Last night was retro of sorts. Krista came over and we had a little BBQ shish kabob (scratch that…kabab…thanks James!) (what language is that from? Turkish apparently!) as well as hooked up the old Nintendo and played some Lunar Pool which was her favourite game as a child. The Nintendo was in poor shape though and would not work most of the time. It’s a shame that we’ll have to find a replacement.
The more welcome point of the night is when the television crapped out and Krista suggested we haul out the guitars. It was an all-request night and Krista requested all the tunes that we had learned when we were in the formation years of our guitar chops. 90s hits like All Over You (Live), Freshmen (The Verve Pipe), If You Could Only See (Tonic), Back To Good (Matchbox 20), If I Could Be Like That (3 Doors Down) graced the living room last night. Heck, she even found an old tune of Let Her Cry (Hootie and The Blowfish) which we all groaned at when it was requested but it’s good to look back at your roots and see where you came from and reminisce as how hard it was to play some of these tunes and now they seem like a five year old can play it. It’s all a matter of perspective I suppose.
But it was great to really look at these tunes and what they meant to me. For for the past few years (if not more than a decade), I have pushed these songs to the wayside for bigger and better hits…classic rock tunes (Guess Who, CCR), staple acoustic diddys (Beatles!) and some contemporary stuff. But I had ignored a lot of the stuff I learned in my formative years and now I’m starting to realize that these are the songs I grew up on and I shouldn’t abandon them! Even though I now prefer the stuff that my parents grew up with, I can’t say that I dislike my generations’ music and if anything, my ears perk up when I hear something from my past and my mind wanders into memory mode.
So now I think I’ll try and find a good mix of songs to play for the masses. I think part of my quest to play older tunes was part and parcel from playing with Troy at Aunt Dinah’s place where the crowd want tunes from their generation, and I fell in love with those tunes. Last night made me realize that the tunes I grew up with are still pretty decent and there are probably some people in the room who would appreciate them. Case in point…looks like another binder of songs have to be repatriated into my arsenal of rock.