Just a Gal from Glidden: When word fails, music speaks
BY KATE WINQUIST
Kate@yoursouthwest.com
Music has the power to evoke strong emotions. It can produce various emotional responses in the same person at different times. It can make you sad, happy, peaceful, excited, festive, and the list goes on.
Music has and always will play an essential part in my life. From a very young age, I can recall listening to a wide variety of music. Mom loved her Dixieland Jazz, Ragtime, Classical, Opera and Broadway Musicals, while Dad had his collection of Sons of the Pioneers. My sisters were talented on the piano, and my brother had a wide variety of record albums.
It amazes me that music can be so powerful that you can hear a particular song, and you’re able to recollect a specific moment in your life.
I can remember being about four years old and singing all the words to “Little Willy” by Sweet, which I think was on one of those K-Tel compilation albums from the super ‘70s. Oh yes, those were the days!
My brother used to go to the Kindersley Co-op and come home with “grab bags” full of 45’s. I was thrilled that he let me have Tom T. Hall’s “Love You So Much It Hurts.”
As I got a little older, my musical tastes changed. The first albums that I ever owned were “The Game” by Queen and “Crimes of Passion” by Pat Benatar. I would spend my allowance on records. I preferred vinyl to cassettes because of the artwork on the album sleeves. I still have all of my albums, cassettes and 45’s from my youth. I faithfully listened to Casey Kasem and the American Top 40 on Saturday afternoon on CKCK and would write down the entire list.
I spent countless hours making homemade cassette tapes for my friends. We would cruise up and down Kindersley’s Main Street in either my Dad’s Chevy Wrangler truck or the Koska’s big red suburban with the windows rolled down and the music blaring; all of us singing at the top of our lungs.
When my husband and I were first dating, I had made some tapes for him and brought them along on a holiday we had taken to B.C. When I went to play one of the cassettes, it mistakenly got switched with another tape I had made from one of my Mom’s albums ... “Fiddler on the Roof,” to be exact! But bless Robert’s heart; all he did was look at me and smile.
I grew fond of hard rock albums from groups like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Judas Priest and, of course, Van Halen.
I was sad to hear that legendary guitarist and co-founder of the group Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen, passed away earlier this week from throat cancer. He was 65 years old, and he was the inspiration for this column.
I was fifteen-years-old when Val Halen released their album 1984. It was the band’s sixth studio album, and the first where Eddie showed that he was more than just a gifted guitarist - he was also quite accomplished on the keyboard. “Jump,” “Panama,” and “Hot For Teacher” were all massive hits for the group.
Fans have been mourning his death by buying his band’s music en masse, with two of their albums already returning to the charts: 1984 and their self-titled debut album, Van Halen in 1978.
There’s no denying that Eddie Van Halen was one of the most influential rock guitarists of the last fifty years.
After his passing, Lenny Kravitz tweeted, “Heaven will be electric tonight.”
May he rest in peace.
Van Halen 1984
Mom, me, Carrie, Garth and Kristine at Christmas 1984. Without a doubt, music has always played an important part in my life!
