Sibling Assignment 2018:3: Evoking Memories

Christy assigned our third sibling assignment for February 2018:

 

Building playlists have become a part of our lives now because of the new ways we listen to music. If you could build a perfect playlist of ten songs, what would be the theme and what would on that list?  Explain the theme and why you chose those songs, or some of the songs. You can find Bill's post here and Christy's post here.

 

My theme for my playlist is “Evoking Memories”.  When I listen to each of these songs, a very specific memory comes to mind.

 

Here is my special playlist:

 

1.     O What A Night—Franki Valli and the Four Seasons

2.    You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling—The Righteous Brothers

3.    Love Will Keep Us Together—The Captain and Tennille

4.    Another Gray Morning—James Taylor

5.    I’m The Greatest Star—Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl”

6.    Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone—Bill Withers

7.    Suddenly Seymour—song from “The Little Shop of Horrors”

8.    Suddenly I See—K.T. Tunstall

9.    I Try—Macy Gray

10.  My Love—Lionel Richie

 

Here are the memories evoked when I hear these songs.

 

1.     Frankie Valli and the Four Season’s hit, “Oh What a Night” always reminds me of my friend Kellee Crall Mills, and singing it with her, and our routine we did to this song in P.E. in Junior High.  I also have a memory of us singing it at the top of our lungs as we walked along the street of Kellogg, possibly to Kellogg Junior High School.

2.    I remember in high school being at a football game (in Post Falls I think), sitting in my then boyfriend’s car, and the Righteous Brother’s song “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” came on the radio.  At that moment I knew my boyfriend and I would be breaking up soon….because we had lost that lovin’ feeling.

3.    During the summer of 1975, Mom bought a radio that had a pull up antennae, and you could actually pick up KHQ FM out of Spokane on the radio to listen to music.  That summer, the song I loved the most was Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”.  I have a memory of sitting on our front porch at home during the summer, it was cloudy, like a thunderstorm was brewing, and I was listening to the radio on the front porch, and singing along to the songs.

4.    I had purchased the James Taylor album J.T. when I joined the Columbia Record Company, back when you could get 12 albums for a penny, or something like that.  J.T. was one of those first free albums.  I listened to this album a lot in my junior high and high school years.  But it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I totally understood the lyrics to the song “Another Gray Morning”.  I remember listening to it one time, and I could relate to the woman in the song, of how her days were gray with depression, and it was totally where I was at that time in my life. Understanding the lyrics of this song was a bit of an epiphany for me.

5.    I was always a Barbra Streisand fan, and love singing her songs.  I love the movie “Funny Girl”, and I actually have two distinct memories from the song “I’m The Greatest Star” from this movie.  One is performing this number in the Miss Kellogg Pageant my senior year in high school (I was second runner up), and later, I also performed the song in the University of Idaho Talent Show my junior year (and received second place).  I later performed it in a show at Sixth Street as well.

6.    If I would leave town for a few days, and would talk to Paul on the phone, he would sing Bill Wither’s song “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” to me each time I left town.  Paul doesn’t like it when I leave town, and this song always reminds me of that, in a wonderfully sweet way.

7.    When Paul and I lived in Glendive, Montana, we participated in a fund-raiser for the local hospital foundation called “The Fractured Follies”.  They would hire a director to come in, and the show was made up of local talent who would sing show tunes on stage.  It was a fun event to be a part of in that community.  One of the years, Paul and I were given the song from “Little Shop of Horrors” called “Suddenly Seymour” to sing.  We both fell in love with this song, and it reminds me of the love we felt for one another in those early years of our marriage when we lived in Montana.

8.    In the summer of 2006 Paul and I loaded the girls into our newly purchased Dodge Caravan and headed to Southern California for a family vacation.  The music I remember most was K.T. Tunstall’s CD “Eye to the Telescope”, and the song I remember most from that album was “Suddenly I See”.  When I hear this song, I remember traveling through Nevada in the middle of the night, stopping at 2 a.m. at an iHop in Las Vegas, and driving across the Mohave Dessert.

9.    We had made the decision during the spring of 2000 to move to Kellogg from our current home in Meridian, Idaho.  We didn’t make the actual move until August, so we spent the summer in Meridian.  A song that was playing frequently on the radio that summer was Macy Gray’s “I Try”.  Whenever I hear that song, memories of our last summer in Meridian come flooding back.

10.  When Paul transferred to the University of Idaho my junior year of college, he owned a copy of Lionel Richie’s album, titled “Lionel Richie”.  We listened to this album a lot, and when I hear songs from this album, it reminds me of our budding romance and falling in love with one another that year.  But the one song on the album that really stands out to me is the song “My Love”, and especially the line that says, “just thinkin’ about you baby just blows my mind.”