{"id":1574,"date":"2008-02-01T12:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-01T12:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/01\/sad-music-great\/"},"modified":"2008-02-01T12:10:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-01T12:10:00","slug":"sad-music-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/01\/sad-music-great\/","title":{"rendered":"SAD MUSIC, GREAT BIG SEA, STONE PONIES, BEATLES – RIDING THE WAYBACK MACHINE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Great_big_sea_2\"<\/a>
\nHave you ever heard a song that caught you up short and brought you almost to tears?  Boston to St. John<\/a> — sung by Great Big Sea<\/a>, does that to me, no matter how many times I hear it.  In fact, when we pass over St. John on the way to Europe and it shows up on the map on the little TV, I get weepy just hearing it in my head.  What is it about this romantic, acoustic song accompanied by a pipe and a guitar?  Just listen (this one has lyrics posted) – it’s a nice thing to end the week with.<\/p>\n

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I don’t think I’ll ever get over the wonder of what music has come to mean to me, again.  Of course I was a typical teen fan, and then in my college years obsessed with Bob Dylan<\/a>, the Beatles<\/a>, The Doors<\/a>, Cream,<\/a> anything by Ellie Greenwich<\/a>, anything from Motown<\/a>, Linda Ronstadt<\/a> (especially the Stone Ponies phase) – listen to this primo girl song:<\/p>\n

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I also loved the great folkies like Pete Seeger<\/a>, Arlo Guthrie<\/a>, Phil Ochs<\/a>, Judy Collins<\/a>, Joan Baez <\/a>( oh – and Peter, Paul and Mary <\/a>(need I go on?) and Simon and Garfunkel<\/a> — among others.  Then I went into semi-retirement.  I made mix tapes for my kids – Good Day Sunshine, Hippy Hippy Shake, Here Comes the Sun, the Garden Song, Carolina… you name it.  And we sang a lot.  But the deep, gut-wrenching feeling you get when the music drills right to the center of your soul — that all came back more recently.  And differently.  Once, my Deadhead<\/a> son asked me why I had never gone to one of their concerts.  The answer was peculiar, I guess.  I heard all my music for free at marches.  And peace rallies.  Who needed to buy tickets?  <\/p>\n

The music was, literally, the soundtrack to my life.  Every song I hear pulls a movie into my head — me on a bus to Manhattan for a march, in a boat on Paradise Pond <\/a>with my boyfriend, dancing like crazy someplace or other.  Now, though, the music seems to bring the mood to me, rather than meeting it half way.  I can be moved from zero to 60 – solid to weepy – in about one chorus.  Maybe it’s the passage of time.  Maybe it’s that I hear far more of it alone.  Maybe it’s just that much of what I listen to evokes other times in my life.  Today, driving home, I had my iPod plugged into the car radio, on random shuffle, and Pete Seeger singing All My Life’s a Circle<\/a> did it. Again.  <\/p>\n

Of course, anything from the Juno soundtrack<\/a> just makes me laugh.  And lots of Bruce just makes me want to dance.  It’s not all sad stuff.  I guess I should try to figure it out, but I’d rather just think I’m newly available, or RE-newly available, to those feelings.  And be grateful for the music that brings them<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever heard a song that caught you up short and brought you almost to tears?  Boston to St. John — sung by Great Big Sea, does that to me, no matter how many times I hear it.  In fact, when we pass over St. John on the way to Europe and it shows … Continue reading SAD MUSIC, GREAT BIG SEA, STONE PONIES, BEATLES – RIDING THE WAYBACK MACHINE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3,4,6,7,8],"tags":[1673,15,1751,430,1746,1747,1748,365,10,871,1750,1749],"class_list":["post-1574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-aging","category-baby-boom","category-culture","category-life","category-music","tag-arlo-guthrie","tag-bob-dylan","tag-deadhead","tag-ellie-greenwich","tag-emotion-and-music","tag-great-big-sea","tag-juno","tag-memories","tag-music-2","tag-pete-seeger","tag-simon-and-garfunkel","tag-the-beatles"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-po","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}