Baboon Achievers, Media, Music, Stories

The Sound of Our Lives – Steve Grooms

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It’s been two years since we lost Steve.  Below is one of his most iconic posts (in my view).

I’m passionate about music and life, so it is not surprising that the two often meld for me. Certain moments become inextricably associated with the music I was listening to at that time. The most familiar example of this is how couples can have a song or performance that becomes “our” song. But that sort of things happens over and over for people like me. We end up associating music with certain times places we have known. I keep hearing the phrase: “the soundtrack for my life.” And that, for many people, colors how they think of moments from their past.

The worst place I ever lived was a shabby little house on the West Bank near Seven Corners, but that place is also associated with the moment I discovered the music of Leo Kottke at the nearby Scholar Coffeehouse. As awful as that house was, Leo’s music was one of the happiest discoveries of my life. Some of the associations we make are complicated.

Sometimes the soundtrack we can’t help associating with something is wildly inappropriate to anyone else. I discovered the Lord of the Rings trilogy early in grad school. At the same time, I was listening to a lot of Ravi Shankar sitar music. Clearly, the epic trilogy is as thoroughly European and Nordic as Shankar’s music is Indian, but when I read Tolkien I keep hearing sitar music. It is, after all, exotic, and I found the novels exotic.

I think of these matters a lot now because I keep encountering two types of music that are linked in my mind to the pandemic. I discovered the music of the traditional jazz band Tuba Skinny just as the virus reached the US and changed our lives. When I listen to YouTube videos of the band, as I do for maybe an hour each day, I keep reading comments from others who say they could not bear the pandemic without the uplift of Tuba Skinny music.

Similarly, early in the virus shutdown period, Mary Chapin Carpenter began recording Songs from Home. She films herself with her animals (White Kitty and Angus, the golden retriever) at her farm home in Virginia. She delivers her performances (filmed on her phone, I think) with a breathy intimacy that is incredibly calming. Unless you somehow hate her music, I urge you to sample some Songs From Home to read the comments of all the people who say their sole salvation in this difficult time is the music she makes for them.

What about you? What music do you associate with particular moments from your past? Do you have “our song” with anyone?

30 thoughts on “The Sound of Our Lives – Steve Grooms”

  2. This is Abosku’s comment from first thing this morning before WP went wonky.

    I was 17, a senior in high school. It was 1969. I had done NOTHING towards heading for college, and had no real plans at all about what I’d do after graduation. My brother was in Vietnam with the 9th Infantry Division. I knew that I didn’t want anything to do with the infantry, but understood that I’d eventually be drafted and get no choice.
    I was sitting in a little coffee house with live folk music, when the band played a cover of “Someday Soon” (a Judy Collins thing) that included a line about the singer’s boyfriend being “21, just out of the service”. I did the math and decided on enlisting for 3 years, which I subsequently did. By opting for 3, I avoided the infantry (I was in the engineers.)
    Now, 54 years later, the steel guitar entrance to that song takes me back to so much that happened, and to so much difference that childish decision made in my life. I’m grateful to Judy Collins, to that cover band, and to that coffee house.

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  8. A Thanksgiving Carol from the LGMS
    Gandolph The Thanksgiving Turkey to the tune of Rudolph.
    Gandolph the Thanksgiving turkey had a day with many woes.
    And if you ever saw him, you’d say, ” Delicious! Head to toes.”
    All of the other turkeys used to laugh and call him names.
    They always let poor Gandolph eat the final bits of grain.
    Then one dark Thanksgiving Eve the farmer came to say, “Gandolph, with your meat so white, won’t you be my guest tonight?”

    Then how the turkeys loved him and they shouted out with glee, “Gandolph the Thanksgiving turkey! It was better you than me!”

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  10. There are three songs that I associate with my first two years of college. During my freshman year the two songs that seemed to get the most airplay were “Fire & Rain” by James Taylor and “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot. Sophomore year “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart played endlessly on the radio.

    Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I am very grateful for this group.

