Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The Sounds of Memory

A British blogger inspired today's post.

She blogged about the "Sounds of Our Shore" project - an attempt by the National Trust (of Britain) to preserve today's sound of the British seashore for future generations.

Another "we were just talking about that yesterday" coincidences.

We were at my mother in law's house this past weekend helping her downsize (she has sold her house and is moving closer to us.) We talked about what is in the attic.

In the attic is a box of old reel to reel tapes recorded by me, and by my husband, while we were dating and even before (meaning, the late 60's and early 70's).   We discovered the box when my son investigated the attic in a visit a couple of Christmases ago.

The songs aren't of interest to us - the quality would be terrible. And, we don't have a reel to reel player to play these tapes on.  Ours is long gone, left behind in one of our many moves when we were newly married.

But what is of interest are the commercials, jingles and airchecks. People collect those airchecks!  (Here is a collection from a station hundreds of miles from where I lived as a child, but I could pick up the radio station at night).

If, by some chance, we have an entire radio program on one of these tapes, there is interest in those, too.  Here is a website that collects programming from a station where I grew up, WABC in New York City.

These sounds of the past bring back so many memories of my childhood.  A literal "blast from the past."

Of course, the tapes could be too fragile to play. But it sure would be nice to listen to those tapes one last time.

What memories do sounds bring back to you?

4 comments:

  1. The first thing I thought about, Alana, was how pop songs from my high school years transport me--instantly!--back to my girlhood days, when emotions were high and hormones were raging and everything was changing so quickly. It's funny how a song that I haven't heard for 30 years (ouch, am I that old?) can do that to me!

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  2. Oh, I read and replied to her blog post. That was really interesting. I know certain songs definitely illicit memories from various times and events in my life. We also have a mini cow bell "doorbell" hanging on our porch that used to belong to my parents, who are now deceased. Jingling those bells definitely brings back a lot of now bittersweet memories of my childhood home and of visits with my parents.

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  3. It's amazing what is of interest after years and years. Songs? No. Those have been recorded onto new media and sound better than new. No, we want the old commercials and between song chatter. The stuff that no one thought was worthwhile at the time. Funny how that works.

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  4. I love me some classics like Michael Bolton, salt and pepper the pretenders...love it thanks for the flash back

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