Tomorrow is the 54th anniversary, Feb. 03 1959. If you don't remember this congratulations, you're younger than I. Use it wisely!
I was a lonely, teenage broncin' buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck, but...
I knew I was out of luck the day the music died
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Music_Died
http://understandingamericanpie.com/
just an interesting factoid...
Ole
Comments
I'm not old enough to
I'm not old enough to remember the day in person, but I know the song well. We've lost a lot of our best upcoming talent in sudden accidents. Almost as if they were planned.
BW
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
all a coverup
The story they don't tell you is how on Feb 4, 1959 an awkward young bespectacled girl named Holly Budd started her new life.
I was 12 years old when "The Music Died."
In 1959 I was just becoming aware of the power of music. I had what was described as an angelic voice and a talent for harmony, along with relative pitch. I don't truly remember, exactly, the event of the plane crash. I only became aware of the significance of it in later years, mostly after hearing Bye Bye American Pie.
Music has always been a huge part of my life. I sang publicly as a child and teen, in chorus in school, and in the New York State Chorus at Chautauqua N. Y. I was part of two different bands in the late 60s and 70s... no one you would have ever heard of. Music does indeed have a power. It can take us back to better days or remind us of tragedies. It can lift us up, or weigh us down. What it does, is entertain us, to be sure, but it also informs and educates us, if we let it.
Don McLean was a pioneer. His lyrics were always masked and confusing for those who didn't "get it." His song, "Vincent" always moved me to tears, and still does. I saw him, live, at a theater in my home town, Jamestown N. Y., in about 1984, 5, or 6, I forget exactly the year. He captivated the audience and had a stage presence that was understated, but amazing. I'm not sure if anyone even breathed when he sang "Vincent."
I love music, although my music was more based in the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean. My Father brought me up on Big Bands and classics like Beethoven and Bach. He taught me to appreciate almost all music for what it was, not for what I wished it was. I've seen many famous groups in concert over the years. I even met such greats as Peter, Paul and Mary, The Beach Boys, The Lettermen, Count Basie. I even sang, on stage, at the Chautauqua Amphitheater, with The Lettermen... an experience which will live in my memory for all of my life.
Don McLean is, for some, an acquired taste. His music wasn't "pop" as we knew it and yet, it had a strange way of getting inside one's heart and soul. His tribute to one of my favorite Television Cowboys, Hopalong Cassidy, touched me in so many ways.
Thank you Don, for all you gave us, for all you tried to teach us, and for your songs which will live forever.
hugs and memories,
Catherine Linda Michel
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.
Bye, bye...
Odd that page on understanding American Pie, it seemed to miss the whole point of the song for me.
I was in the Army when it came out and believe me, for those of us in uniform then, the Day the Music Died was definitely May 4, 1970. It had been less than 18 months since the tragedy in Ohio and everyone I knew in the Army felt sure that that was the event that catalyzed the writing of the song. The Beatles broke up that same year and most everyone thought that had something to do with it, too.
But Kent State loomed large, and even though we were students in non-combat specialties at the time of the shootings, we were all confined to base for several days and instructed that at any moment we might be issued weapons and riot armor and be sent somewhere to restore peace and order. A year and a half later most of us were in Viet Nam and it seemed Don McLean had a pipeline to the feelings of shock and despair we had felt on that Monday when the music died.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Ohio...
What if you knew her...And found her dead on the ground...How can you run when you know?
A defining moment for our generation, aye. Things just weren't quite the same.
Cause the players tried to take the field...The marching band refused to yield...Do you recall what was revealed, the day the music died. Sigh...
Love, Andrea Lena
Even then ...
... when I was a 19 year old working away from home living in digs my only connection with pop music was through my peers. I had virtually no interest in it personally and I'd never heard of Buddy Holly when his death was reported. The US performers I liked were Tom Lehrer and Stan Freberg and I had a brief flirtation with Bill Hailey and Lonnie Donnegan but that was about it. My wife tells me that she and her friends at the YWCA where she was living wore out several copies of Peggy Sue through repeated plays, so I'm hardly typical of English 19 year olds at the time.
My favourite piece of music is by an American composer, John Cage - his 4 minutes 33 seconds :) I'm playing it as I type.
Robi
Why you NEVER should fly in icing conditions in an aircraft that
cruises slower than 400 mph with an inexperienced pilot ...
A tragic and easily prevented accident. But then that whole bus tour was a last minute, done on a shoe string nightmare.
Nearly every year I read of small aircraft and in particular helicopters crashing in similar conditions. All preventable accidents. And so sad.
As for me?
I was 412 days old -- 13 and just over one half months -- so my memories of the time are a tad ... fragmented?
I was concentrating on sucking milk direct from my mommy at that point. Though once I started teething.
Instant glass bottle feeding.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Rock and Roll has been going downhill since Buddy Holly died
a quote from American Graffiti. And R&R would have died too, if not for the Beatles.
Sighs are the natural language of the heart.
-Thomas Shadwell