The Hit Parade

That coy minx, emily sears, has tagged me. I now walk through the city with a dart in my shoulder, the tranquilizer calming me and encouraging me to:

1. Share a list of songs that defined you during at least eight significant years of your life beginning in early childhood.

2. There could be more than one song for each year, if you like, and and they should be songs that were released or popular in that year (but if there was one important to you that year which was released earlier, that is acceptable).

3. Please tag your post 'playgroup' and then tag four other people to do the same. 

1.  When I was in junior high school, I was very busy.  Busy creating the Aubrey that types this very post.  All that I am was either polished, researched or dreamed about during those years.  Those were also the years when I seemed to be incurably sad.  And I considered music to be the pool to reflect my thoughts.

Paul Simon, "American Tune".  This is a political song.  But in 1975 all I heard were these words,

"Many's the time I've been mistaken,
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I'm alright, I'm alright
I'm just weary to my bones..."

And they meant all the world to someone who was badly in need of comfort.

Paul Simon - American Tune (1975)

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2/3.  Then there were the years in the mid-1980's when I was a romantic, waiting patiently to be disappointed.  I wanted to hear the same yearning, and to hear the beat of someone else's broken heart:

The Smiths, "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side"
The Smiths, "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out"

The Smiths - The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

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The Smiths - There is a light that never goes out

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4/5.  But during those same years, I also harbored a wish for unabashed joy - untouched by cynicism or irony.  And I wanted it beat over my head by a tirade of guitars.

Big Country, "Fields of Fire"

"The shining eye will never cry
The beating heart will never die
The house on fire holds no shame
I will be coming home again"

Big Country, "In A Big Country"

"I never took the smile away from anybody's face
And that's a desparate way to look
For someone who is still a child" 

I remember playing my Big Country records at full blast - at 11, actually - with my ears smeared across the speakers, my heart and emotions racing.

Fields of Fire - BIG COUNTRY

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Big Country - In a Big Country

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6.  I was a college graduate when I first heard this (released in 1978).  I was a secretary in a collections agency.  I was not happy with my job, or with other people.  I expressed myself clumsily and oddly.  But I had the wit to lose myself in a song that I then didn't completely understand.  It was like taking a walk in the darkness, enjoying the directions that just exceeded my grasp.

The Only Ones, "Another Girl, Another Planet"

Only Ones - Another Girl Another Planet

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7.  In the late 1970's, I also carefully stepped into the lava pool that was punk rock.  There was a lot of muck to step over, before discovering a passion so virulent that it could lift you off the ground.

The Clash, "Tommy Gun"

The Clash - Tommy Gun

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8.  This is the one.

1965.  A madness of words, somehow linking together to convey a message.  I bless the chemical, the intelligence, the truths, the lies that whispered the lyrics to this song in his ear.  Dylan in the mid 1960's was unexplainable, undecipherable; he was as exotic and unreachable as a unicorn.

Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone"

Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone 1966

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I invite everyone to take part in this little musical exercise.  During the course of this composition I did more thinking and remembering than I thought myself capable of.