As I head out to Nashville for the annual pond cleaning (as quickly as I can, the sister of Jen, Anne and her husband have a fish pond that needs to be cleaned out every spring and therefore Jen and Lynne have gone down to help and I join in this year (a reason to see friends and hang out and party (with some wet work thrown in)) I have been making some mix CDs and that leads to a topic that I have been wanting to Blog on for a while… Music.

The earliest memories I have of music involve country music and 8 track tapes that my parents had. They also had a number of albums of country music. A few of my favs at that time were Johnny Cash and Donna Fargo.

While I don’t remember this, my mother says that I would listen to Johnny Cash’s Cry, Cry, Cry over and over again and sing along like there was no tomorrow.

What I do remember is really liking Ring of Fire and I Walk the Line and it wasn’t until I saw the recent biographical movie Walk the Line that I realized what I really liked about Johnny’s music. In one scene of the movie June Carter asks Johnny how he came up with that sound, that freight train drive in his music. That’s what I like about his music!!

When I was in first grade I asked for and received for Christmas Shaun Cassidy’s 1st album. He was all the rage with the girls at school and I wanted that album. (Not to mention that in hindsight I had a huge crush on him). I must have listened to that album hundreds of times hence cementing in my psyche a love for young good looking “boy” singers with mediocre talent. By the way my favorite song was his remake of Da Doo Ron Ron. Here is the scary part… I think it was the same year, I would go over to this girl Jill’s house and we would practice a dance routine to the song that we were planning on performing at a talent assembly at school (which I don’t even think our school had). And yet is took me to age 18 to come out of the closet!!

Throughout elementary school whenever we had “open gym” which meant we could do any activity we wanted, there was a group of girls who would listen to music on an old phonograph set up in the corner of the gym’s stage. The album that was most listened to was the soundtrack to Grease (obviously the teachers and parents couldn’t really understand John Travolta as he sang about tits and creaming) and the girls would dance along as I would I.

My next musical memory is sketchy but I think important yet involves some set-up. As I’ve noted on here before I have played the Cello since I was 8 years old. Throughout elementary school and middle school I was a member of a group called “Little Mozarts.” It was a group of musical children who got together once a month to listen to a speaker on some aspect of classical music and then a few students would perform. During these formative years because I was a classical musician I didn’t listen to popular music (I think this came from my private music teacher who had quite a disdain for popular music) and really only hear county music in my parents’ cars. At one of the “Little Mozarts” meeting as an icebreaker we were asked who are favorite “rock” person or group was. I didn’t want to be embarrassed as having no idea so I just copied what an earlier person had said and answered Styx. In hindsight I find this funny.

The next memory is at Maria Schreiber’s birthday party and once again the topic of music came up… this time it’s what we wanted to listen to and almost everyone voted for Kiss and so it was put on. I had no idea what I was listening too and really not sure if I liked it.

This took me to high school….