You know you are getting old when:

[vitanola]

My congratulations!
Even if it’s only a toe tap, don’t ever stop.

I have been fortunate not to have arthritic issues. I believe tennis/cycling
has also made it possible for me to still “shake a leg” when I hear the sounds
and the beat of the music which I enjoy. Even in my late middle age.

Well, back in my telephone interconnect days, when I was building the company, I had an accident involving a very old (1915) telephone pole, and dull pole gaffs. I slid forty feet down to the ground and messed up both of my knees and ankles. Thank heaven I was wearing the appropriate leather climber's apron and heavy gloves, or else I would have also turned my front side into a splinter farm.

 

[2jakes]

Well, back in my telephone interconnect days, when I was building the company, I had an accident involving a very old (1915) telephone pole, and dull pole gaffs. I slid forty feet down to the ground and messed up both of my knees and ankles. Thank heaven I was wearing the appropriate leather climber's apron and heavy gloves, or else I would have also turned my front side into a splinter farm.

Well it’s a good thing you were wearing that apron!
Did you have any thoughts as you plummeted down?

I lost my balance the other day and fell down a step ladder.
(Happens when I stay up late the previous night working on a project)
I was holding a Hasselblad as I was going down but held on to
it as if somehow I would also be protected.
My head hit the ground and I lay there for awhile.
All the time Polo is looking at me like ...
"wtf are you doing?”

The camera is ok. But my face is all banged up.
I was lucky. No broken bones.

 

[Stearmen]

For me, Big Band music brings back two warm and fuzzy memories. First, my mother listing to it on the Magnavox, and second, all the times flying airshows in the 80s and 90s.

 

[Stearmen]

Well it’s a good thing you were wearing that apron!
Did you have any thoughts as you plummeted down?

I lost my balance the other day and fell down a step ladder.
(Happens when I stay up late the previous night working on a project)
I was holding a Hasselblad as I was going down but held on to
it as if somehow I would also be protected.
My head hit the ground and I lay there for awhile.
All the time Polo is looking at me like ...
"wtf are you doing?”

The camera is ok. But my face is all banged up.
I was lucky. No broken bones.

No, Polo was thinking, "oh great, who's going to change my litter box now?"

 

[Stearmen]

Well it’s a good thing you were wearing that apron!
Did you have any thoughts as you plummeted down?

I lost my balance the other day and fell down a step ladder.
(Happens when I stay up late the previous night working on a project)
I was holding a Hasselblad as I was going down but held on to
it as if somehow I would also be protected.
My head hit the ground and I lay there for awhile.
All the time Polo is looking at me like ...
"wtf are you doing?”

The camera is ok. But my face is all banged up.
I was lucky. No broken bones.

P.S. glad you are OK!

 

[2jakes]

For me, Big Band music brings back two warm and fuzzy memories. First, my mother listing to it on the Magnavox, and second, all the times flying airshows in the 80s and 90s.

YES!!
I cannot listen to this without thinking of my mother who was a teenager and danced to it!

I’m tapping my toe as I listen.

Mom, this is for you!

 

[vitanola]

I'm lucky that both of my parents are still with us. Mom is 96, and though her memory does not go back much farther than fifteen minutes these days, I also still have most of her record collection. She tended to prefer the sweet stuff (and still does, she recognizes all of the old songs and happily sings along, even on days when she does no know me or my father - her husband of sixty years); "I'll Never Smile Again", "Only Forever", "Blue Champagne", "Moonlight Cocktail", "You'll Never Know", "Sunday, Monday, or Always", "I'll Walk Alone", "Bésame Mucho", "Til the End of Time", "Oh, What It Seemed to Be", "Heartaches", "Peg O' My Heart", "Ballerina", "A Tree in a Meadow", "You're Breaking My Heart", and "Some Enchanted Evening" were characteristic of her 1940's record purchases. In the 1950's of course her tastes ran to Frank Chacksfield, Perry Como, "Manhattan Tower" and Jackie Gleason's "Music to Make You Misty' and "Music for Lovers Only".

