Music I Like
Hummmm.............music. I love music. The first memory I have of music is the radio at night. There were songs like 'Cookie, Cookie, Give Me Your Comb' and 'Lipstick On Your Collar'. That was a couple of years ago. Then I remember visiting my aunt and uncle in Ft. Worth, Texas, around 1965. My mom and aunt had gone out shopping and my aunt came home with a Beatles album called 'Meet The Beatles'. I became a big Beatles fan at that time, and still enjoy their music. I remember waking in the middle of the night whenever the Beatle's song 'And I Love Her' came on.
I also really liked the music of the 60s. Hits by the Turtles, the Buckinghams, Classics IV, Bee Gees, Beach Boys, Dusty Springfield, Four Seasons, Herman's Hermits, Mamas and the Papas, Monkees .......you get the idea. I think this was a very special time in music. It sounded great and was simple and easy to listen to.
But then everything changed for me in 1971. It was about 9AM on a spring Saturday morning. I was making a left hand turn off of Sprague going north on Napa when the song 'Country Roads' came on. The DJ announced it as a new singer named John Denver. From that moment on my life changed forever. I went up to Valu-Mart and bought the 45. I think on the flip side was 'Poems, Prayers, and Promises'. I'd never heard anything like this. Understand, this was the time of the hippy movement, yahoo Mountain Dew, Hillybilly bread, and the beginning of the ecology movement (Expo '74 in Spokane?). I have been a HUGE John Denver ever since. I've seen him in convert several times and even went and seen him in Aspen a couple years before his death.
The first time I saw John was in 1972, in concert in the Kennedy Pavilion at Gonzaga University. I was only about four rows from the front. I should have went up afterwards to see him but I had a splitting headache that night and just wanted to go home. What a mistake! If I'd only known who he would become. Listening to his music also became somewhat of a spiritual thing for me. From the things he wrote about in his songs to things he would say in interviews. John Denver had a special way of communicating ideas, ideals, and feelings. I was open to it all. And still am. Because of his music I chose to go within for answers and eventually learned to meditate.
