The sound of music

Anyone who knows me well knows that my I savour my childhood.  I also have quite an obsession with music.  I couldn’t sleep last night and I started to think about my history with music.

One of my favourite memories is watching the Muppet Show, particularly the one that had Elton John as a guest star.  I think I might have been five or six and it was my first introduction to music or at least, the ability to pay attention to it.  I know every song Elton sang from that episode and at the end of it all I was probably more in love with him than Miss Piggy was.  I’ve been a huge  fan since.  I could probably do a presentation on him. *Nerd Alert*

I started paying attention to words and decided that maybe I could be a singer.  When I was about seven, my cousin and I would put our towels on our heads and pretend we were in a band.  We were by no means destiny’s children but we had our own thang.  Jodie Watley was a massive star then and we emulated her in our routines.  We had a couple of hits that we performed for my brother on the days that we carpooled.  Think 7am listening to two eight year olds sing out of key.  I still remember one of them, it was called ‘whoa’.  The routine involved a shoulder shudder, similiar to a tick, combined with a hand on the hip and a subtle waist shake.   

Both: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa…

Cousin: My baby,

Me: Is going to the town

Cousin: (echo)To the town

Me: Is going to the front

Cousin: (echo) To the front

Me: Is going to the side

Cousin: (echo) To the side

Me:  Is going to the back

Cousing: (echo) Is going to the back

Both repeat ‘Whoa’.

Silly huh?  But you would not believe the amount of time, effort and fun it took to come up with that!  I think our other hit was called ‘serious’.  We figured the first one was pretty childish and tame and we were really going for was the Jodie Watley theme with a tonne of sass and over the top dance numbers.

I don’t know why or how, but I became enamoured by Tom Jones.  My parents had a record player and I’d go skipping around the living room singing and replaying ‘She’s a lady’, a million times. The record ended up getting scratched and it was bye bye Tom.  I definately understood Carlton’s obsession with Tom Jones.  What a voice!

As I got older, I got introduced to different types of music. Case in point,  an older male cousin skanking every afternoon to Bob Marely, UB 40 and Peter Tosh.  My brother reciting rhymes from Tribe called Quest and Notorious B.I.G.  My sister belting out Whitney and Mariah.

I gave up my dreams of singing after elementary school and just stuck to singing in the shower. I’ve always gravitated towards movie soundtracks because there are often songs that add more meaning to the movie than it would have on its own and I see life in the same way.  I’m not sure what the soundtrack to my life is, but there are definitely songs that have stuck during some great and not so great times.  I just thought of two albums that I first bought when I came to Canada and they kept me up last night.  I might be a little dramatic but I think they came out at the right time for me to have heard and received their message.

What songs make you tick?