Songs That Mean Something To Me: "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran

I've been experiencing some difficult things lately.  Nothing that can't be taken care of, so don't worry.  But a friend of mine was recently having a bad moment and she mentioned that she was going to listen to music to try and make herself feel better.  It reminded me of my favorite line from the movie "Across the Universe": "Music is the only thing that makes sense anymore...play it loud enough and it keeps the demons at bay."  It got me thinking about different songs that have some sort of special meaning to me.  So the next few posts or so on here are going to be a series: Songs That Mean Something To Me.  Not the most original series of posts, but there isn't much original in the world anymore anyways.

I've been a Duran Duran fan for as long as I can remember, but only in my teenage years did I really start paying more attention to them.  I mean, I knew "Hungry Like The Wolf" and "Rio," of course, but apart from that, I never really knew anything else about their music.  That changed when I was 16 and heard "Come Undone" for the first time.  I was blown away, because I had no idea this was the same band.  To say I was impressed was an understatement, and I looked forward to hearing it when the local "We Play Anything" station played it, and though I couldn't share my excitement at being a fan with anyone at school and couldn't afford to buy "Astronaut" when it was released, I was definitely on my way to where I am now.

In 2007, when their album "Red Carpet Massacre" came out, I was still in a pretty bad place.  My father had died less than a year before, and I was having trouble concentrating on things, so I didn't buy it, something that has since been rectified.  On top of that, a month after my father's funeral, I'd had to attend the funeral of one of my closest friends' 2 year old son.  I also hadn't cried since either funeral.  Literally, no tears whatsoever.  I just kind of froze up, still not quite believing that my father and the little guy I'd considered my nephew was gone.  I'd even resorted to calling my dad's not-yet-deactivated phone, just to hear his voice on the voice mail.  To be quite honest, I was more robotic than human, I think.

That changed one weekend during the summer of 2007, when I was alone in my apartment at technical college.  I'd decided to get some music to put on my then-brand new iPod (which has since been replaced due to shutting down completely after nearly 5 years of use), and one of the artists on my "To Buy" list was Duran Duran.  I'd heard from some friends that if I got anything, I should get "Ordinary World" and "Come Undone."  They had me sold at "Come Undone."  I immediately bought it and "Ordinary World" and started listening, happily singing along as loud as I could to "Come Undone" because hey, I was alone in my apartment and could do whatever the hell I wanted.

And then I listened to "Ordinary World."  If I've never heard a song before, I'll usually sit quietly and listen to it so I can get an idea of the words before I sing along.  This was different.  I don't know whether it was the lyrics or the music or everything combined, but it did something to me.

For the first time in months, I cried.  I thought about my father and my "nephew" and how unfair it all was, and I cried.  Not weeping, either.  Legitimate sobbing.  It was like something that was broken had finally been fixed, as cliche as that sounds, and all it took was one song to fix it.  I put the song on repeat for about an hour and just let myself cry out everything I'd felt over the months since I'd put myself on auto-pilot.  I think it was just what I needed at the time, even though I hate crying and don't like to do it even if the occasion calls for it, especially if other people are around.

At the time, I didn't know the backstory on why "Ordinary World" was written, but knowing now what I didn't know then, it makes almost perfect sense that it was that song that helped me get back on the road to being normal again after two horrific losses.  Even now, in the moments when I get upset about my father, "Ordinary World" is my go-to song, the song that I use to convince myself that I can keep going and not default to auto-pilot again.

They'll never read this, and if they do, I can't say I wouldn't be slightly embarrassed, but I'm going to say it anyways: Thank you, Duran Duran.  This isn't the only song of yours that's helped me during a diffcult time, but it's the first, and the first is always the most important.  Just...thank you.

A Vinyl Inheritance: My Record Collection

Many of my friends who will read this already know this part of the story I'm about to tell, but for those of you who don't, I'm repeating it again.

My father died of lung cancer in November 2006.  He was 59 years old.  I was 19 at the time, away from home for college for the first time, and was fortunate enough to be able to come home and say my goodbyes.  My father, though I loved him fiercely and still miss him with all my heart, was not the type of man to plan ahead most of the time, and I know it caused some fights between him and Mom, but they always managed to figure it out somehow.

I say this because of what I say next: my father died without a will in place.  Nothing to tell us what, if anything, we'd be receiving once he left this world.  I'll be honest: I didn't give two shits if he left me anything.  At the time, I was too focused on the fact that I'd lost my father to care.  I knew there wasn't any money, and I knew that any insurance would go to paying the funeral bills.  Additionally, there was my little sister, who was only 13 to worry about.  I didn't have time to worry about what'd I'd get from Dad's things.

The summer after he died, my mom pulled my little sister and I aside and told us that even though Dad hadn't left an official notarized will, he'd discussed with Mom and put down on paper some things he wanted his kids to have.  She'd already given my older siblings their items while I was away at school, but wanted to wait until I was home to tell my little sister and I what we got.

