… or at least a significant time for many people in a land … or indeed in the west … is often not from one of the classical schools … although the Water Music of Haendel certainly did mark an occasion … but more popular songs of our era, e.g. Vera Lynn’s 1939 “We’ll Meet Again” or Ben Selvin’s 1930 “Happy Days Are Here Again” were certainly milestone markers for many.
The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady most certainly defined the 50s. The three below, in their own way, marked 1968/9, 1974 and 1982 … for me … momentous changes in fortune, momentous changes in society … plus, in watching them in YT reaction videos, where the reviewers were maybe late 20s to 30 something … I chose three which really grabbed many of the young watchers, stunned them in some ways.
But there was one other factor for lil ole me, myself, I … I’ve more than once listed elements I enjoy in any given song, really needing those elements in there … one of those being in jazz … a flurry near the end, followed by an abrupt end to the recorded song … that does lift a 20s song in my eyes.
Another stylistic element for me is that, about a minute and a half to two minutes before the end, the whole song changes up, drops the neat lyrics and choruses and just goes instrumental, seemingly with no limits … almost jamming … that is so nice … and all three of these have such endings.
But even more than that, coming full circle in this post … there were highly significant events occurring in and around the release of the song … events both outside in society, plus in my life. Though I quite like the songs in themselves, I’d not call them my faves … and yet they … well let me put it this way …
… in the first, by Tommy James, have a glance at the stats … over 50 million views, plus 19K comments. I dare say some of Swift Trailer might get those stats … so be it, different world today. In late 1968, early 1969, I was coming off two very close encounters with the female of the species since late 1966 which really knocked me about as a young lad and set the pattern fo the rest of my life. Way too early for such things and my attitude today to the female, despite some bad ones ruining it … well you see it in my writing.
”Now I don’t hardly know her” … “when she come walking over”. That’s exactly how it happened.
Time frame? The Beatles had gone LSD, the Stones were psychedelic and spacy, Woodstock was still some time ahead.
Right … second song … May 1974 was a major time in music … after the psychedelic 60s, the bland (in my eyes), pompous “prog rock”, pre-punk and at the end of the decade … ska … but at the same time, folk had gone electric, troubadours were still about but in a different way … artists still highly personalised in their music … sort of Donovan Catch the Wind continued … Jackson Browne was one of those, although, as with Leonard Cohen, some sort it as music to slash your wrists by.
In my life, it was a stormy period where I’d lost the plot, the wild yoof period and in the middle of it came the steadying influence of a woman, not a girl … there were still plenty of soaring highs and plummeting lows to go.
This song is renowned for the fiddle of David Lindley, inseparable from pianist JB … and once again … that change up within sight of the end which completes the whole. But the theme too … it’s exactly today’s theme … before the deluge late 2025/early 2026:
The third and final song, again, had that two minute change up ending which really completed it, with intense, passionate guitar, which quite fitted the mad world after my dad died. It became a flurry of females, out of which came some interesting times until the late 80s … this could be termed my family period, though that diminishes the value of each human involved. Plus I was in fulltime work the entire time.
One thing I’d learnt was that anything a man does can be wrong in his female’s eyes if she wants to take offence … it’s part and parcel of the game I suppose … she needs lively, volcanic, he needs calm and consolidating. The song is perfect for that theme:
