Music vs. Monday: Earliest Memories

Mix Tape Pouch by Etsy seller Bravemoon

I decided today’s Music vs. Monday post should take us back a few decades. I wanted to try and remember the first time I really listened to music. I mean when I first really heard something that made me dance or just captured my attention. Oddly enough, I found a mixed tape that my mom and dad made when I was a little kid and, as I listened to it all, of my early childhood memories started to wash over me and I realized that these songs were, well, kind of cheesy. But no matter, because they had an impact on me and some of them made me what I am today. Sort of.

My dad was always a storyteller, a person who valued a good pause before delivering the punch line of a joke and so it’s no surprise that one of his favorites on the mixed tape was "Along Came Jones" by The Coasters. I remember thinking when I was a kid that the men who sang this song were all big floating cartoon fish heads. Not sure why…

Chuck Berry Pen and ink drawing by Etsy seller Bruce Line

Moving on, the next song had something to do with Donald Duck and I couldn’t really bear that, so I hit the fast forward til I came to that classic song that makes all pre-teens giggly: "My Ding A Ling" by Chuck Berry. If you have never heard this song, then you have never been to a drive -in, soda shop, or 50’s diner. Yes, it’s goofy. Yes, it’s corny. But that's the point, right?

My mixed tape ventured into some adult territory with the classic "Love Potion Number Nine" (the Searchers version although the Clovers version is much better.) As a kid, I just thought the song was funny but listening to it now, I can really feel the origins of the song and I might have to put it back in my mix. Who doesn’t like songs about kissing cops?

After this song, the tape ended up getting scratchy and so I pulled out another childhood tape and pressed play. Moving from one tape to the next, I jumped from the 50’s to the 80’s and discovered Michael Jackson. So much has been written lately about the late pop star so all I will say is this: My earliest memories with MJ were spent on my mom’s front porch. My brother and I would sit and roll a ball back and forth (I know, what kind of game is that?) but while doing so we would lapse into this Michael Jackson-induced trance while singing along to "Beat It" and "Billie Jean".

Beat It Toddler Tshirt by Etsy seller Cantaloupe Corner

On the surface these songs may all seem cutely cliché, but what ties them together for me is their ability to tell a story and to paint a picture. They were vaudevillian and dramatic, not simple songs of lost love but tales of deeds played out in dramatic scenarios. Perhaps these tunes, which I now carry around in their coffin-like cassettes, were laying a foundation that I didn’t recognize until recently. Perhaps there was something inherent in me which at an early age sparked up when Michael Jackson sang, "No one wants to be defeated.” Perhaps. Or perhaps they were just pop songs that made me laugh and helped me keep my rhythm as I cruised in my high top roller skates at Skatetown on Friday nights.