In My Life

So I was looking for something to do last night. Arlene was tired and just wanted to stay in and I was feeling about the same. It was a hot day and warm humid night. I suddenly remembered I had recordings on the dvr portion of my television box. I have recorded programs and then never watched them. So I checked it out and I found I had stuff that went back four years. As I looked around I found I had a recording of Paul McCartney at the White House back in 2010. I also had a special that was run on CBS several months ago. I watched both. Both shows were quite good. I consider myself lucky to have grown up during that era. Not only was I at the right age when the Beatles hit the Ed Sullivan Show I had the pleasure of seeing the flowering of pop music in the 60's into the 70's. I got to hear Eric Clapton with Cream, my other favorite group from that era. I had always wanted to play the guitar and I got an acoustic one for Christmas in 1966. When I heard Eric I wanted to play the electric guitar. Those two groups really got me interested in music though I had already been taking piano lessons. But the Beatles were really something different. In one appearance they changed almost everything. I remember my father really upset over their "long hair" being a barber. Well back to the present, after watching both programs, though I was well aware of all the great songs they wrote, hearing them performed by other artists made it all the more clear to me what timeless classics they came up with. Sure they were a rock 'n roll band inspired by Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly, but their development as song writers was quick. By 1965 they had already come up with "Yesterday". And when I heard all the great songs they had come up with I got real emotional. All those songs stand up to any other great songs that were ever written. Beautiful melodies. Wonderful lyrics. Genuine talent from rock 'n roll to ballads to experimental stuff in the recording studio. Though you could usually tell who had the original idea for the song by who sang lead, some were exclusively written by either John or Paul though they were always credited as Lennon and McCartney. I love them all. I have heard them all many times over the last 50 years but the one that really got to me and is still my all time favorite is a song by John Lennon. "In My Life". A beautiful melody with words to match. That inspired me to make a little video with some of the pictures that I have in my possession. The first few were taken from the ones I published a couple of blogs ago. The rest were of family and friends taken over the last 40 years. I do have to say that it still freaks me out that I can casually refer back 50 years but I guess it's better than being dead. The song is relatively short so choosing the pictures and timing  the whole thing out so it fit into 2:28 of song length took some doing and eliminating some pictures of friends and family that I would have liked to used. Still it came out ok. There are a few from Italy, some from the 70's, some from the 80's when my sister and I took a trip to Washington to visit friends who moved down there to a trip I took in 2006 out to California to visit my friend Lee. She was born here, her family moved to California, then she moved back where I met her at work, then she moved back. There are a couple of shots from Sea World and her with her family. Two from the Fender guitar Museum. One of me trying out one of the guitars. Then there are some of my family shots of my mother, my sisters, one from my sisters wedding back in 2000, and a few shots from Martha's Vineyard with Arlene and I. It took about three hours to make but that's ok. I have been off since Thursday, August 21, and won't be going back to work until Tuesday, September 2. I have a lot of free time right now.
Here it is.
I'm outta here.