Memories Are Made Of This: The Golden Years of The Sixties Music Revolution
I guess my initial realization that music was something much more applicable than studying the words Christmas concert appreciated my Dad’s collection of 78s’. He was a guy with odd tastes. My contemporize’ parents listened such as Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and so on, or so the big band sounds of the afternoon.
However, my Dad had human tastes that comprised Eastern European folk songs, Scottish bagpipe ballads and Welsh miners choirs; and my very first introduction to classical like exciting bits such as Aram Khachaturian’s”Sabre Dance”.
A fan that was Crosby, my Mom, disliked these sounds she articulates any playing with this caterwauling’ a wooden structure in the rear of the home. This satisfied my Dad, and me personally fine.
He’d mend cycles and tinker with machines in 1 corner, while I’d curl up on a battered leather couch taking a look at images in old film publications, rapping jokes backpacks of Lilliput and studying girlie kind books (Little Girls, Black Beauty, etc.) while the haunting strains of Bulgarian women’s’ voices, Highland airs or even the overpowering noise of Welshmen giving it their all diverging from the older wind-up gramophone; memories are made from this.
I’ve come full circle. With the rising prevalence of world music,’ I am appreciating the harmonies and folk tunes of women together with the novices from Latin and African American origins.
Every creation thinks they’ve undergone the best’ span of songs, but I do believe the sixties have been a particular case. Think about this; any weekend my friends and I had a choice to make. Can we go’ uptown’ into Ken Colliers to watch American blues stars such as Big Bill Broonzy or jazz giants such as Dizzy Gillespie; or maybe into the Marquee or even 100 Club to listen to this up and coming Britishers such as Paul Weller from the Jam, Eric Clapton and the Yardbirds and Georgie Fame with the All-Stars.
Or did we remain closer to home and visit the Riki Tik at Windsor and danger asphyxiation from the room called the Rolling Stones. And that was just the beginning; what about Osterley at which you can listen to John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee and some number of other Southern American blues celebrities; or even Windsor Drill hallway at which, on a Friday night you can appreciate the finest of Cyril Davies and the All-Stars, that generally featured among my favorites, Long John Baldry.
And, if you were ready to risk parental anger, it needed to become Eel Pie Island in Twickenham, a den of iniquity where you could listen to the very best of fresh rhythm and blues; odor strange materials burning in the atmosphere and at which I first struck psychedelia in the form of Pink Floyd whose revolutionary light shows of colored lava lamp blobs forming and popping different contours were the precursor of this giant movie displays of today. To say we’re spoilt for choice isn’t to emphasize a term.
I have not even mentioned the folk clubs scattered about that my friend and I visited Lucy as a singing duo, in which we shared stages Cat Stevens, Duster Bennett. We’d travel to isolated places in the heart of the Berkshire countryside and find ourselves at a barn somewhere, with people sitting on hay bales and listening to the stirring lyrics and voices of Sandy Denny, Davy Graham, and John Remborne, as well as the Wurzels (bring your cider!).
If you wished to dance, but not ballroom, you can stomp in a collection of jazz’ clubs. Bands of styles were constantly on tap; Acker Bilk, Dick Morrisey, the Ken Collier. And it did not cost an arm and a leg to gratify yourself. If we paid over a few quid to get in we felt hard done by. Like visiting Cream in the Hammersmith Odeon or the special events were cheap at the Purchase Price.
There was audio. This was the coffee bar’s era using a box at the corner belting out classics like’Dock on the Bay’, or Buddy Holly Joan Biaz, or Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix; in which to stop! Ahead of the trend for’personalized music’ (catered for firstly from the Walkman and now in it’s the latest incarnation, the iPod) the most recent tunes brought like heads together. There was A Saturday outing on the record store where buddies would crowd to a stall to listen to the most up-to-date from the graphs’.
It was just’style’ however, as the year’s race that sixties music has survived the test of time. A number of our personalities are family names. Such giants are still appreciated by our kids like Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and Bob Marley. The likes of Paul Weller, the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart tour all Around the World. Am I showing my age once I believe it is difficult to love? I am longer.
By the moment the first caveman (or girl ) found how to produce musical’noises’ out of reeds or stone, wood or water, we’ve appreciated the privilege of some fantastic present. Once we hear a tune or melody The way to describe the grab? To characterize the sense of pleasure and exhilaration come together to sing some uplifting work. I dare anybody to say they’ve never believed. And when a few souls insist that’s the case I feel sorry for these.
