60's Music Meaning

I’m sat listening to oldies on Spotify. It’s a playlist of songs from the 1960’s when I was a boy. Cilla Black, Neil Sedaka, Sandy Shore, Manfred Mann, Kinks, Hollies, Beatles etc. etc. I have it in background while I work. Suddenly though I wondered why do I listen to this stuff?

The answer is because it takes me back to when I was a child. Safe and secure in a small house in West Hull, England. Usually sitting between the kitchen and living room smelling the drifting smells of my Mum’s home cooking or listening to her and her Mother chatter about things. I can see the old fashioned furniture, b&w TV with curtains, old dialled radio and smell the carpet.

But there is more.

I can hear my Dad singing or whistling some of these songs. Sometimes, I am in the passenger seat headed on some trip with him. No seatbelt, no airbag.

Some songs remind me of my grandparents. Now long gone and not often thought of. Family events - bingo, sandwiches and salads, pork pies… the smell of pipes, tobacco and cigarettes….

It’s funny how music can do this. Take you back to another time and place in an instant.

Listening to some of this music, it was far more progressive than you might think. It was a more innocent time for sure generally but there are hints and themes of a seedier life that certainly hid behind the polished veneer of the times. Some of the music is quite complex and has different structures - you can quite easily see where progressive rock originated from.

But what I realise more than anything is how I relax listening to this music from my childhood - it is as if the lack of worry and sense of childhood security was soaked into the songs and when I hear them, they take me into a different mode….

Have a great weekend.