Falling in Love with Music

It's amazing what you can find when you snoop around YouTube. I'm not sure if any of my siblings other than Laura actually read this blog, but all of them should certainly remember this singer:

The rest of you may think he's odd, but when we were young my parents loved to listen to Roger Whittaker. I can remember getting into our big old blue van (and not a van like the minivans of today; a real van with the u-shaped couches around the table in the back) and heading to Clear Lake to go skiing, with Roger Whittaker filtering through the speakers.

I know, not exactly the kind of music to pump you up for a lake outing, but I really did love this cassette tape (just be impressed we moved beyond the 8-track). We were always a family that had music playing, but there was something about Roger Whittaker's voice that made me aware of singing as a story-telling process. It was one of the first times I realized a person could get lost in thought while listening and actually feel the emotions in your skin. It's how I wanted to sing someday; making other people feel what you were at the moment.

Just so you don't think we were all some sort of hippie kids wanting to listen to Roger Whittaker 24/7, I'll have you know that my brothers tried very hard to listen to a cassette tape of KISS... until my mom saw what the cover looked like with the white and black make up and confiscated it. And if we wanted to listen to Olivia Newton John's Let's Get Physical, we had to do jumping jacks. I swear to God, people, I can't make this stuff up...