The Beatles “Old Brown Shoe”

Seminal Moments . . .

The whole point of this blog is to write about the songs around me, that have effected me in one way or another. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of songs in my life, that have some kind of story attached, or make me think of something specific.

But at the top of the list, there are a few songs that are truly life-changing. Their impact on me, was big enough to alter the course of my life, in sometimes major ways, sometimes subtle ways, but always in definable ways.

I was going to do a week’s worth of Seminal Moments, but there are probably more than five, so I’m going to sprinkle them in, here and there, as they strike me.

Here’s the first one . . .

At some point in my elementary school years, I discovered two things---Casey Kasem and my parents’ record collection.

I’ll have to write more about Casey Kasem in another post---he was definitely an influence---but listening to his Top 40 Countdown every week, brought statistics to music. My Dad was a baseball coach, so I already understood the importance Stats, in appreciating and understand the impact of something.

Around this same time, I graduated from Sesame Street records, to hunting and pecking through our small stack of vinyl. No surprise that I found The Beatles there.

Dad had the Blue album, which was a multiple record set of the hits from the 2nd half of the Beatle years. I listened to those records over and over, reading the lyrics, staring at the album cover, absorbing the music.

One night at dinner, I asked my parents, “How many number one hits did The Beatles have?”

It was a perfectly natural question, in my mind.

If I had said, “How many home runs does Jim Rice have this year?” or “What’s Carlton Fisk’s batting average?” Dad would have answered that without missing a beat.

But “How many number one hits did The Beatles have?” provoke unsure looks.

“Uh. I don’t know. 50?”

I can remember being shocked that my perfectly natural question, had stumped my parents.

I learned two things that day.

My parents apparently didn’t know everything.

I might just grow up to be a music chart geek.