reflections of the way life used to be

do you ever go through your old cd's? i did recently, for the first time in a while... two giant albums of them. a friend had reminded me of a great old song, 'cry to me.' i knew it from the more dirty dancing soundtrack, but i have a feeling she owned the original solomon burke record. listening to that album started a frenzy, as ben witnessed, of listening to every cd from childhood i've got, and enjoying the memories each song brought back.

i spent my childhood just a little crazy about music... i guess you could say it was encouraged in my family. aside from each of us playing various instruments, we really loved listening and singing along to all kinds of music. my dad took my sisters and i for 'rock & roll drives,' during which we would sit in the back of the isuzu trooper while my dad drove along country roads and played tapes of bruce springsteen, huey lewis & the news, creedence clearwater revival, and anything else he had laying around. a typical saturday afternoon in the lansford household meant three little girls dancing and singing - sometimes performing, sometimes with makeup and costumes- around the living room with the stereo blasting.

our musical tastes knew no boundaries. the first cd i ever owned was joan jett & the blackhearts, thanks to my dad. if i was in a singing mood i'd go through my mom's record collection, which is how i came to know every lyric of every peter, paul & mary, simon & garfunkel, bob dylan, mamas & papas and beatles album.

whenever our relatives would come to visit- and they did every summer- my sisters and i would prepare a musical routine to be performed one evening during their stay. once it was an annie medley (i sang daddy warbucks' part in the duet 'anything but you,' need i say more?), once it included pat benetar- but it was ALWAYS dramatic. my parents still have the pictures to prove this, and it's one of my most cherished childhood memories. i was blessed to have a very simple, innocent and uncomplicated childhood. music is, for me, a reminder of that.

going through my old cd's brought it all back, while simultaneously reminding me of what a freak i was. for example, one of my favorite albums that i memorized every song from was 'partytime 50s,' a compilation cd my mom bought to serve as background music for one of my dad's birthday parties - as a joke. i absolutely loved dancing and singing to every track on that album, from 'sh-boom' to my favorite, 'tallahassee lassie' (she dances to the bop, she dances to the stroll, she dances to the walk, yeah she can rock & roll), i simply could not get enough. of course, i immediately played it when i found it in my collection the other night, and when i started listening i just felt... good. it was familiar and funky, i still know all the words, and i'll be damned if every song doesn't have a great beat for gettin' your groove on.

what is my point? i guess after living in a foreign country for over a year now i can appreciate the things that bring back a sense of home, belonging and familiarity. and for me, one of those things is a compilation of songs from the fifties.