the vinyl vault: first 10

I was catching up on some blogs the other day and Abigail has a new meme which I need to borrow: 25 top albums that shaped your life - couldn't resist.
The rules are:
Think of 25 albums that had such a profound effect on you and how they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions, etc. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. No being cool, which albums have you actually listened to thousands of times? Please note that some of these are single songs since it was all about the 45s when I started buying vinyl ;)

1. In 1966 My best friend Cora Lynn and I used to karoke Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made For Walking" on our front steps. They were brick and built so there were 2 arms to use as separate stages. With the song came the knowledge that I am not a carpet.

2. In grade school Halfbreed by Cher: reflected how I din't really fit in anyone's expectations because mine were already so vastly different. Her version of the Long and Winding Road became my theme for ever time we moved (every 2 years - dad was a banker)

3. Donny Osmond's singles - They were probably compliled on a best of album somewhere but these songs made me and my girlfriends sing in grades 4 and 5. One Bad Apple (which my dad occasionally called me), YoYo (which I used to dance to at the bus stop when I was delivering papers at 6:30 am. the first time the ticket clerk was scandalized but after that she just smiled and occasionally nodded her head, and Puppy Love (my first boy girl dance with Steven)

4. Michael Jackson's Ben - except for me it was my cat Snooper.

5. Harmony by Three Dog Night - One, Old Fashioned Love Song, & Black and White. I started to play it in 1973, My mantras in grade 6, I was 12? and they explained Me, Me & Love, and Me & the World. First Album I ever purchased in fact.

6. Alice Cooper - School's Out. Bought the album while attending catholic school and wearing the first pair of hot pants. Pink jersey with monet style flowers in yeoow and orange. Crazy Hot.

7. John Denver Rocky Mountain High - back when I still liked country music, grade 7, and totally misunderstood what he meant by rocky mountain high ;)

8. April Wine : the album with Oowatanite on it. Cow Bell. C'mon quit wastin' time!!!!

9. Elton John's Good Bye Yellow Brick Road - what can say? Perfect for an angst ridden antisocial 13 year old.

10. Heart - any album - Strong women can be anything they choose.... baracuda!

5 days later

well I'm somewhat better but still exhausted. Antibiotics are starting to help the bronchitis but the quietude is getting to me. Too much time to think. Regrets and memories popping out of nowhere.

At the beginning of grade 2, about the same age my grandson is now, I had an affinity for the limitless sky and I talked to the moon. I made my first visit to the Winnipeg planetarium that autumn, just before my birthday and it was a REALLY BIG DEAL. Over a hundred students, though it seemed like thousands, filed into the amphitheater, voices hushed, punctuated with the occasional childish squeal. Directed to our seats, we climbed into them as anticipation throbbed like a second heartbeat.

The lights dimmed, words poured out of the void and my seat tilted back as an evening sky dimmed to royal, then deepest blue shading to obsidian. My breath caught and the first nano brightness appeared in the northern sky. Like pinpricks through LiteBrite, stars were born and coalesced into the milky way spinning across my own personal universe, so close I could have reached out and caught one in my hand.

Old Sol flaring alive with heat, the realization that the sun really was a star illuminating a newborn landscape in my imagination. The planets, no longer two dimensional pictures in the Reader's Digest World Atlas but spinning nonchalantly through the night sky, immense and heavy, the colours surreal. First love happened then and there, I never wanted to leave.

The questions that trip engendered are some of the same questions I am still asking myself 40 years later. The awe and wonder of the magnitude of the universe beats in my heart still.

The next summer,1969, I was 7 1/2, Apollo 11 landed on the moon and humankind took its first steps on a different planet. Utterly mesmerized by the foggy images on our black and white television, I ached to be an astronaut walking on Mars and fly through the rings of Saturn.

Anything was possible to me then. No matter that my teachers told me I couldn't, my mom told me I could be anything I wanted to be, and that the others who nay sayed me would forever limit themselves by their own unbelief.

The sheer gloriousness of believing that I would someday walk among the stars was my shield against the drudgery and angst of everyday life. Childish as it was, I could go there and hide from all the ugliness of reality.

But time passes and glories dim. Failures intrude and living pushes those dreams into the nooks and crannies reserved for ancient history. Until one night while camping, lying in a field with the endless sky above you, the artesian well of hidden joy springs forth and lifts your heart on a magic carpet ride through the milkyway, just a hand's breadth away.

