The Vinyl Ape šŸ¦§

ROBERTA FLACK
First Take
1971 Canada pressing

I got into an interesting conversation with a friend of mine yesterday; one that drove me to pull this record out.

He had asked me ā€œWhat song elicits the most emotional response in you? Do you have one of those? A song that just overwhelmingly takes you over any time you hear it?ā€.

As a matter of fact, I do.

Itā€™s ā€œThe First Time Ever I Saw Your Faceā€ by Roberta Flack.

One would assume it is related to my beautiful wife of almost 20 years, but no, it is not.

Itā€™s a song that is heavily rooted in the birth of (& love for) my now teenage son.

Itā€™s an achingly beautiful song that I loved LONG before he was born (I first heard it in the film The Best Of Times), but when my son arrived, the lyrics took on new meaning for me.
Oddly, it was also the first song Iā€™d heard after he was born, and it transformed me forever.

Do any of you have a song like that?

#vinyl #vinylrecords #vinylcommunity #vinylcollection #retro #vintage #art #music

Apr 12 at 2:03amWeb
Show threadicastico20h ago

@TheVinylApe

Stop your crying by Spirtualized: my wife and I moved to NYC in early September of 2001. Moved into our downtown apartment on 9/9/2001 in fact. She had a new job at the Natural History Museum. A couple of days later she had to walk 80 blocks back home towards the fires of the WTC. The whole thing was traumatizing for her and killed her vision of her new life in NYC. She is a big Spiritualized fan and that song captured the mood of trying to comfort her as she worked her way through it all. It still brings me right back to that smokey brownstone every time I hear it.

https://youtu.be/JhynUZyB2sk

Spiritualized - Stop Your Crying (Official Music Video)

YouTube
Show threadThe Vinyl Ape šŸ¦§20h ago

@icastico wow.
I moved OUT of NYC in May of 2001, so I just missed it.
My bandā€™s rehearsal space/ studio was not too far from Ground Zero so chances are, I would have had to deal with that stuff too.
Thank you for sharing that.

And thatā€™s a great song.
I have a great deal of painful memories attached to Spiritualizedā€™s ā€œBroken Heartā€, which is a soliloquy for another day.

Show threadparamnesiac19h ago

@TheVinylApe This one.

https://youtu.be/ZjXKrBGtx5g?si=sClGs7jRkKmsfniR

Makes me weepy every time.

Fireworks (Never Tell)

YouTube
Show threadThe Vinyl Ape šŸ¦§19h ago
@paramnesiac oh cool.
Iā€™d never heard that before!
Thank you for that!
Show threaddonutage (Bill Cole)19h ago
@TheVinylApe I have similar feelings about a very different song, Imperial Teen's "Butch" (from š˜šš˜¦š˜¢š˜“š˜Ŗš˜¤š˜¬, 1996). I'm not sure when I'd started listening to that album, but I think it was still pretty new to me in the late summer of 2002, when my daughter was born. For some reason, I latched onto the chorus ("Butch is pink & butch is blue / You like strawberries. I like you") as something to sing to her as I walked around with her head on my shoulder trying to soothe her to sleep.
Show threaddonutage (Bill Cole)19h ago
@TheVinylApe It's a pretty weird song to associate with fatherhood, but that emotional memory is unbreakable now.
Show threadThe Vinyl Ape šŸ¦§19h ago

@donutage my son changed my life, dude.
I was a selfish, self-centred, self involved horrible alcoholic and drug addict for years.
The moment my son was born, that all changed.
The lyrics of that song cover everything I felt when I first looked at him.

Thatā€™s the thing with music.

We have zero control over how any of it will touch us.

100 people can hear the same song and get 100 different things from it.

Itā€™s why I fell in love with it at such an early age.

Show threaddonutage (Bill Cole)19h ago
@TheVinylApe Music is magical, for sure. And good on you for straightening out for your kid. šŸ¦¾
Show threadThe Vinyl Ape šŸ¦§18h ago
@donutage yeah. That was one family heirloom I wasnā€™t passing down to him, man.
Show threadThe Vinyl Ape šŸ¦§19h ago
@donutage and thatā€™s a wonderful story, dude.
Just lovely.