 

[Stearmen]

For me it will always be Glen Miller with my Mom. Though I can remember Tex Beneke doing his version of American Patrol, in the hanger in Salt Lake, with the doors open and the sound of the engines pinging as the cooled down in the twilight. Pure magic!

 

[2jakes]

^^^^
I remember my folks watching The Perry Como Show.
Brought to you in “living black & white” on the Magnavox with the
rabbit-ear antenna on top.
I was the designated channel-changer (no remote) although there was only 3
or 4 stations at the time.


And you know you are getting old if you remember television shows that had
curtains like in a stage show.
Benny, Skelton & Gleason for example!

 

[Captain O]

Watching Lloyd Bridges in "Sea Hunt" and Gene Barry on "Bat Masterson". Robert Stack in "The Untouchables" and Seeing Bill Cosby live at Gill Coliseum at Oregon State University in 1964. Watching the original release on CBS of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in 1965. (I had just turned 11) Fearing an attack from Cuba in 1962.

I remember.

 

[2jakes]

Watching Lloyd Bridges in "Sea Hunt" and Gene Barry on "Bat Masterson". Robert Stack in "The Untouchables" and Seeing Bill Cosby live at Gill Coliseum at Oregon State University in 1964. Watching the original release on CBS of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in 1965. (I had just turned 11) Fearing an attack from Cuba in 1962.

I remember.

The Cuban crisis was scary.

Vaguely remember reading in the late 50s issue of Life magazine of a young Fidel & Che
who were victorious in Cuba.


Also a Soviet leader pounding a shoe at the UN.

 

[Captain O]

The Cuban crisis was scary.

Vaguely remember reading in the late 50s issue of Life magazine of a young Fidel & Che
who were victorious in Cuba.


Also a Soviet leader pounding a shoe at the UN.

Hell, I lived through the Communist revolution in Cuba (the ousting of Batista in 1960) as well as the "duck and cover" exercises in school. "Conelrad" later became the Emergency Broadcast System. Our "noon whistle" was a daily test of the air raid/Civil Defense siren. I watched Nikita Kruschev pound his shoe on the podium and saying "we will attend your funeral." Most American media reported that he said, "We will bury you."

Yes, those were frightening times.

 

[sheeplady]

I only grew up with one living set of grandparents.

My grandmother was very much a modern woman until the day she died. She watched the current television shows, she wore the modern fashions, and she listened to modern pop. (She died in 1994.)

She basically had the position of "why look backwards?" And this extended to watching "old" television or listening to "old" music... although she did like Elvis (not the music of her teen years) and she did collect some antiques.

As a result, I never got the "old grandmother" experience of her sharing the music or movies of her teens with me. I more associate her with watching Miami Vice (one of her favorites), wearing her Jordace Jean jacket with her multiple pierced ears (3 on one, 2 on the other), and trying to talk celebrity gossip with me while she was reading People.

She wasn't play acting, either. She honestly wanted to be with it and involved in what she saw happening, not doing these things to be perceived as hip. I didn't even realize she was "different" than other grandmother's until long after her death.

 

[Zombie_61]

Though I have also noticed that quite a few older people do seem to gravitate to swing and big band even though they were teens and young adults in the '50s and early '60s.

There are exceptions to almost any "rule". When I was growing up and going through school I could never understand why so many of my classmates had little or no interest in anything that pre-dated their memories. For example, I'd listen to music by The Rolling Stones, and when I read somewhere that Howlin' Wolf was one of Keith Richards' influences I sought out his music as well. Then I'd find out Howlin' Wolf was influenced by artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Tommy Johnson, so I'd seek out *their music. No one else I knew did that, except for one person and he's been my best friend for more than 40 years now. So, yeah, when he and I are in the nursing home and everyone else wants to hear Hootie and the Blowfish or Jimmy Buffett, we'll be the lone holdouts asking for Gene Krupa, Artie Shaw, and, of course, Frank Sinatra.

