Music

Up until 7th or 8th grade most of the music I was exposed to beyond nursery tunes and songs we learned in school, was the music of my parents' record albums. I hardly remember most of them but I do recall some favorites: The Guns of Navarone, The Sound Of Music, Oklahoma, The King and I. We knew the scores and/or the words by heart after hearing them played so many times.

My first experience of Pop Music was riding to Canandaigua Lake in a friend's family car. His older sister and her friends (teenagers to our preteen status) sang every song that came on the radio... songs of the "Johnny Angel", "It's My Party (and I'll cry if I want to)", "My Boyfriend's Back (and there's gonna be trouble"), etc. ilk. It revealed a new world to me. Soon, all that would change.  Maybe just something girls get into before boys. Heck, we (boys) were just separating ourselves from incessant sports-related activities.....girls were just appearing around the corner of our lives. But like I said, all that would soon change.

When I was in the 8th grade, my high school sister asked me what album I would like for my birthday. She suggested one (Meet The Beatles) from a new group she had heard about but I chose Johnny Tillotson because I liked "Poetry in Motion" and at that point hadn't heard of The Beatles. It's funny to think how in one month the (musical) world changed. By the time my birthday came, the Beatles had become a global phenomena and it didn't take long before we were listening to 'Meet The Beatles' non-stop round-the clock on the family stereo (while getting parental warnings on how that music was going to "ruin the needle").  Soon the "British Invasion" hit in full force and we began to define ourselves by our favorite groups. Everyone loved The Beatles but The Rolling Stones fans fancied themselves a bit rougher around the edges, The Dave Clark 5'ers less so, etc.

It was a pretty innocent age of music - the British rock and soon after the Folk resurgence.  Like those teenagers on that drive to Canandaigua, we soon knew every song on the radio.