January 15, 2018

A 52 Week Autobiography Through Music – Week 2 – 50s Rock and Roll

52 Week Autobiography Through Music_Week 2 from Pancycle on Vimeo.

This week is 50s Rock and Roll week with a famous tune by Gene Vincent - so famous My wife started singing along immediately when I put it on and she's Belgian and was born in the early 80s! I found that to be good justification for using Be-Bop-a-Lula as the soundtrack for this week's post. I can't escape the feeling that I (like most eye witnesses) am recounting a history of my own making and that much of what I "recall" is at best inaccurate but the fact that this music and these artists remain in my memory at all means to me that there was an imprint made and that, after all is the point of this endeavor - to build up a picture of the musical environment I lived in and how it shaped me. I am finding great joy in going back and listening to the music I heard when I was young and that is an unforeseen outcome of this project. I didn't go into this with the intention of "rediscovering" the music of my past. In fact there is no rediscovery necessary. As I have been making the list of artists and genres to cover throughout this year long project I am realizing that even though I don't actively listen to some of the music that will appear here it has never diminished in importance in some sense. This is revealing in that I have heard and forgotten (or at least tried to forget) a lot more music than I will cover this year meaning the music that makes it into this project is permanently imprinted in my soul - it really is a part of who I am and not just a passing preference.

I digress... or do I? It is my blog after all. Please be patient while I try different things and try to make this entertaining on some level. Please feel free to leave comments here on the blog. I would love to hear stories about your experiences with music growing up and how it shaped you! Also comments and ideas about how I might improve this Vlog are welcome. 50 episodes to go so there is room for improvement!

Lastly, I name a few artists who were on regular rotation in the house while I was growing up and here are some links for further reading:

Elvis Presley: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley
Gene Vincent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Vincent
Carl Perkins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Perkins
Johnny and the Hurricanes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_and_the_Hurricanes
Jerry Lee Lewis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Lee_Lewis
The Ventures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ventures

 

3 Responses to A 52 Week Autobiography Through Music – Week 2 – 50s Rock and Roll

  1. Patricia says:

    I was eager to see how/whether this era would figure in your autobiography. Who can forget “Reveille Rock”?!?! I thought of Johnny and the Hurricanes straightaway when I read about your vlog plan.

    The other thing I thought about was how very young children are drawn to certain tv commercial jingles. You had one but I don’t remember what it was. What about your daughter? Though perhaps that’s more about psychology than about music.

    • pcadmin says:

      I too thought of Reveille Rock but when thinking of this era but that song has such negative associations that I went with Gene Vincent instead! 🙂

  2. Marie-Noëlle says:

    Cela me fait trop plaisir d’entendre cette musique qui t’a ‘fondé’. Pour moi aussi, que de joyeux souvenirs, un immense sourire et une irrépressible envie de danser sur cette musique… Merci Darren! Je suis impatiente d’entendre l’épisode suivant…
    Et si tu parles un peu plus lentement, ce sera plus facile à comprendre pour moi…

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