*I still don't know spit about those early blues artists, but I like the music when I hear it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The one record that makes me think of my mother is Arthur Godfrey singing "Too Fat Polka." She'd play that for us when we were kids and we would all snicker about how dumb it was.

My grandfather, the one who ran the gas station in later years, was a professional musician in his, and the, early thirties. He led a six-piece orchestra that performed in dance halls, small-time vaudeville, and local radio until he decided that eating regularly was more important than art. A music career such as his, at that particular time, and in this particular place, was just profitable enough to allow one starve to death while wearing a white mess jacket and a starched collar. After about six years of this, he decided to do something more lucrative and joined the WPA.

But the legacy of this is that my mother and her brother grew up in a family where there was far more emphasis on performing music than in listening to other people play it. My mother learned to play piano by ear -- even though she had only one ear that worked -- before she was six years old, and she was given a piano that one of her aunts had won in a contest, a piano which still sits in her living room today. She'll still sit down and bang out "Marizy Doats" at the slightest provocation. She's also taken up the ukelele, an instrument that her mother played, and now owns at least four different standard ukes and a banjolele, upon which she intends to perform this summer in her town's annual home-talent revue. I pointed her to some George Formby records on You Tube and suggested that her friends and neighbors might enjoy a ringing rendition of "When I'm Cleaning Windows."

 

[Fading Fast]

I only had two still-living grandparents when I was born and neither listened to music at all that I remember. Both had horrible experiences in the depression and, I think, music just didn't do anything for them, maybe, just me guessing, they had no desire to remember that time. My grandmother loved the movies though, but new ones; she didn't express much interest in watching the old ones on TV.

My dad was a big bands, Sinatra, Crosby, Cole, etc. fan and I grew up with and loving that music. Equally, I grew up listening to what we call classic rock today and loved that (but couldn't play it anywhere near my dad). For me, there was no contradiction, they were just different styles and I loved both (really all - since it was more than two) of them.

Also, I saw early on that Elvis was less of a break from Sinatra and Crosby than a bit of a jump forward on the continuum (couldn't sell that idea to my dad though). IMHO, when the Stones and Beatles started writing harder rock (not the early stuff which was very derivative of '50s Rock and Rhythm and Blues), there was a bigger break in the continuum than Elvis was.

While there is music from almost every decade that I like, it is the music noted above that I grew up with that I enjoy the most.

 

[2jakes]

.....While there is music from almost every decade that I like, it is the music that I grew up with that I enjoy the most.

It was the 50s & 60s music
that I grew up with which I enjoyed
at least most of it.

I still enjoy it because it brings fond memories of my youth.

Today I don't have a specific decade.
If I like the beat I will listen to it.

Thanks to Fedora members, vitanola
for example, that has posted many
songs by artist I never knew existed.

 

[ChrisB]

When I hear music from my youth, I usually listen to it even though I don't particularly like most of the music from that era. It is because that music, even if I despise it, cues me into some very specific memories. The memories are preferrable to what prompted them.

 

[2jakes]

When I hear music from my youth, I usually listen to it even though I don't particularly like most of the music from that era. It is because that music, even if I despise it, cues me into some very specific memories. The memories are preferrable to what prompted them.

I hated "Mr. Sandman" when I heard it
on the small radio atop the icebox in
the 50s.
When I watched "Back To The Future"
the part where Marty goes back in time.
That song can be heard in the background.
Now... I love it & will played it on my iPhone
when I ride my Schwinn around the neighborhood
which looks like a set production of the movie.

"That is heavy Doc!"

 

[Trenchfriend]

Music from my youth means music from the cheap, trashy, crappy 90s. I never liked the 90s much. Then, I was more in the great first half of the 80s.

The first half of the 80s is so much more GROOVY than the second half, to me.