Through the Years...Part 1 ~ by Grace Augustine

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Do you remember the first 78 you purchased? The first 45? The first Album? The first 8-track? The first Cassette? The first CD? The first download? Wow, look at this…in just 26 words, I’ve spanned 7 decades. That’s 70 years, friends.

Music has always been an integral part of my soul. I don’t remember my parents listening to much music. My mom listened to KSEN, the local radio station, and CJOC, a station out of Lethbridge, Alberta Canada. She loved Ernest Tubb, Tennessee Ernie Ford (I think she had a thing for Ernies) and Faron Young. My dad, on the other hand, was a boxing aficionado. If there was a match on the radio, and later on the television when we had one, he was glued to it.

The summer of my 6th grade year, I remember grabbing my

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transistor radio, taking a towel out to the front yard, slathering my skin with Coppertone, spritzing Sun-In on my hair, and spending the afternoon listening to the same radio stations, which now played current music as well as country, allowing the sun to damage my skin.

The Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, and the Ventures could be heard blaring from the radio every Saturday. I tanned, cleaned the house, and danced to their beat. During that time, I also fell in love with a few Canadian artists—Ray Griff, Andy Kimm, Ian and Sylvia, and of course, my beloved Gordon Lightfoot.

When I was 14, my mother had saved to purchase a record player for my birthday. It wasn’t a fancy one, not an automatic one, but one you had to change the records when they were done playing. There were little yellow, red, and blue plastic couplers that inserted in the center of the 45 records. I only had 3, so I had to switch them out to listen to different songs or listen to the same one repeatedly.

The first 45 I purchased with my babysitting money was Sugar, Sugar by the Archies. I think I drove my mom crazy playing it over and over. After the 3rd time hearing it, she suggested (strongly) that I maybe stop and do something else.

When I was 16, I was given an upgraded record player, now called

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a stereo, with 2 external speakers that I could put anywhere in my room. It not only played 45’s and albums, but also played something called an 8-track. They were big, clunky looking things that plugged into this space on the front of the stereo. The first one I purchased was a medley of 60’s and early 70’s songs.

Even though cassette tapes had been around since the early 60s, I didn’t begin my small collection of them until I started purchasing albums. I didn’t like the cassettes because of issues of rewinding them with pencils if they didn’t play properly or if they happened to jam in the player.

I began spending all of my hard-earned babysitting money on

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albums. The first album I purchased was the first album of the Statler Brothers, Flowers on the Wall. I wonder what that would be worth today, if I still had it? Some of my other favorites I owned were by The Partridge Family, Bobby Sherman, Bobby Rydell, Tom Jones, Andy Williams, Engelbert Humperdinck, and of course every album I could get my hands on by Gordon Lightfoot. I had quite the crush on him back then and still to this day have great admiration for the man.

About the time my first child was born, we moved into the era of CD’s. From 1982 to today, they have been a mainstay in music. Again, I collected all of Gordon Lightfoot’s CD’s, and own signed copies from Grainne Ryan, James Clark Jones, Matt Andersen, Chad Elliott, and my favorite, Garnet Rogers, to mention a few.

Today, I don’t download much music, but I do have favorite channels on YouTube and listen to many programs on Blues and Roots Radio and Wey Valley Radio. I have a few friends who send me EP’s of their new releases now and again, and I cherish those, immediately transferring them to a pen or external drive.

Music is an art form that transports our hearts and souls to a happy place, a reflective place, a place of deep emotion. It allows us to relax and be carried away on the serenity of its notes or energizes and revives us.

Each decade over the past 70 years has given us many different types of music.

      **The 1940’s = Jazz and Big Band (Artie Shaw, Count Basie, Rosemary Clooney)

      **The 1950’s = DooWop, Rock and Roll, Country (Elvis, Little Richard, Nat King Cole)

      **The 1960’s = The British Invasion, Surfer music, Psychedelic Rock, Motown (Beatles, Beach Boys, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel)

      **The 1970’s = Disco, Funk, Soul, Progressive Rock (Kansas, ELO, Jackson 5, Osmonds, Commodores, Bee Gees, Linda Ronstadt, ABBA)

      **The 1980’s = Hip-Hop, Metal, New Wave, Rap (Madonna, George Michael, Run DMC, Culture Club, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallic, KISS)

      **The 1990’s = Pop, Rap, Alternative (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Hootie & the Blowfish, Backstreet Boys)

      **The 2000’s = Hip-Hop, Rap, Country (Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beyoncé, Brittany Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Keith Urban, Chris Stapleton)

So, as you see, there are so many different types of music one

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would never tire of listening. I prefer the 70’s,  and enjoy finding new-to-me indie artists, like John Tracy, Julian Taylor, Minnie Birch, and bands like Flook, Sheppard, and Merry Hell (who will be our guests later in the month.) Whatever music you like, make sure you take time to listen, close your eyes and hear the words, sway to the beat, and most of all escape and lose yourself for a few minutes from the reality surrounding you. You may catch yourself humming or singing along!