My little sister got Dad's rifle and the pistol Dad had carried in Vietnam, a tiny little thing that looked about as threatening as a water gun.  There were no bullets for either, and there hadn't been for a long time, which is why we managed to not shoot ourselves as children.  Also, it was kinda hard to get to the rifle, since it had been buried behind all manner of things in the back of my parents' closet for years, and we hadn't known about the pistol until the summer before Dad died.  I got Dad's car, something that annoyed my little sister to the point where I joked that if she wanted it, she could shoot me for it.  I ended up selling the car for scrap money because when a mechanic took a look at it, he said it would be cheaper to buy a new car.  Broke my heart to do it, and Wendy, my little sister, didn't speak to me for weeks before and after I did it.  But I also inherited something else, something that, to me, was worth far more than any money I could ever get for it, because of what Dad's reasoning for leaving it to me was.

The other part of my inheritance were my father's 3 Beatles albums: Beatles For Sale, Beatles IV, and Yesterday...And Today.

I'd always known my father was a Beatles fan.  Growing up, if the Beatles came on the radio, he'd refuse to change the station.  Granted, he refused to change the station normally, but he'd be more forceful about it if there was a Beatles song playing.  His first exposure to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was during Vietnam, when a barracks-mate had the vinyl and played it constantly, to the point where Dad and his fellow barracks-mates got sick to death of it and threatened to toss the soldier and his vinyl to the Viet Cong if he didn't give it a rest.  In his later years, he was able to go back and listen to the album without getting sick of it.  When I bought the VHS remaster of Yellow Submarine at age 13, Dad was the one who sat down and watched it with me, and who best put up with my repeated viewings.  He knew all the words, and seemed just as amused by it as I was at the time.  One of my favorite memories of my father is connected to the song "Hey Jude," but that's another story for another post.

Most importantly, my father encouraged my love of the Beatles at a time when I was taking a lot of shit from people at school for being open about my love of the Beatles.  In my hometown, it wasn't cool to listen to the Beatles, and if you did, you kept quiet about it.  I've never been the kind to keep quiet about my love for things (ask my friends who have to put up with my constant babbling about my love for Duran Duran), and I didn't realize that I was opening myself up to teasing.  I had two other people in my grade who loved the Beatles, and were more than happy to talk about them with me, but they were considered "popular kids" and therefore immune to the teasing about it that I suffered.  My father, in addition to threatening to kick the crap out of the bullies, made sure that I knew that there was nothing wrong with liking the Beatles, and encouraged me to learn as much about the band as I could.

I didn't know he owned any of their actual records until junior high.  I was doing a presentation on The Beatles for English, and we were promised extra credit if we brought in props related to our subject.  I had already packed my Yellow Submarine VHS and the songtrack CD when it occured to me that maybe my parents could help me further.  So I asked my mom and dad if they could help me, and I was handsomely rewarded: my mom had three albums, all compilations, which we quickly deemed wonderful but not really good for my purposes.  That's when Dad looked through his records and pulled out the three albums I mentioned above, and told me that he'd bought them when they were released and they were the musical purchase he'd always been the most proud of.  I was amazed.  There in my hands were 3 original Beatles albums, 3 things I never thought I'd be close to at all in my life.  I brought them in for my presentation and guarded them with my life.  One of the two people I'd talked about them with in elementary school asked if she could hold one, and my teacher encouraged me to pass it around.  So I did, letting everyone know that they belonged to my dad and if they broke the record, he'd break them.

Years later, I sat on the couch with the three albums in my hands.  I was 19 1/2, my father was gone, but he left me the albums that had been so important to him.  When I asked my mom why Dad had left me the records, she said "When we discussed it, he told me that you would get the records because he knew that if he left them to your older siblings, they'd just sell them for money, and that Wendy wouldn't want them at all.  He left them to you because he knew that out of all his children, you'd be the one who would properly appreciate them and love them."

Dad was right.  Those 3 albums are some of my most prized possessions, and the start of what I hope someday becomes a larger record collection.  For now, though, even though it's small, thanks to my father I have the greatest record collection in Pennsylvania.

"Though I know I'll never lose affection for people and things that went before, I know I'll often stop and think about them, in my life I'll love you more." - "In My Life" by The Beatles

An Interesting Education

I don't remember a time in my life when I wasn't listening to music in some form.  One of my earliest memories is of my mother singing lullabies to me as a little girl.  Another is of sitting on my father's lap while he played DigDug on our old Tandy 1000 and annoying him by trying to sing along with the highly annoying background music.

