Everybody has a favourite song. Or two. I think I have about 300. We all have those special songs that rip us right out of the present tense and shoot us back to a moment in another time and place. It’s like a ride on a time machine.
Like the first time you get up enough jam to phone that cute girl you’ve had your eye on since the beginning of the school year. For me the song was I Think We’re Alone Now by Tommy James and the Shondells, and I had played that 45 vinyl record over and over again until, with shaking fingers, I actually called Heather M. from our upstairs “extension” phone in Parkvale. I could barely get my pointer finger into that rotary dial. And, of course, her father answered.
There was the entire Simon and Garfunkle soundtrack from the movie The Graduate, that even now when I hear Sounds of Silence, I’m back there at that wedding scene at the end where Ben is banging on the window and Elaine turns and yells and, well, that trip in the time machine always makes me a little dizzy. I almost have to pull the car over if it comes on the car radio.
The Beatles, of course, always seriously shake up the space-time continuum. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (I Saw Her Standing There), to their last rooftop appearance (Get Back) who would believe in a million years that Paul and Ringo would still be rocking out in 2016 as 70-somethings! Now that’s a time machine.
The first song I ever played in a band really winds the old wayback machine for me. The place: Central School gym. The event: our Grade 9 graduation. The band: The Imperials. The song: Tijuana Taxi by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
I can still hear that honk from the old squeeze horn that blatts at the end of that tune. And we thought we were rock stars. Yikes.
People have a first kiss song (For Your Love by the Yardbirds), a driving to the lake in your very first car song (Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf), a broken heart song (I have 12 of those), the first dance at your wedding song (Close To You by The Carpenters).
The musical memory vaults are different for each person depending on when and where and how they grew up of course, but we all have those song triggers that fuel our own personal time travelling contraption. So I was thinking about that a while back and started writing down my favorite songs from my favorite musical era, the ’60s and ’70s. About five hours and about five pages of tunes later I had a nap and then woke up and said to myself: “Self. You should put together some sort of concert thingy to play some of these songs.” Also: “Self. You could call it ‘The Time Machine Show.’” Then, exhausted, I had another nap.
So with a boot in the butt from my long time buddy and bandmate Dave, a two-act list of iconic rock and pop songs emerged from the musty misty long-ago haze of the peace and love generation. But something interesting took shape with the tunes. Love. The song titles I mean. I realized you could tell a love story with the titles and lyrics of songs and yet have 20 or 30 great tunes – from rockers like Satisfaction by the Stones, to beautiful ballads like Time in a Bottle (Jim Croce) and You’ve Got a Friend (Carole King and James Taylor), to psychedelic classics from Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane. From the best R&B like R.E.S.P.E.C.T. (Aretha) and I Feel Good (J.B.) to bands you don’t hear played live very often like The Young Rascals and Three Dog Night. And let’s not forget a couple of get up and dance mirror-ball disco ditties.
So all I had to do was enlist the best music producer in town (Morgan) and cherry-pick six of the best young musicians and five (count ‘em) FIVE of the best lead vocalists around, and join with Bull Skit Comedy to handle the production heavy lifting at the Scott Block Theatre and — as members of the great musical British Invasion of the ’60s would say — “Bob’s your uncle!”
That took eight months.
But now the ole Time Machine is warming up, rumbling away, gearing up to launch the first two weekends in November. And it’s going to be quite a ride.
Harley Hay is a local freelance writer, award-winning author, filmmaker and musician.