Or try not to remember
The formative
years of my youth included quite a lot of music. I listened to the jazz musicians – big bands,
small groups, and the random soloist.
The musical theater spun its own list of songs that received popular radio
play time and were often covered by various vocalists. These were often saccharine in nature,
mawkish beyond repair. “Try To Remember”
fits that category all too well.
Unfortunately, it is also one of those songs that sticks to your brain
like napalm. Long after it has been
heard, the echoes keep rolling around inside your brain like the smell of hellfire
on tree lines.
That’s sort
of a capsule encompassing the music and culture of my younger years. The later years of the folk revival generated
many “folk” groups putting a smooth outer surface on older songs, linking in
some nostalgia, and touring from college to university to small club venues,
carrying their polished, largely apolitical harmonious offerings to people who
still preferred acoustic music powering songs that could be shared among party
attendees putting away one last scotch and soda before traveling homeward.
The bland
nature of those songs was in direct conflict with the political and cultural
events of the period. The folk music
stuck around until Dylan introduced his electrified material, The Beatles cut
Sergeant Pepper, and the generational demand to be heard shared airtime with
the spread of FM stations in the bigger markets.
Think of
1965-66, there’s still a lot of folk influence to hear in the antiwar lyrics of
the day. But the touring groups still
have their niche available. By the end
of 1976, there’s no folk music to hear beyond the late night public radio shows
that are becoming something of “old soldiers’ homes” for a generation’s folk
musicians.
The culture
has changed markedly as has the music. “Sympathy
for the Devil?” Nothing better describes
the nature of the VietNam War. Add in “Fortunate
Son” and “Morning Dew,” and the history is easily recounted.
But despite
the change in my listening habits and the absence of the bland and mawkish from
the radio and the streamed networks, every time September rolls around, the smell
of distant napalm and the barely audible sound of “Try to remember” crawls into
my consciousness. I can’t predict how
long it will stay, repeating, looping, demonstrating the longevity of mediocre
music and the pervasiveness of random memories.
I’ll try to suppress the song.
But that’s much more easily said than accomplished.
So, it’s
early September, the leaves are already beginning to change and to fall. The days are getting shorter, the nights
longer, and behind “Try to Remember,” I can already hear some syrupy voice
ushering in the next season with “Oh it’s a long long time.”
Enjoy it or
not, these earworms keep gnawing their way into memory. What surfaces in your mind that you can’t
eject or erase?
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