Music, News, Weather

The Sound of Summer

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Today’s post comes from Bill

Ever since our last presidential election, I’ve been taking the news in small measured doses and I’ve been wary of letting it just wash over me unless I am prepared. Consequently, instead of keeping my car radio tuned by default to the MPR news channel, I have an iPod, loaded with my choice of music and set up to shuffle through the selections whenever I drive anywhere.

Today, Robin and I were running a short errand together. The weather was sunny and warm with a light, fresh breeze. As we drove, the music selection that came up was a samba by Antonio Carlos Jobim, “The Girl From Ipanema” and I remarked to Robin that I have always considered Brazilian sambas the perfect evocation of summer– so warm, so languid. If Jobim doesn’t conjure up a hammock and a cool drink, I don’t know what does.

https://youtu.be/aFlEOn20UiA?list=RDaFlEOn20UiA

But maybe you know.

What music perfectly evokes summer for you?

32 thoughts on “The Sound of Summer”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    The pop tunes from the summers of 1967-69 evoke summer. My friends and I, ages 13-15 years old at the time, hung out at the city swimming pool during those summers. We were too young to have a summer job, so we had hours to kill each summer. There was a speaker at the top of a red pole that blasted KLEM, 1430 on the AM dial. It’s play list was anything by the Beatles, “Red Rubber Ball,” “I’m Enery The Eighth I am,” etc. I hear those songs, and I am back at the pool, hot, sweaty, covered in baby oil.

    I also have been trying to avoid too much news, although there are some things I like to hear (book reviews, interviews with non-politicians). Podcasts have been my salvation. However, yesterday I was riveted to the testimony of You-Kinow-Who. Things feel as tense as the Nixonian years.

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  2. The Beach Boys’ music leaps to mind. “California Girls,” “Surfin’ USA,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” etc. Makes we want to go to my nearest beach, lay out my towel, and crank up the transistor radio, all while surreptitiously checking out the cute girls in their bikinis. (Not proper for an old man, that’s why surreptitiously. 😉 ) Of course, they’d all be laughing so hard at my transistor radio that it wouldn’t matter.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. I have the same summery reaction to the Beach Boys. “I Get Around” puts me in a specific time and place. Also the other purveyors of surfer music, Jan and Dean.

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  6. On MPR this morning, John Berge played “Solace: A Mexican Serenade” — a Scott Joplin rag played by the fabulous Butch Thompson as the epitome of summer. It just happens to be my absolute most favorite song in the entire universe, so I had to agree. Another favorite from when Trial Balloon first started up is “Everything I Do is Goin’ to Be Funky”. I think that was my theme song for a while.

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    2. I’ve never particularly liked this song, but it was popular in the summer of 1970 and when we were driving to Colorado on our honeymoon, it played on the car radio incessantly. For that reason, I always associate it with that trip.

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  10. I remember driving out to Colorado those three summers with the radio on – If I Had a Hammer played a lot… And I had my transistor the last summer (1960), remember Chantilly Lace, Cathy’s Clown and other Everly Brothers, Personality (Lloyd Price), Multiplication (Bobby Darrin), and there’s one I still find myself humming but can’t quite catch.

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  20. OT – Just learned that our own Chris Norbury’s book Castle Danger was awarded a B.R.A.G. Medallion from the website indieBRAG.com. BRAG Medallions are awarded to independently published books that have achieved an overall level of excellence in all aspects of publication as determined by the selection process and reader evaluations and reviews of the book.

    Congratulations, Chris. What a nice feather in your cap. Don’t imagine that there’s a large monetary award, but it’s a start.

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    1. i agree with the brag folks. it is a great book. i hope you find time to dig in and build a bunch of the continuing stories. the charachters do hold up and make you want to read more.

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