost" and "Little House on the Prairie" both the books & show. Making crafts in the coop, listening to WRKO all day, every day. My first summer sleepover in the coop when we ate candy and listened to the radio all night, then talked till dawn. The 4th of July & the Barnstable County Fair. Being barefoot from morning to night, playing hide & seek when it got dark, donning our cowboy hats & cap guns and getting 'a game' going. Being scared to go swimming in Cape Cod Bay b/c "Jaws" was the blockbuster movie that summer. Ice cream from Twin Acres; pizza from Minerva's; Sunday night Chinese take out from Dragon Light. Big family cookouts, back when all our aunts & uncles were still alive. It was a great summer.

One Summer Dream - Electric Light Orchestra

ELO is easily one of my fave bands ever. I started getting into them in late 1977 and spent all my allowance money on their albums. Jeff Lynne's masterful use of production techniques perfectly marries driving rock & roll with strings and choirs, creating the soaring sound for which ELO is known.

"Face the Music" is definitely one of my fave LPs. Released in 1975, it contains the hits "Evil Woman" and "Strange Magic". Both are good, but definitely aren't my favourite songs from that album. "One Summer Dream", the last song on side 2, is. I first got the LP in the summer of 1978. That was also the summer I discovered "The Chronicles of Narnia", and it was also unusually rainy that year. I remember playing "Face the Music", (along with ELO's "A New World Record" and "Out of the Blue") over and over, while reading the Narnia books over and over, in my room. But my nightly ritual for at least 2 years, well into my sophomore year of high school, was to put "One Summer Dream" on the turntable, shut off my lights & get into bed, and go to sleep with that song as the last thing I heard. It made for some very vivid and interestingly strange dreams, which I wrote down each morning in a notebook. I still have that notebook, and I do like reading it b/c it brings the dreams back as clearly as if I'd just had them the night before. They weren't bad dreams, they were just really surreal and really cool. There was a lot of flying, lots of pretty colours and glittery things in those dreams. They were usually set at the cranberry bog & railroad tracks across the street, and the woods behind my house, places I played & explored as much as possible.

What are your 8 songs?