1st song you remember???

Right you are Ozfly - this "Threads" vs. "Answers" stuff always crosses me up! Thanks for taking the transposing trouble on my behalf, I haven't figured out how to do that yet either. You are a scholar and a gentleman! :-)

If anybody cares to look up one of my archived threads by clicking "Threads" next to my name below, in the music catagory under the title "In Search of Beatles Rock but not Pop", you can find my story (and a pretty neat one, I think) about the first song I remember (it's in my second post to the thread). Sorry folks, but the story's too involved for me to tell it over again here! :-)

I'll also tell the story about the first concert I remember. I grew up (and still live) in the DC area, so we are graced every summer by the Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Festival held on the Mall, in between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. At just a little older than I was in the Beatles'n'headphones story above, around 4 years old, my folks took me to it for the first time.

Now the crowds can get pretty large down there for some of the musical performances, and there were no seating pavilions installed back then, so everybody stood, and a little guy had a hard time seeing much beyond a forest of legs. The performer we heard that day at my first live show turned out to be none other than the great Pete Seeger with his banjo. I don't think I really knew any of his songs, but I knew his name, maybe from Sesame Street or something, and knew he was some kind of a big deal and that everybody liked him (or so I thought).

Even more than the music, I'll never forget the musical element my eyes were opened to during the show. Not being able to see the stage except for the occasional glimpse, I looked at what I could see: people's feet. And I noticed something weird about what they were doing, but I couldn't figure it out. So I tugged on my father's trouser leg, and when he bent over to hear me, I asked:

"Daddy, why is everbody moving their feet?"

"They're tapping their toes" was his reply.

Of course, that only prompted me to return with, "Why are they tapping their toes?" I hadn't even known what the word 'tapping' was.

"Because they're keeping the beat" he explained.

You know what came next: "What's the beat, Daddy?"

So he told me that if I listened very carefully to the music, and watched the peoples' feet, I would find the beat, and then I could tap my toes to it too. He showed me by clapping his hands in time with the music and tapping his toes. I concentrated real hard on the music, and watched the people, and the next thing you know, I was tapping my toes to the rhythm!

And that's how a legendary folk performer and a bad view taught me about the beat for the first time.