YOUR SAY: MEANINGFUL SONGS
We asked: The death of “Be My Baby” singer Ronnie Spector had many of us thinking about the playlists of our lives. What songs have been the most meaningful to you and why?
The music used to be up close and personal
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, there was Elvis, of course, but there was a radio DJ named “Murray the K.” Murray Kaufman somehow was able to assemble numerous, then-popular performers and put on shows highlighting them at the Brooklyn Paramount and Brooklyn Fox theaters in New York City.
My friends and I went to two or three shows, taking the Long Island Railroad from Long Island, waiting on line to get a ticket, (no pre-order of tickets). Cost was $10.
There was a movie that began around 10 a.m., and the “show” followed. We saw the pop singers of the day, and heard their great music, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “The Tracks of My Tears,” Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops,” Freddie “Boom Boom” Cannon’s “Tallahassee Lassie,” The Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love,” Frankie Avalon’s “Venus,” The Skyliners’ “Since I Don’t Have You,” and, of course, Ronnie Spector and The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.”
There were other performers and other shows with different performers, but you couldn’t beat the price or the entertainment. There were no bodyguards, just fabulous show-stopping performances, and we screamed until we were hoarse. Johnny Tillotson (“Poetry in Motion”) appeared in one of the shows we saw. I was fortunate to work at the hospital where his first child was born and held his new baby up to the window for him to see for the first time.
Also, one day, after the morning show, we all went to the luncheonette next door to get lunch, and Smokey Robinson came in and sat down in the booth with us. That’s how it was in those days, no entourage, no fights, just enjoying the music and the singers.
My playlist consists of one song from every one of those performers. I am lucky to have a jukebox and all my old 45s, so I play them and close my eyes and I am back at the Brooklyn Fox having the time of my life.
Ruthie Clements, Escondido Youngbloods hit still has relevant message
The song “Get Together” by the Youngbloods has always had meaning and truth throughout the 56 years since it was released. This single, written by Chet Powers, was the Youngbloods’ only Top 40 hit on the coveted Billboard Hot 100 list.
I remember being a “typical” teenager in the 1960s sitting alone in my fluorescent lime-green bedroom. The black light posters illuminating the room were a salute to the “Peace and Love” generation of that decade. The posters helped me to get in the mood to dissect and interpret each song lyric as I searched for a deeper meaning of “my” music.
The repeated chorus of “Get Together” lets us know that this song could have been written in any decade and be relevant then and now:
Come on, people now
Smile on your brother Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
There are many different people in the world, but despite our differences we all want to get along. I have learned that getting together isn’t about being that person’s best friend or sharing all their hobbies. It is about treating all people with respect, care and love.
Marla Eggert, Escondido Timeless missive on our interdependence
There just can’t be any message more timeless and presently relevant than Bill Withers’ homily “Lean on Me.” It calls for interdependence and compassion, strength amid weakness, empathy and courage.
When I was a facilitator for team-building activities on a ropes course we often used a particular challenge called the “High V” when it was 20 feet above the ground and a lower version known as the “Commitment Bridge.”
The only way partners could successfully negotiate the diverging cables they were standing on from the closed end was to fully lean against each other with outstretched arms and clasped hands. Even with the safety harnesses, it was usually terrifying, and ended with elation.
In debriefing their experience I often cited Withers, and it was typically a powerful moment for everyone:
Lean on me
When you’re not strong
And I’ll be your friend
I’ll help you carry on
And even toneless folks like me can sing along with it.
Steve Scarano, Vista Song struck chord in three different ways
As a kid growing up in the small town of Connellsville, Penn., in the 1960s, I listened to a lot of music, mostly on the little transistor radio that I stuck under my pillow at night.
Hands down my favorite song was “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas & The Papas. The melody, acoustic guitar, flute and rich vocal harmonies spoke to me, but I had no idea how that song would be connected to the thread of my life in three significant ways.
First, I joined the Navy in 1972, and I went to boot camp in San Diego. Second, during my Navy enlistment, I served on the
USS California CGN-36. Third, in 1987, my wife and I moved from Virginia to San Diego.
I feel a wave of nostalgia flow over me every time I hear “California Dreamin’.” I love that song today just as much as I did 50-plus years ago. California dream fulfilled.
John Silcox, Serra Mesa Ballad was a call for environmentalism
Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” is a song on her 1970 “Ladies of the Canyon” album. The cover is a black and white selfportrait, her colorful Laurel Canyon neighborhood pieced in her skirts. I played that album as a teen growing up in Point Loma and in my college dorm rooms in Oregon and Davis, and I still tell my Google Assistant to play the song while I am cooking in the kitchen.
I read that Mitchell’s inspiration was a trip to Hawaii. Arriving in Oahu at night, she threw back the curtains of her hotel room that next morning to see — paradise — and a huge parking lot.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot
The lyrics were meaningful to a young woman who grew up in San Diego only to see it expand much like the waistline of those who do not watch what they eat: bursting at the seams and unattractive.
Like Mitchell, I lived my early life in Canada. My family moved to San Diego when I was 6. As a young girl, I rode horses in a valley where Fashion Valley was built — in the San Diego river bed. (Is it really that surprising that it floods there after a heavy rain?)
“Big Yellow Taxi” has been labeled as an environmental anthem. It resonated with Californians who had experienced the tragic 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill that coated sand, surfers and sea life with tar. Smog was also a huge problem. Interestingly, it was under President Richard Nixon’s reign that in 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency was created, finally introducing air pollution legislation. Mitchell’s lyrics discuss DDT, a highly insoluble pesticide with a low decay rate that weakened the egg shells of birds and harmed aquatic life:
I have lived in Poway, the “City in the Country,” since 2001. I love it here, not much traffic, lots of hiking and running trails, friendly folks abound. But lately, as I drive by what used to be the StoneRidge Country Club where my sons grew up and my husband spent much time with them and their friends, I am saddened by the leveling of the ground in preparation for construction. Craftily named “The Farm,” most Powegians voted to allow the vacant land to be razed and developed.
Mitchell’s song talked about putting trees in a tree museum. The Farm will have a butterfly garden. It all may turn out well, but I cannot help but sing this refrain in my head as I drive by:
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone
Laura Alcorn, Poway A reminder of what California has lost
One of the most meaningful songs to me is a love song. Not about a person, but about a place that no longer is. The song is “The Last Resort.” It’s by Don Henley and Glenn Frey, but Frey seems to give all the credit to Henley. It’s the last song on the Eagles’ “Hotel California” album. It came out in 1976. I was only 14, but could feel the words of the song and how they applied to my San Diego and California.
Two of my favorite lines in the songs are:
Some rich men came and raped the land Nobody caught ‘em
and
You call someplace paradise
Kiss it goodbye
I left after 55 years to find the memory of what San Diego was like to me, many years ago.
Kevin Hippensteel, Bullhead City, Ariz. Many Beatles tunes hit the right notes
I have been a die-hard Beatles super fan almost my entire life. It started the night of Feb. 9, 1964, on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 9 years old, and those first songs the U.S. heard live, I would say are my most impactful, including: “All My Loving,” “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” I know I am not alone in this, but they have always been my shining light.
I have told anybody that will listen that I have a special place in my heart and brain for them; any of their songs will instantly make me feel better — hence I am better. They really are the soundtrack to my life, and opened all music to me.
Sharon Ayo, Escondido