wistful

 

Photo by cottonbro studio from Pexels 

My daughter has been constantly listening to music (One Direction, Taylor Swift) and I'm thrilled about it. It's nice to know that she's able to identify what interests her and recognize her tastes. For me, I just found out that John Mayer (JM) is on tour and unfortunately, I did not get to see him in concert a few days ago when he was in town. I simply had no idea, because I wasn't keeping up with events in general. I had the pleasure of seeing him live in 2019 and I certainly would like to see him live again. (Glad that there are snippets of his concert online, especially the talking bits) Many folks consider Continuum as their favourite JM album, but mine is his first one: Room for Squares--just because it was released around the time I was in university and it's very nostalgic. Also, I wanted to be able to play guitar the way he played guitar-- of course, I'll never be able to because I will remain a perennial amateur plus I do not have big hands to do all his Rachmaninoff-esque finger gymnastics abilities. 

This nostalgia or wistful longing for the past in terms of listening to certain songs for the first time or recalling how I would patiently wait for FM radio or music television (a.k.a. MTV) to play songs I liked, has compelled me to also revisit my admiration for The Beatles. I remember one birthday when I asked for the complete set of Beatles albums on cassette tape, which my wonderful parents bought for me--and I got a free poster and silk-screened T-shirt. I may or may not have posted about this story before, but there was one summer sometime in the late 80s-early 90s when a new TV station aired Beatles videos and interviews for about 1.5-2 hours (I've been Googling this but can't find it...either ABC-5, RPN-9, PTV-4...I don't remember which channel exactly) and I became I fan of the Fab Four. I became particularly fascinated with Paul McCartney and his left-handed bass playing (and cuteness, come on). Anyway, I've decided to curate my favourite songs here. How amazing is technology, eh? Music on demand. Whereas when I was young, I saved money to either buy stationery (pens, perfumed paper with envelopes) or blank cassette tapes so I can press the record and play button at the same time if a song I liked started to play on the radio. It's yesterday once more...

Update: John Mayer had a few unreleased songs or deep cuts during his tour and I’ve added clips like “Hotel Bathroom Song”, “In the Neighborhood”, and “I don’t miss you” (which is by JP Saxe; update: this single already exists on Spotify  https://spotify.link/7X6VEgUuOyb thanks to JM’s IG story!) in my curated playlist of favourite songs/music videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2wfslVJDE_A7G1oQ_mo75WPqWjia9KEW