G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S

By far the earliest memory I have of music was in preschool. I went to this really small preschool called The Little Red Schoolhouse in Florida. We were a very wild group of kids and when nap time rolled around, it was a nightmare. The teachers couldn’t calm us down even hours after trying. One day, one of the staff showed up with a bulky radio. When nap time rolled around, she plugged it in and got the tunes rolling. I don’t remember any of the names of the songs, but they weren’t nursery songs. More like slow breathy love songs. That’s the best way I can describe it. A guy would sing some deep heartfelt line and in her high voice, the female would respond. It’s a very distant memory but sometimes when I hear something similar it takes me straight back.  I don’t even know what genre of music it fits under, but I do know that was probably my first recollection I have of music.

Other early memories I have are when I would jam with my grandma. In particular, the song “Glamorous” by Fergie. My grandma, who lives in Florida, used to have this white convertible Mustang. We often went on random rendezvous and usually, the journey was more fun than the destination. We would roll down the top and turn the music up all the way. My grandmas’ audio system had a bass dial in addition to the normal volume dial, so we cranked that all the way too. This caused not only the car to vibrate, but also the road. It was fun to just immerse ourselves in the music and belch the lyrics as loud as possible. The simple days.

Also, with my grandma were dance parties in the living room. This time, Adele. When her album dropped, 21, we immediately were fans. Grandma bought the album and hooked it up to her stereo in the living room. After listening to it calmly a few times, we grew comfortable with it and started our jam sessions. We danced to almost every song in a row. Exhausted after the album ended, we collapsed on the floor of the room we had just destroyed. We laid there for a while, just chit-chatting. I wonder now if the dance parties were just a way to tucker me out because like stated before, I was a very energetic kid. If so, kudos to her. I still like to dance every now and then. Not anything good or coordinated, but rather something that exerts a lot of energy. It’s nice losing yourself in the loud music to forget about all the Uni stress.

My final favorite old memory of music was an Illinois car jam sesh. My mom and I were on the way to drop my sister off at school. I somehow remember that it was a chilly morning, probably late October or early November. We had the radio on a local channel, 94.5, which is the pop station. A song came on called “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO. I was repulsed. It had this techno 80’s vibe. My younger self didn’t understand how radios worked or that 94.5 was a pop station, so immediately I accused my mother that this was a weird song she listened to in her youth. She laughed and proceeded to turn the volume up higher. I’m still not a fan but I just remember this older memory of music vividly.