Another reason to always remain 8 years old.

I love spring

The flue 3 weeks ago, snow mould, and too much time around furry animals equals hack hack gurgle spit cough, unscratchable itch, 3 hours sucking up a variety of other unknown virii at the clinic, and no freaking sleep.

I love spring.

ready in fifteen -

Toss the cordless across the room, convoy arrival in,

15 minutes: Quicksort the closet: work, social, out, formal, alternate season and or size.
Parameters: Season? (woe betide those in this situation at change of season when everything is fair game) Where? When? Who? Party or pints? What did I wear there last?

Spring+pub+Satevening+crew&Oldfriend(fair missed)+blujeans whitehodievest= Blk jeans RB Penguin tee jacket

11 minutes: personal hygiene

7 minutes: Mineral particulate clings to horsehair, the gentle sweep grants release to settle into crannied nooks transforming reality to delusion. Tortuous steel teeth force kinks into place of natural arcs. Sticks of wax and unknown oily bits redefining planes and curves, provoking false perceptions, and inviting alternate possibilities.

*** howling in silent glee as I reread that last ;)

2 minutes: dressed, shod, and wrapped,(wriggle pull tuck) purse/phone/cash/maybe camera.

A touch of scent, she locks her door from the inside.

The phone rings, right on time.

tip toe

through the tulips,
in the garden,
taht is where I'll be .....

ROTFL - then I get this vision of my sister and myself with 30 pounds of caked mud up our legs trying to clear dad's raspberry garden ... beautiful.

stupid gardens.

happy birthday Murray

It is hard to believe you are 26 today and yet so easy to see. I love you. I am proud of who you are whatever you may think. You are so very talented and generous. I am looking forward to supper. Huge dk hugs.

Irish for a day

Happy St Patrick's Day everyone - may you live in interesting times ;)

doin' the nod

Setting: on a wild a wicked windy winter wednesday wench wends her way past bushes so fozen the twigs crackle and pop with each blustery blow. Unbeknowst to our heroine steam seeps from the tendrils of shower damp hair peeking out of her parka hood to create a personal fog that follows everywhere she steps.

A brazen 13 story block of semi modern cement beckons ...

Enter wench: (a mad dash from the taxi to the front door)sotto mumble: thank the hundred little gods the auto lock is turned off this time of morning she reaches to her face to wipe the encroaching fog from her specs only to find that she isn't wearing any. what the ...? her brows scrinch down upon the bridge of her nose and she flutters her worn gloves in front of her face seeking clearer air without any luck.

She heaves the door open and the wind slams it against the safety rail on the other side, clanging and banging echoes through the elevator foyer of a workplace barren of its denizens except for the singular security guard at 7:30 in the morning.

Morning Lman the usuaul smile absent from her normally cheerful visage
The security guard chuckles Cold enough for ya?
muttering under her breath as she stabs the UP button everyone's a f.... comedian!

The elevator opens onto her floor aromatic with the scent of early morning coffee, after a brief arguement with the door combination lock she finally makes it into her cubicle to divest herslef of the winter layers needed for survival this week of the ides of March. Mumbling to herself as she peels, This coat is too freakin heavy, the scarf scratches, damn, dropped the stupid glove again, where's I put my smokes, gowd I need caffeine, why is the PC on? where'd I put that urgent file - ouch... damn file drawer ...

you get the picture... by 2:00pm she is quietly doing the nod as the sugar from the kung pao chicken combines with the burgeoning heat rising from the floors below. Hope she doesn't snore ;)

Mr. Winter's response:

I am a cold hearted mother.... and it sucks to be you.

Dear Winter:

I submit. You are all powerfull. You have trodden the strongest hearts and wills into bloody heartcicles and we are done in. We are depressed and cold and tired and cold and bitchy and cold and we really only like our beer cold. Which by the way, you manage to freeze when left in the trunk for 4 hours.

Please go south and/or north for your hibernatory period and allow us to refresh our memories of warmth, and sun that has heat, and walks around the lake that don't see one frozen in place on the Trafalger bridgehead. Or go to Cuba I hear it's nice there this time of year.

The winter blues, the flue, the ague, the sniffles, headcolds, bronchitis, pneumonia, arthritis, bursitis, excema will follow your recession into the hinterland and the peasants will rejoice.

Please make us happy and go away.

With all my heart,
the frozen flatlands