We’re sitting on the front deck listening to British Sixties Radio, an internet radio station we like and listen to a lot, and they just played the Dave Clark Five doing Glad All Over.
That song came out on the UK charts in January, 1964, reaching North America a bit later.
Fifty years ago this year. I was a young teenager then, not long moved to a new apartment, going to high school, and listening to the music of the British Invasion on the transistor radio I carried everywhere with me. In another year or so, I would be moved by the music to buy my own guitar and learn to play.
Between 1964 and 1967, the Dave Clark Five had 17 top 40 hits on the Billboard charts and 12 on their UK charts. I know them all.
What always surprises me is that, when I hear a song like that, something from so long ago, I still know every word of every lyric. And most of the time I can place myself in the place and time(s) when I heard it. Memory is a strange force. I can’t always remember what I had for breakfast (if I even have it), but I can almost always recall the words of a song from 50 years ago.
The Dave Clark Five, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Animals, Marianne Faithfull, Pentangle, Donovan, Bert Jansch, John Renbourne, the Moody Blues… Such talent, such passion, such creativity. Big influences on me, culturally. Still are. Embedded in my memory.
I have a lot of their music and similar music from the 60s and 70s on vinyl and in most cases on CD, with a few oddities like the JSD band, solely on MP3. They are my personal time machine back to a younger, less complicated time. The innocence and naïveté of youth.
Will there ever come a time when this music doesn’t move me? I hope not. These songs bind Susan and I in an emotional way and I would not want that to ever dissipate.
