Another blog meme - 'Six Songs Of Me'

Via a link at the Silicon Graybeard's place, we learn of a meme that's doing the rounds called 'Six Songs Of Me'.  It asks six questions:

1. What was the first song you ever bought?
2. What song always gets you dancing?
3. What song takes you back to your childhood?
4. What is your perfect love song?
5. What song would you want at your funeral?
6. Time for an encore. One last song that makes you, you.

OK, here goes!

1.  I mostly recorded songs off the radio in my much younger days, using an old and rather scratchy reel-to-reel tape recorder, because my pocket-money was only 5c for every year of my age.  That didn't leave much to spare for music!  I could earn more by doing odd jobs and extra domestic chores, and when I finally managed to save up enough for my first LP, it was Jethro Tull's 'Aqualung'.

2.  I was never much of a dancer, but I was born and raised in Africa.  I respond instinctively to tribal rhythms.  One song that can always get my feet tapping is Juluka's 1982 hit 'Scatterlings Of Africa'.  You can hear the original version on YouTube.

3.  My childhood . . . well, I don't particularly like to be reminded of it.  I read widely even during my younger years, and often a particular piece of music would become associated in my mind with a book or books.  A favorite book series was Arthur Ransome's 'Swallows and Amazons', set largely in England's Lake District and on the Norfolk Broads.  For some reason Ralph Vaughan Williams' piece 'The Lark Ascending' has become linked in my mind with that series, so when I hear it, I'm transported back to those years.  Sometimes the memories are even pleasant.  You can hear a live concert version on YouTube.

4.  A perfect love song?  I don't have one.  However, back in 1983 I fell in love.  She was killed.  It was . . . not a good time.  We'd enjoyed the Moody Blues' 'Nights In White Satin' together, and its blend of love and pathos was unbearably reminiscent of her.  I couldn't stand to hear it for a couple of years, but after a while it became a reminder of what we'd shared, and what we'd lost.  I can look back now and be grateful for the short time we had together.  She made me a much better person.  So, it's not my 'perfect love song', but in memory of a lost love.  I guess that'll have to do.  (It's a whole lot easier to hear that song today, because the hole that had been left in my life has at long last been filled.  If you don't know it, here's the original 1967 version on YouTube.)

5.  At my funeral?  Something thoughtful, profound, yet also hopeful.  I think I'd like any and/or all of these three pieces:

• Gregorio Allegri's 'Miserere' (hear it on YouTube);
• 'I Know that my Redeemer Liveth' from Handel's 'Messiah' (on Youtube);
• 'The Cry of the Poor' by John Foley SJ (of the St. Louis Jesuits).  I like the original version from the 1978 album 'Wood Hath Hope', but I couldn't find it online.  Here's a rendition by John Michael Talbot that I also like very much.

6.  A song that makes me, me.  Hmmm . . .  I think I'll go for Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis'.  Here it is.  Turn up the volume and let it sweep over you!

What about it, fellow bloggers?  Have at it!

Peter