The Old Tunes Are The Best

The old tunes are the best. So the saying goes and this proves especially true when you haven't heard them in a while!


The CD player on my computer has been acting up recently. I like to have music playing in the background while I work so I borrowed my daughter's old boom box only to discover that the CD player on that only works sporadically. It does, however, come with a cassette player (remember those) and, being one of those people who find it hard to throw things out even if I never use them anymore, I just happen to have a drawer full of cassettes. 

Wow, what fun it was to go through them all and be reminded of music that I'd liked enough to buy back then but hadn't listened to for years.  Two tapes in particular caught my attention because they were compilations: Old Gold 70's (Vol 2) and The Rock'n'Roll years 1964-1967. 

Old Gold 70's has such hits as 'Spirit in the Sky' (Norman Greenbaum), 'Maggie May' (Rod Stewart),'Whiskey in the Jar' (Thin Lizzy) and 'I Hear You Knocking' (Dave Edmunds) - all songs which instantly brought back memories of my teens and, in the case of 'Maggie May', school discos!

I'm sure our school discos were fairly typical events. Started off with girls on one side of the gym, boys on the other, huge empty space in between, and a parent/teacher playing DJ in the hope someone would get up and dance - isn't the latter the point of a disco? Now, I was a shy kid at school, but I loved to dance, and I couldn't bear the "we'll dance when someone else gets up and dances first" attitude that most people seemed to have because, if you take it to it's logical conclusion, no-one would get up and dance! So I'd pluck up the courage, go to the DJ and request 'Maggie May', and then persuade at least one friend that if we danced at the edge of the room nobody would really notice - and guess what? As soon as we started dancing, lots of other people got up to dance too!

But I digress. Except that might explain why I spent more time dancing round the room than working when I first put the tape in.     

The 'Rock'N'Roll Years' album covers a period when I might have been too young to be interested in pop music if it weren't for my older siblings who listened to the radio much more than they watched television, though many of the songs have become such classics that it would be hard to miss them. 'House of the Rising Sun' (The Animals), 'Whiter Shade of Pale' (Procol Harum), River Deep, Mountain High (Ike and Tina Turner) 'San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)' (Scott McKenzie) and 'All You Need Is Love' (The Beatles) are just some of the fabulous songs included. 

Nowadays, with I-pod shuffles and The Cloud, we can make our own personal mix of songs and performers to listen to whenever we want (and one day I might get round to it), but while it's easy to upload CD's for this purpose, those old favorites on cassette are easy to overlook unless you want to buy then again digitally. I grumbled when the CD players didn't work, but now I'm grateful for the chance to be reunited with some of my favorite songs. 

Must finish now....... 'Maggie May' calls!

Is there a song which has special memories for you from your teens?