We recently put a new XM radio into my wife's car. I tuned to the 50s station, which covers music of Rock's first decade, which means into the early 60s, or roughly the period of my school days. I graduated from high school 50 years ago this June, but I am not sure how much that reality hit home until I was listening to songs of my younger days.
It shocks my spouse that I remember the lyrics from songs from the 1950s. Perhaps it shouldn't - I am a musician by background and by training, and used to be able to learn lyrics within hearing a song three or four times, and in those days you might here some songs that often within a single hour, if not on the radio, perhaps in a jukebox in a diner.
Today we happened to have on PBS as my wife was eating lunch, and it was the 25th anniversary concert of Peter, Paul and Mary. I immediately told my wife that had to be more than a quarter century ago, because they were popular in the early 60s, and famous before the 1963 Civil Rights March, at which they appeared. Besides, they looked only mildly aged in the video. I had no doubts when they sang a song titled "El Salvador" that it was filmed during the Reagan administration, and it was - in 1986. Later there was a brief interview of Peter and Paul in the studio - they are older than me, and they show it.
(By the way, because of that song I just also posted Music of another time - yet relevant?)
I can remember when Truman was President, followed by Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and now Obama. 12 Presidents. Companies that were a familiar part of my landscape now gone - Robert Hall, Oldmobile, Alexander's, Woodward & Lothrop. Watching children of athletes I admire come to the ends of their athletic careers. Knowing that increasingly were I to turn to a news source I will encounter the passing of someone I once knew.
Yet most of all it is the music that marked the passing of time. In my last years teaching I found that many of my students knew the music of my youth because they listened to it with their grandparents.
I know I am getting old.
Yet I still remember the lyrics.
The music can take me back and remind me of how far I have come.
I do not know how much further I will go.
I only know that as I travel I will as always be accompanied by music of all sorts, at least in my memory if not in my ears.
Peace.