Sunday, March 7, 2010

Music and Memories

I run to music - I use it to pace myself and to take my mind of the pain.  So, my IPod has become an essential piece of my running kit (along with the compression pants, water bottles, and food).  With the mileage increasing I am finding it necessary to put more and different music on it to keep the runs interesting and my mind guessing about what song will be next.


Last night I decided to update the play list so went searching on ITunes for more jams.  To be honest, music right now kind of sucks - it all sounds the same no matter what genre you go under and the lyrics are less than motivating or inspiring (well, the new Maxwell and Anthony Hamilton are damn fine pieces of work and I have to admit I am a Lady Gaga fan - don't hate).  So I started to type in artists I use to listen to back when buying a CD was cool and one of those artists was Wynonna Judd.  Going through the songs I came across That Was Yesterday from her 1993 Tell Me Why album.  I downloaded the song and put it on my country play list.

Today, about 4 miles into my run the song came on and as her powerful, soulful, country voice went through the song I suddenly had a flashback to Christmas morning circa 1993 or 1994.  My dad had surprised me by getting me a new CD player and 3 (yes 3) CDs!  A big deal at that time I was excited as I could finally say I had a CD player. The 3 CDs were a compilation of the Beatles, Billy Ray Cyrus' Some Gave All and Wynonna Judds' Tell Me Why album.  I didn't care for the Beatles that much but I played that Wynonna Judd CD over and over again, soaking in her voice and wishing I could belt it out like her.

Although I grew up on the Far Southside of Chicago everyday going to school in my dad's FORD (Fix Or Repair Daily as he told me on more than one occasion) van we would listen 99.5 US99 - the country station.  So my love of country grew at an early age as my dad would tell me about growing up in Southern Illinois and then moving to Oklahoma for a while.  I loved it and I loved him so I associated (and still do) country music with my dad.  Today, as I continued on in my run a smile crept upon my face as these memories flooded back into my mind.  It's amazing how music can bring back memories, both good and bad.  I'll keep this song on my IPod (and keep on running) and hold onto it as another memory of a man I miss everyday.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Girl if you need running music lemme know heheh. I'll dj your run like whoa. Let me know if you like this: http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Blaze+Do+You+Remember+House+Bob+Sinclar+Remix+/2zuhP8 That's an AWESOME house track. It fires up at 1:30. Pretty repetitive but you can't beat that bass hehe. I can send you some tracks if you like. I have oldschool house, breaks, electrohouse, etc. C