Oldies

I love to listen to oldies. We have a few oldies radio stations I can pick up here in Cumming, and the local cable company has a music channel called “Solid Gold Oldies” I listen to a lot. I am not wealthy or progressive enough to have Sirius Radio, but I understand they have multiple oldies channels as well.

All it takes is the unforgettable opening riff of a song like the Stones “Satisfaction” and I am transported to another place and time. Tommy Roe’s “Dizzy,” for instance, sends me back to the eighth grade and hanging out with my cousin in Hattiesburg, MS. We’d walk from his house to the Ben Franklin dime store and buy model airplanes, then come back and put them together listening to a transistor radio (remember those?). Each song, it seems, has a special memory attached to it. Trips to the beach, riding the school bus, certain girlfriends, Friday night football, where I lived at the time, summertime, etc…

I have a special category of oldies I think of as “skating rink oldies.” While living in Germany (1967-69) I went to the roller skating rink every weekend. I rode the streetcar there Friday and Saturday nights, and again on Sunday afternoon. “Mony Mony” by Tommy James and the Shondells was always blaring when it was “race time” at the rink. The boys would race, then the girls, maybe to some other fast song like “Yummy, Yummy Yummy (I’ve got love in my Tummy)” by the Ohio Express. After the races were over they’d play a slow song to get everyone back out on the rink – something like “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro, or the instrumental "Love is Blue" by Paul Mauriat (Listen to it here).

Some songs make me think of exactly when and where I was when I heard them for the first time on the radio (no iPods then!). “Hey Jude” by the Beatles does that, as does Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild.”

I’m sure you have oldies memories as well; probably sweet ones and sad ones. Here's a good web page listing the top hits of 1968. You can easily change it to some other year. Enjoy!