Music notes

1) I’ve written about this before, but isn’t it odd that I can sing some old rock ‘n’ roll chestnut in the car, and my daughters will sing along, too, knowing every word? That just wasn’t the musical relationship I had with my parents. Tonight, we sat in the driveway for the last six minutes or so of “American Pie,” bellowing along. I know “American Pie” can’t mean to them what it means to me — though I’ve explained to them who he was singing about and what it meant, it’s got to be pretty abstract. And it didn’t even really mean that to me — the song came out in 1971, became a monstrous hit in 1972 despite its eight and a half minute playing time. But at the age of 11, I could hardly feel for the loss of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, or the Big Bopper. I knew who they were, I knew their songs, but they were barely relevant by the early ’70s. Interesting to a kid just discovering rock ‘n’ roll, but nothing to weep over.

But the song did mean something else. For starters, it had hints of a darker world — not a lot of pop songs at the time mentioned drinking whiskey and Satan laughing with delight. For another, it had hints of a fascinating, more adult world: “I know that you’re in love with him / ‘Cause I saw you dancing in the gym / You both kicked off your shoes . . . .” Somehow that line seemed imbued with all the mysteries of teen and grownup romance, something just a little way off for me at the time, but fascinating. What kind of passion on the dance floor could cause a girl to kick off her shoes? I was dying to find out. And then, of course, there was the pure joy of trying to decode the song (please — Jerry Lee Lewis was so The Jester).

In addition, when it was a big hit, it was playing everywhere, all the time. We were on a Boy Scout trip to Lake Placid in the winter, and at the high school there had been a snow sculpture contest. One of the entries was a giant slice of pie, colored red, white and blue. I had never seen anything like it, and it really resonated with me, locking that song forever into a particular moment in time. I can’t walk by the Methodist Church in Lake Placid, where we slept on the floor of the church hall, without thinking of those weekends with my friends and their fathers, and I can’t walk by the speed skating oval in front of the high school without seeing that giant slice of American pie in my mind.

2) Does the world ever run out of groups and singers that sold more records than The Beatles, but which you’ve never heard of? In a thread on a site I contribute to, someone asked who had done “Pictures of Matchstick Men,” and as that’s the kind of question that I actually get up in the morning just to answer, I was quick to answer, “Status Quo.” But I wanted to be sure there wasn’t an extraneous “The” on their name, and so I did a quick search, and found that at the BBC, at least, Status Quo have not been forgotten. Then I was faced with the fact, according to the BBC, that “the band have sold over 100 million albums, and notched up 50 British hits (more than any other band, ever!)” Well, if that’s true, don’t you think we would have heard of them? I know not everything crosses the pond, but you’re telling me that a group whose only US hit charted in 1968 has had more hits in the UK than anyone else? Hard, I say, hard to believe.