Life Coaching: A Few Words About Music
/I watched the movie “Yesterday” and wanted to cry. Considering a world without the music of the Fab Four would be a very depressing place to live indeed. Can you imagine having never heard the phrase “all you need is Love?” Or “we all live in a yellow submarine.” Or even “goo goo ga joob?” Depressing, isn’t it?
Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s made for some rather amazing musical creations. From the angst of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” to Dylan’s snarky “Don’t Think Twice” to Mitchell’s darkly lovely “Case of You,” to the Temptations telling us us it’s all a “Ball of Confusion,” we were entertained, enlightened, invigorated, and entranced by music that changed our lives in ways that are difficult to explain. Of course, the same era brought us such questionable classics as the bubble gum Melanie song “Brand New Key” , or “Loving You” by Minnie Ripperton (I always thought that song sounded like two dolphins mating), but we can forgive such whimsical nonsense because they were part of the whole. I am still trying to figure out what part Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols had to play, but they can’t all be winners, can they?
My point today is I really have no point—just nostalgia for music when musicians actually took the time to be proficient on their instruments rather than relying on electronics to make up the deficit. I doubt there will ever be another Jimi Hendrix whose left handed guitar playing amazed and awed us all. I am skeptical that the world will ever produce another Janis Joplin or Otis Redding. I am uncertain the world would receive another John Lennon, George Harrison, Ray Charles, Tom Petty, or Roy Orbison.
My grandson has recently discovered Cyndi Lauper, and while she’s definitely not 60’s and 70’s music, I am encouraging him to listen to “Time After Time” time after time. In fact, I made the boy a playlist of such 80’s classics as “Walking on Broken Glass” and “Everybody Walk The Dinosaur,” simply because it’s preferable to mindless pulsating electronic beats that make up techno dub-step. (My very soul shudders at the thought that his musical tastes would run to “I have a pen, I have an apple, I have a pineapple.” Ugh...)
I’m gonna try “Funkytown” our on him next. It may smack of techno-type beats, but at least it was original at the time it was written.
I realize each generation thinks their music was the best. I get that. But...here are a few things to think about while you’re lying awake in your beds...
1. Where did Janie get her gun?
2. What did Mary Jane do after her last dance?
3. What is the real meaning behind Puff The Magic Dragon?
4. Whatever happened to Billy the Mountain and Ethel the Tree?
5. Whose bathroom window did she come in through anyway?
6. Did Desperado ever come to his senses?
7. Did David really know a secret chord that pleased the Lord?
8. Where did the devil go after he went down to Georgia and got beat in the fiddle playing contest?
9. Just who was Bobby McGhee?
10. What do I do if I can’t get next to you?
These are just a few things I’ve contemplated as a young whippersnapper that the current generation will never know. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just that it’s a different thing. I’m glad I have my music and I’m grateful the happy memories it evokes. I am also grateful for the pain...the pain of that first dramatic breakup. We girls all had at least one, where we listened to Joni Mitchell, ate a carton of ice cream with our peeps and sobbed as we sang “Case Of You” in hollow, broken voices. That’s a sisterhood right there in itself. I am grateful for songs of protest in the midst of the Vietnam war era, songs calling for peace and grateful for the day it finally happened. I am grateful that when I want to just chill out, I have Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr. I have Bowie and Badfinger. I have Zappa and Clapton. I have Trower and Fogelberg. I have Prine and Lee. I have Steppenwolf and Sister Sledge.
And most of all, I am grateful for Jesus. He’s the one who truly deserves gratitude. He allowed me to grow up in that crazy, peace-loving, war-mongering era that produced some of the finest music ever written. It made me the happy, old hippie I am today. God bless! Maranatha! And peace out!✌️
