June 11, 2015- Music, Stuffed Animals, and Writing-Part 2

   Mom still has all of her records, even the Rosemary Clooney 78s. She doesn’t have her old record player that could play these though. I have my record player only it hasn’t been used in about 10 years. That stereo has been in mom’s room for even longer than that.

    I can’t believe that I used to like listening to her musical soundtracks- Gigi, Gypsy, Oklahoma, South Pacific, The Music Man, Bye- Bye Birdie, Jumbo, and The King and I. We watched these movies together too.

    I wish that I never got rid of all but 3 of my Beatles records. I’m kind of embarrassed about my McCartney crush. I did have a poster of him and a Beatles one on my wall during that late 80’s- early 90s phase. 

    I thought that one of our 8^th grade Communion Breakfast (pre-graduation) songs used Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” with our school name replacing “Rock and Roll”. When I recently looked in that booklet, I saw “Graduation” to the tune of Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” which I do remember. But there was also another called “Be Good Eighth Grade” to the tune of “Be Good Johnny” that I definitely don’t recall.

   Why had there even been 2 songs? The former says 1982 with words written by 4 of my classmates and the latter is 1983, with 5 names.  A couple of them sound familiar; they might have been the class of 1984. I am really confused about this.

   Mike mentioned that his class had “The Reflex”. Was it used for this same event or as the main song for his 8^th grade dance- Medieval Times theme? If it was the former, I wonder how they would have changed the words to fit graduation/grade school memories.

   I’m so bad at remembering song lyrics. I do know some Christmas carols still, I think. The songs that I remember most are the ones from my childhood and it’s not like I can recall many of the words. There’s Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane”, Lionel Richie’s “You Are”, Kenny Rogers- “The Gambler”, Wham! – “Careless Whispers”, and McCartney/Wonder-“Ebony and Ivory”.

 

                                                                 Rosemary Clooney

                                                                Rosemary Clooney

 

 

Music Memories 3

Grade School Music Memories

- We listened to Susan’s Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album during lunchtime one day in the 5^th grade.

-Secret Santa gifts that I received- K-Tel’s Wings of Sound in 6^th and John Cougar’s American Fool in 8^th.

-Our second grade teacher Miss M would sometimes bring in her guitar and play for us and we’d also occasionally sing songs like” Friends Are Like Flowers”.

-Our class sang John Lennon’s” Imagine” during a school assembly/show.

-For an art project in 6^th or 7^th grade we had to pick out an album cover to draw. I chose Grease which at the time I liked but no longer did a few years later.

-A Blondie record, the one with” The Tide is High” on it, was playing at Nancy’s birthday/slumber party.

-The church group did the play Bye, Bye Birdie in the early 1980s. Mom saw this on Broadway when Paul Lynde and Gene Rayburn were in the cast. She has that Playbill.

-We went on 2 trips to the Garden State Arts Center. Both were religious type events- a music group and a play (musical?). Mom got the record of the former.

- 4^th grade plays- My class did Shenandoah; originally it was going to be Oklahoma. Mike’s class did The Sound of Music.  

 

Note- the last 3 photos are from the internet