Music_Connects_Us_to_Time_and_Place.

Running Head: HU300 Art and Humanities 20th Century and Beyond Unit 4 assignment HU300 Unit 4 Assignment September 18, 2012 In 1958, ten years prior to my birth, my mother Fran Aronofsky and her 5 brothers (Lenny, Marvin, Donald, Kenny and Dennis) had recorded Doo Wop style Rock and Roll records as Fran Arrow and The Arrows with Producer David London in Brooklyn, New York. The songs they played included some cover versions of popular favorites such as "A Thousand Stars" and "I Enjoy Being a Girl", but recorded in a more upbeat Rock and Roll tempo, as well as some original songs written by my uncle, Donald like "The Coney Island Rock" and "Never Let You Go" The records were pressed on vinyl coated metal 78rpm discs, known in the music industry as acetates, with generic studio labels that have the band name and song title typed in black from an actual type-writer. I am able to describe these too you because, ever since I was born, in New York 1968, they have been in my home and up until this day, they remain in my possession and have been part of my vast music collection, which consists of anything and everything from Amadeus Mozart to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. I have truly been raised with music playing for a large part of my life. To be able to write ones own life soundtrack is no easy task, as depending on ones mood, they may choose a different genre altogether tomorrow, from what songs they are singing today. Playing mom's 78's are very fond memories for me, as I can remember the feeling of thinking one day my mom was going to get discovered and make it big like Striesand or The Carpenters, it was great to hear such early Rock sung by a then 15 year old teenager during the days now known as the Golden Age of Rock and Roll. I could imagine seeing my mom and uncles standing on a snow covered street corner around a garbage can lit on fire to stay warm as they Doo Wopped into the night and along comes a man in a limousine wearing a big hat and smoking a big cigar; (then my mind conjures up the image from a line out of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album; "Come in here, Dear boy, have a cigar. You're gonna go far, You're gonna fly high, You're never gonna die, You're gonna make it, if you try; They're gonna love you") until my mom tells me what happened to The Arrows; Basically my mom said that, "we were great and would have been the next big rock stars of the 50's, like the Crickets but my mom (my grandma) was afraid to sign any contracts because she couldn't afford a lawyer and didn't want her underage daughter to get mixed up with the wrong people." My grandma told her, "you'll sing to your children, you don't need to sing for strangers and you don't need to sing for money!" and that was it for the dream of Fran Arrow and the Arrows. And that is exactly what mom did, she sang to me and my brothers, sometimes to cheer us up and sometimes as a form of torment but always out of her heart. Traveling was always a time for music, as my family would travel every summer by car across the United States for several weeks at a clip. There is only so much you can do in a car back in the 1970's there were no ipods yet and tape players were not as efficient, the batteries would die out quickly and the earpiece was uncomfortable and sounded terrible, so we all took turns chosing a station for a few songs. My dad was up for anything he could move to, as he loved to dance, so he would put on R&B greats like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and anything Disco or Studio54ish. Mom liked vocalists such as Mario Lanza, Elvis Presley and Perry Como, but she also dug folk singers like Peter, Paul and Mary and Joni Mitchell. My older brother was more into reading and playing chess, he usually liked to turn the radio off for his turn and wanted to talk or have a discussion without the radio on (Ugh! that annoyed the crap out of me!). As for me, I liked whatever was hot, popular, funny or made a statement of some kind, a message of sorts. As the Counting Crows said, "I want to be Bob Dylan Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky When everybody loves you, son, that's just about as funky as you can be" and yes, I do love Bob Dylan's work. To understand Dylan, one must first see what Dylan saw and feel what Dylan felt! Go back to Dylan's first 1962 album, "Bob Dylan" but before you listen to it, read some of the news stories of the days, read about Woody Guthrie, read about how bad the younger generation was being stifled by the generation before and the government of the day, once you're angry enough about society, at that time, then play the very first Dylan album; once in context, it is an amazing experience of sound, thought and pure imagination bleeding through your brain, or as Dylan himself says in one of my favorite Dylan song's, "And every one of them words rang true And glowed like burning coal Pouring off of every page Like it was written in my soul from me to you, Tangled up in blue. Yes, I was blue alright, anytime I didn't get a chance to play what I wanted on the radio. Sometimes we would stop driving for the night, just before it was my turn on the radio dial, and my brother would use that to tease me, "ha ha, you lose your turn, ha ha, Hmmm, mybe I should take two turns next since I gave up the last turn, nah nah,,," older brothers can be relentless... Anyway, when mom started singing, the whole family was happy, nobody cared about whose turn it was on the radio, whoever was closest would automatically shut it off in order to catch every note of our musical mother. Since then, mom has sung at just about every family event and on the rare occasion that any one of her 3 remaining brothers are around and up to it, they break into song and treat whoever is in earshot to the incredible sound of 1950's Brooklyn Rock. And during recent events, the old and new have been known to sometimes sing together. Now the newest generation, my children and those of my brothers, are all active musicians chasing the dream of stardom, who knows, if they are lucky enough, maybe they can all sing for their own children too. REFERENCES: Duritz, A., Bryson, D., Malley, M. and Bowman, S. (1993) "Mr. Jones and Me" Dylan, B. (1962) "Bob Dylan" Dylan, B. (1975) "Tangled Up in Blue" Janaro, R. and Altshuler, T. (2009) The Art of Being Human: The Humanities As A Technique For Living, SECOND Custom Edition. Published by Pearson Custom Publishing.Copyright © 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc. Waters, R. (1975) "Have a Cigar"