Life's in harmony with music

Roger Moroney.

Music is a most subjective thing.

What one person likes another will loathe.

"Turn that infernal racket off!" was a much-used term in many a house during the emergence of that thing called "rock and roll".

Parents would endeavour to teach their youngsters the values of fine tunes and melodies as they played their Glen Miller songs and a spot of Nat King Cole and Guy Mitchell.

The quiff-haired youngsters however would close their doors and put on a Chuck Berry 45.

Each, indeed, to their own.

So I was a tad fascinated last week to read of the Queen's 10 favourite songs list, and I took the stance of "no real surprises there".

There was a touch of diversity though, which is always a hallmark of music and its ability to attract attention.

Her Majesty is fond of dear old George Formby's Leaning on a Lamppost although she did not mention the Herman's Hermit's lash at it.

She is also partial to Fred Astaire and Cheek to Cheek as well as Delores Gray and Bill Johnson's version of Anything You Can Do.

Howard Keill's Oklahoma also gets the royal thumbs-up and of course there is a majestic touch to her list with the inclusion of the Regimental March Milanollo.

And of course being of the era she is smitten with Vera Lynn's delightful White Cliffs of Dover.

No sign of Chuck Berry however, and I mention that because when I was about 17 I bought a Chuck Berry album of greatest hits.

I'd heard Maybeline somewhere and liked it ... and read about how this hard-living rock'n'roller influenced a lot of bands which emerged in the '60s.

So I'd play it at home, in a subtle manner when the folks were in of course, and then let the radiogram fry a little when they were out.

And one day I came home from the warehouse store I was working in and I heard Maybeline playing.

I suspected one of the bro's had put it on but then realised they wouldn't have been home.

It was mum.

"I quite like that one," she said.

Old Chuck had closed the borders of age, which did not surprise me as I secretly used to enjoy hearing dad play his favourite song, If I Were a Blackbird by the tenor Josef Locke.

I learned some years later that dad, despite his penchant for very refined music (apart from an occasional burst of Spike Jones) liked a couple of Beatles songs but, like us and our liking of some of their music, did not make a thing about it.

Music has been with us since the first hairy brutes decided two legs were better to stand on rather than four.

I daresay they began beating sticks on things and eventually added strings.

One of the first things we learned at school was singing the national anthem, and in our second year we all learned to play a strange plastic flute thing (a cheapo version) appropriately called (I think) a plastiflute.

Music was everywhere, as it always has been and always will be. So I considered what the Queen had chosen and sat down and tried to come up with my favourite 10 songs - but ended up with a list double that.

Whittling it back was too tough although lodged in there are two songs called Rain - one by the Beatles and one by Dragon.

And there is Wishing Well by a band called Free which I first heard over the PA as a build-up to the Rolling Stones concert at Western Springs around 1972.

I think the odd muffins we had at the hippy house we stopped at in Hamilton helped.

But I also adore Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Demis Roussos' Rain and Tears.

And If I Were a Blackbird.

And despite nudging 62, I like The Wildhearts and The Killers.

During my errant fourth form year I was a bit of a nuisance in the music class but was inspired to actually write a song called Get Out.

The teacher had declared that I "would not know a minor from a major" and I said I did - one wore a uniform and the other was covered in coal dust.

"Get out," he said and something sparked in my head.

- Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.