Sunday 27 April 2008

The Music of My Childhood

Here's a fun idea I have stolen, quite brazenly, from blogchum Linnet! Basically, you list the albums/songs you remember your parents playing in your childhood. To this day there are songs which, when played, immediately remind me of the blazing hot summer of 1976, or hiding amongst my granddad's runner beans when I was a tiny tot! Oh nostalgia...such a seductive mistress!

A Windmill in Old Amsterdam
This was played on the radio near constantly in my early childhood. I was FASCINATED by this song...windmills, mice, clogs, what's not to love!?! My nana had one of those large radio/record player combinations made...I used to think Jimmy Young actually lived in there, playing all the songs...

Don't Go Breaking My Heart
Well, 1976 may have been the year of the S*x Pistols for art school students in big towns, but for me it was the year my little sister was born. In every "Mothercare" and "Boots" we went to, this Elton John and Kiki Dee song was playing. To this day I hum the tune whenever I go into "Mothercare"! If you click on the link you get to see Elton perform it with Miss Piggy! Quelle Joi!

Hopelessly Devoted to You
"Grease" mania really took hold of me a year later. I didn't get to see the film until it came on the telly a few years later, but watching all of the film clips on "Top of the Pops" made me want to BE Olivia Newton John.

Evergreen
Oh boy, did my mum love this song. I *think* it's the only song La Streisand actually wrote. It is a cracking song, but my mum played it so often I'm sure she wore out the grooves on the record. My DH once told my mum what a big Barbra Streisand fan he was, how it was a shame she didn't write any more of her own songs, what a fantastic voice she had etc...I sat, slack jawed at his shameless fibs, but bless him, he was only trying to charm his mother-in-law...lol!

Ghost Town/Too Much Too Young
Now, all of my cousins from Coventry were much older than me and were in their teens by the close of the 1970s. I thought they were soooo cool! They were very into Two Tone/2Tone! I suppose because The Specials really did put poor old Cov on the map. Yeah, Coventry rocks! These songs are really, really great, and I still have a crush on Terry (but blimey the list of crushes I have just goes on and on and on...)

Anyway, if you'd like to join in with the nostalgia fest, do let me know the songs of your childhood!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Oh my giddy aunt! The Windmill in Amsterdam! That takes me back!! I listened to this over and over too, as well as Froggy Went a Courtin' and I'm a Pink Toothbrush You're a Blue Toothbrush by (ye gads) Max Bygraves.

And Ghost Town - your parents WERE cool! I thought the lyrics fantastic when I was going through my anti-government badge wearing phase - badges including CND, Greenpeace, Anti-nazi, you name the cause and I wore it as a badge and spent many an hour ranting with my friend K and her chappie R the Anarchist (who are both now social workers in Liverpool). Lol, the last time I saw them they were becoming quite middle class and R was getting quite cross about K visiting bourgeois boutiques, Lol.

Sorry I digress...

And Grease, I still love that film.

Great trip down memory lane dearie.

Dulce Domum said...

Oh you can't be in solidarity with the workers if you visit posh boutiques! Whatever happened to anarchists anyway? It used to be that you couldn't walk down the high street without tripping over an anarchist! My suspicion is that they have *all* become social workers.