I remember sitting on my brother's bed in what ended up being my room when I got older, listening to Vanilla Ice and becoming convinced that he was quality music.  I remember one of my older sisters singing along to the radio on a trip up to Maine when I was about 6 1/2.  I don't remember ever NOT having music in my life.

I have, as a 23 1/2 year old, what you might call an "eclectic" taste in music.  This can be attributed to the musical education I received growing up.  Now, I'm not talking about the kind you get in school; the kind that involves learning how to play the violin/cello/viola/clarinet/trumpet/trumbone/saxaphone/French horn/drums/what have you or the kind that you get in a classroom.  I'm talking about the kind you get at home, from your friends and family.

My musical education was an interesting mix of past and present, and it came mostly from one source: the radio.  Ah yes, the radio; that now apparently forgotten instrument that delivered music to some of the greats and made them want to make great music of their own.  The radio was important to me growing up, because most of the time, that was how I got to hear the vast majority of the music that I have on my beloved iPod now.

My parents were eight years apart in age, but their musical tastes was, in my mind at least, one of the things that they shared and part of what made them compatible, despite all appearances to the contrary.  My late father was born in 1947, my mother in 1955.  My mother first heard "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" on the radio; Dad heard it so much on vinyl in the barracks when he was in Vietnam that he threatened to throw it and its owner to the Viet Cong if the soldier didn't stop playing it so much.  They both watched The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, though Dad remembered it much more clearly than Mom does.

Both of my parents had cars, and both of these cars had two important features: a cassette player and a radio.  In Dad's cars (first a Dodge Caravan, then a hand-me-down Oldsmobile Delta '88 from my grandparents, and finally a Chevy Corsica that was left to me when he passed away), the radio was always tuned to 94.5 3WS, a Pittsburgh station that played what is now termed "oldies."  From him, I learned to appreciate Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and many other bands that most people my age have never even heard of these days.  His in-car cassette collection wasn't much, but it did hold one that got played over and over again once my little sister and I discovered he had it: ABBA Gold.

Mom's cars, on the other hand, were always a bit more new.  I only remember the make and model of her two most recent cars (a Plymouth Breeze that she got when I was in 5th grade, and a Hyundai Elantra that she got when I was in college), but there was always one thing that stayed the same, no matter what car she drove: the music.  Mom preferred a mix of songs from the past and present, so occasionally we would listen to 3WS, but her station of choice was 95.6 KEY 95 FM (now 96.5 96 KEY FM, having jumped over on the dial slightly when I was in either my last year of high school or my first year of college), billed as "The best variety from yesterday and today."  It was mostly '90s music up to the present, but every weekend, they'd play '70s and '80s music.  It's from my mother that I came by my love of David Bowie, Queen, Bruce Springsteen, and the other greats of those decades.  Mom mostly let us play children's music on cassette in her car, but I distinctly remember in about junior high a tape of the Royal Guardsmen getting heavy airplay in the Breeze.  The Elantra is probably the best for music, because while we can no longer listen to the tapes, we can listen to CDs.  Mom's in-car CD collection includes Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, Adam Ant, and Stevie Wonder, among others.  A cursory check of my iTunes playlist would confirm that I got most of my musical tastes from my mother.

However, my parents weren't the only ones who helped me along.  I have an older brother and two older sisters, and they listened to their fair share of music.  As previously stated, my older brother listened to Vanilla Ice, and though it pains me to admit it now, Ice Ice Baby was a favorite song of mine growing up thanks to him.  My status as a Duran Duran fan is undoubtedly owed to my older sisters, and I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't be one without listening to them singing at odd moments when I snuck down to their room as a toddler.

I was also fortunate enough to own some cassettes and vinyls of my own as a child, though most of them are either worn-out or broke when I was little.  Two of my prized possessions were a copy of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" on cassette and Smokey Robinson & The Miracle's "You Really Got A Hold On Me" on vinyl.  I had a Mickey Mouse record player and a child's tape recorder, and I listened to them constantly.  Consequently, when 8th grade American Cultures rolled around and we did a music appreciation unit, I was one of the only kids in class who knew all the words to "We Didn't Start The Fire" from memory.

When I got older, my parents allowed me access to their tape deck, which contained all sorts of treasures.  Thanks to what I jokingly referred to as "stealing" and my parents called "supplementing my collection," I became the owner of some excellent finds: My father's copy of "Hot Rocks," Mom's copies of "Hot Space," "David Bowie: The Singles 1969-1993," two cassettes containing the first four Bruce Springsteen albums, and a Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons collection, and my brother's copy of "Violator."

When you combine all of these and stir gently, you get my present-day iTunes collection, which contains all the above-listed artists and more.  It's a collection befitting my musical education.

You also get stories.  I have so many stories about music, ranging from concerts I've seen to how certain songs affect me, even stories about who and what I associate certain songs with.  I'd like to share some of them with you, which is why I started this blog in the first place.

Consider this your first lesson.