Day 29 of the LoL’s epic thirty day challenge, Dear Reader, and today we’re remembering songs from childhood…
*Sounds like gobbledygook, Clicky… /lights up and smokes…*
*And what does that mean?!*
^Legs & Co: Birdie Song / The Tweets (TOTP, 01 Oct 1981)^
Enjoy! β€
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Day 29: songs remembered from childhood
Cade’s first song pick…
A lot of this is going to come from television. I can see no way around it. It’s either going to be television, church or school since that is the holy Trinitronβ’ of streams providing music to young ears in my time. I’ve already done a lot of stuff from my childhood, so in order to meet the criteria for today’s specific challenge, I guess we’ll go with television seeing as how church and school were pretty much still stuck in 19th century music when I was a kid. Not that television was that much different, but unlike church and school, television certainly was trying to figure out how to upgrade their musical models.
^Merrie Melodies & Looney Tunes – Opening themes.^
Roob’s first song pick…
Weird that Cade chose to focus in on TV music from his childhood, as the one song I’d fixed upon including in this post – before even receiving his choices – was the theme tune for a sports show on TV…
*No, that’s not the one I’m specifically thinking of Clicky, though we did watch it at Sunday teatime…*
*Fuck! I’d forgotten just how much cricket I was subjected to as a kid…*
*I’ll admit, there was quite a lot of it I did like…/flicks ash… But that’s not it. Seriously, we could be here all fuckin’ day if you’re gonna keep on guessing, Clicky…*
*Close…*
^Classic UK TV Theme ~ Pot Black (Black And White Rag)^
Cade’s second song pick…
Loads of music came in via the idiot box. Mostly musical snippets and blurbs. Lots of fade-ins, lots of fade-outs, and lots of musical chunks that really didn’t belong to a tune, but rather just disconnected and otherwise disjointed musical sounds added for dramatic effect. A xylophone tapping out a cadence to let you know that the news was on. Or maybe a bar or two of some dramatic horns with kettle drums banging away in order to snap your attention away from whatever you were involved in whilst simultaneously raising your pulse rate. Television producers were some devious fucks way back. Loads of people graduating colleges with sociology, psychology, and marketing degrees, and you must put them to work in some capacity in order to prove the the educational system is A) working, and B) pays off in the long run. The practical side being, these young minds you are employing bring with them fresh perspectives on squeezing dollars out of the public, whilst simultaneously remaining malleable enough that they can likely be made to not make distinctions between light and dark. Afterall, they need their jobs. They gotta eat. So you cross some lines here and there…so what?
^Zoom opening credits – Season 3, Cast 2^
Roob’s second song pick…
*Kid shows full of kids. Yuck! Ironic, too, considering that one ran for decades… /blows smoke rings… Oh, I didn’t know Russell T Davies worked on that show…*
*Was it a case of ‘Why don’t you… regenerate Doctor Who?’ …/smirks…*
^We could have been anything – Bugsy Malone^
Cade’s third song pick…
The answers as to why samplers and sampling became so popular in music are right there, you possibly just aren’t looking at things as they really are. Everything got put on the clock at some point. Everything got condensed. The radio was still a bit fluid with respect to time, and also fluid with respect to their programming. But not television. Television was relentless. You have a block of time, in time, and that’s all the time you get. That means anything and everything is over-produced. No raw, no rare, everything is well-done. Rehearsed and practiced to perfection. Sequenced. Quantized. Sterilized. Clean. Machine like. Nothing left to chance. The art has been, and is still being, perfected.
Digress
You’ve got somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds to get your brand out there with a shiny and smiling face, and you gotta do so in such a way that people are gonna beat a path to your door. God only knows how much time, effort and resources went into producing that perfect commercial, but you can bet it was a lot. Pouring weeks or even months into a few seconds. Getting into people’s heads a few seconds at a time, and staying there. Yeah, I’m thinking that it caught on.
^SPEED RACER 1967 Cartoon Intro^
Roob’s third song pick…
The one song that completely captivated me during my childhood, was also encountered via the telly. When my school put the play on for Christmas, I practiced and practiced singing it before the afternoon of auditions in the school gym. I was so excited to be asked to stay on once Mr Ford, the teacher/director, had made his shortlist of candidates for the leading role. That excitement was matched by my complete and utter disappointment to discover that I was only there to help stack the gym benches back along the wall once the auditions were over…
*/shrugs… Yeah… /stubs butt… I got two speaking parts and simulated the tornado sound, so I actually ended up with 3 roles in the play, Clicky…*
^Somewhere Over the Rainbow – The Wizard of Oz ((1/8) Movie CLIP (1939) HD^
The final word to Cade…
My intent today was not to be morose or glum and gloomy. I had no idea what I was being fed at the time. Just someone born into the world when I was, and have spent a good portion of the rest of the time trying to make some kind of sense of it all. And, I honestly don’t remember much outside of television with respect to music other than a lot of the ground I’ve already covered in both this 30-day thingie, plus a lot of the writing I’ve done over the past few years. I guess I make distinctions between television and radio music because music on the radio seemed to be more about giving, whereas stuff on television was all about taking. Music on the radio willingly opened a door and gave freely, whereas the stuff on television was more akin to sticking a crowbar in the door to break in or maybe picking the locks. So yeah, the music I remember from βmy childhoodβ is a lot of bits and pieces of nonsense. A chaotic scramble of nonsensical noise created for the express purpose of getting inside my head, and staying there. Consumer 4 Life.
^The Mamas & The Papas – Monday Monday^
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We reach the end of the song challenge tomorrow and the final task…
*And Cade and Poppy and Legs, Clicky… /pats snout… And you…*
… When we’ll be suggesting songs that remind us our ourselves. If there’s a song that reminds you of yourself, Dear Reader, pop it into the comments, below, and we’ll include it in the grand finale π
Until then, have a Song π
^Fade Away And Radiate – Blondie (1978) FLAC Remaster 1080p^
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