#52SlicesOfChingonaLife
5/52 #52EssaysNextWave2019
It’s raining outside.
Rainy days and nights are perfect for listening to music. In fact, this is what I’m doing as I wait out this California storm. Looking out of the window, watching the cars go by, watching the colors and reflections of the stoplights, store lights, car lights, watching the raindrops on the window change colors as this all happens…all to the sounds of music that I love.
Took me back to when we had records and would make a conscious decision to listen to music. All of us Torres5 had a record player in our rooms and a stack of records that always made it onto that turntable. You would go thru the box of 45 records, mine were kept in a couple of shoeboxes; or go thru our vinyl albums, check out the covers to see if there was a song you wanted to hear, reject the records that you knew were going to scratch or skip LOL and, of course, someone would have to be “dj” and physically put the 45 or LP onto the turntable and get the needle into the correct groove/song that we all wanted to listen to. And listen we would, for hours on end.
I don’t know that many people take that kind of time to enjoy music anymore, kind of makes me sad that our little ones may never know that kind of fun – the fun of reading album liner notes, looking at the face of an artist/singer as you listen to their music that you “know” s/he is singing just for you, laying on your bed daydreaming, sometimes looking out of the window, sometimes not, sometimes with the lights on, others with the lights off , letting the music take you away to another place, freeing you from life’s problems, helping you think about your next move, helping you recover from a broken heart. Or falling asleep hearing that unmistakable click over and over telling you that the record/album has ended.
Radio, iTunes, mp3s, Pandora, Spotify can bring us all of the music we need and, I can get the same enjoyment blasting my music on the commute, a long drive, train rides and in my headphones but I do miss those days when we actually took time out of our day specifically to listen to music. In my case, I loved to sing along (and still do) to great songs. One of the reasons I’ve loved working in the radio industry is precisely because, in certain moments, concerts and station events specifically, you’re able to see the power of music and the joy listening to music brings to our listeners. There’s no way that I’m the only one who loves music listening days (and nights).
In my family, we cannot listen to music at night, because we always want to hear the next song and we get no sleep LOL And now I’ve decided that I am going to break out our vinyl and show our TorresBabies what it’s all about 🙂 I think that they will love it.
Here are some of the songs that we Torres5 listened to a LOT, so much so, that I associate the songs with said sibling and, believe me, there are thousands more songs in both English and Spanish, but I decided to go with the first song that popped into my head.
Here’s one that brother Mikey always loved and I wonder if he still sings it at his gigs today (probably):
Hollywood Swinging/Kool and the Gang
When I hear any Santana song, my thoughts automatically go to my brother Martin, who loves, “the number one Chicano in the world” as he puts it.
Incident At Neshabur/Santana
This album holds the record for never leaving the turntable for MONTHS and months. We TorresSisters know every single song on all of the Heatwave albums because Kiki wouldn’t let us take the record off :). But no one like sister Kiki to sing these songs and she would work the high notes too.
Mind Blowing Decisions/Heatwave
As Christy is the youngest, she had to listen to whatever we wanted and was, many times, the one who we assigned to be ‘dj’ to change the records LOL. This is one of her absolute favorite songs and, by that time, it was likely on CD.
Kiss From A Rose/Seal
Most of the vinyl I bought back in the day was Tejano and the mighty Latin Breed was the first Tejano band I remember hearing. I can safely say that I was one of the first of the Torres5 to really get into musica Tejana – now we love it and everyone always thinks we’re from there 🙂 Still love tejano music and the Latin Breed never gets old.
De Que Te Quejas Mi Amor/Latin Breed