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  11. Considering the number of gardeners in this group, I thought I’d share this:

    ~ A Prayer of Thanksgiving by Rev. Max Coots

    “Let us give thanks…
    For generous friends…with hearts as big as hubbards
    and smiles as bright as their blossoms;
    For feisty friends as tart as apples;
    For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us we had them;
    For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;
    For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn — and the others — as plain as potatoes, and so good for you;
    For funny friends, who are as silly as brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;
    For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who — like parsnips — can be counted on to see you through the long winter;
    For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;
    For loving friends, who wind around as like tendrils, and hold us despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;
    And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past, that have been harvested – but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;
    For all these we give thanks.
    Amen.”

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  14. Daughter and family gave Sandra a wonderful day. She sat and did Sandra talk with her two Minnesota grandchildren for quite awhile.
    Since I only really knew the rock and roll played on the radio that I did not really like , it took me awhile to find music to identify with. Folk and classical at my first college. Just the genres, not so much particular pieces. Oh, Shenandoah stood out for both Sandra and I. The plaintive quality suits my nature. The desire for home I guess for both of us for different reasons. We once owned about 7-8 versions. I should collect a few again. Maybe I will listen to Kottke tonight. I have 4 CDs. I have 3 Chapin Carpenter CDs but not that one.

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  15. I came home one summer evening to an empty (San Francisco) apartment, which was rare to have the place to myself. Put on the Beatles’ White Album, the side with Julia I think, and while sitting listening came to the realization that I was an original person, with a unique set of abilities, desires, traits, habits… (and so was each person I knew). I will never hear the song Julia without remembering that feeling.

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  16. About halfway through my freshman year at Carleton, my roommate’s parents sent her some money to buy a stereo system and speakers. When she finally decided on what she wanted and brought it up to the room, we laid on the floor with our heads between the speakers. The first song that she played was Dust in the Wind by Kansas. To this day, when I hear that song, I think about the glorious sound coming out of those speakers, and how incredible it seemed that day…

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  17. The Platters singing “Harbor Lights,” “Only You,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and “The Great Pretender” take me back to babysitting in 1956. After the kids had fallen asleep, I sat on the floor in front of my portable record player the rest of the evening and played that record over and over. I was a romantic at heart at thirteen, I guess.

    At another babysitting gig it was Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” that I played repeatedly.

    Some of the early Beatles songs transport me to the dance floor of The American Club in Moscow in 1964. “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “This Boy,” “Love Me Do,” and “Twist and Shout” were on heavy rotation. My preferred dance and Scrabble partner, Georg Harrison, and I danced for hours and never tired. He was an archivist at the embassy; his career goal was to marry a wealthy woman, so I was never considered a viable romantic partner, but we sure enjoyed dancing together.

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  19. Hi kids. Missed the blog this morning so didn’t know there was issues. 🙂

    I rememeber stopping at my friend Kevin’s house. He played Steely Dan Aja, and talked about his first hearing it.
    He died suddenly a few years ago. And Aja always makes me thing of him.

    And my friend Mike, the minister who married us (and came to my bachelor party) he and I would talk about Johnny Cash’s version of ‘Tennessee Stud’. Michael has passed too, but that song is always his.

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  20. The summer after I got out of high school I shared an apartment with a friend. We had eclectic record collections. There was quite a bit of country – 24 of Hank Williams Greatest Hits got a lot of play, I recall, and it was often juxtaposed with Joni Mitchell’s Hissing of Summer Lawns album, and Bob Dylan’s Desire. Dolly Parton’s All I Can Do album also came out that summer.

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  21. Johnny Mathis is inextricably connected in my mind with wasband. Cat Stevens’ album “Tea for the Tillerman” was the soundtrack of a very painful divorce. Tomorrow is his 80th birthday. It’s also the 58th anniversary of my arrival in this country; today’s Thanksgiving feast was my 58th. Tallying up the wins and losses, I have much to be grateful for. Much to grieve as well. Grateful for my fellow baboons.

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