I was thinking about The Band. I had never heard of them until I met Mark. He showed me their album called “Music from Big Pink” and told me that they had been Bob Dylan’s back up band.
That first album and subsequent ones could make up a musical background for our years together. Listening to music with my first husband could be a lot of fun, then go too far and become both boring and confusing. Come to think of it, listening to Cream was the same way. Again, I had never heard of any of the three of them. Their lyrics made no sense and Ginger Baker was almost as scary as Janis Joplin.
“Up On Cripple Creek” was a nice Band song; so was “Stage Fright.”
I pulled into Nazareth, I was feeling about half past dead
I looked around to find a place where I could lay my head
Hey mister, could you tell me where a man might find a bed.
He looked at me, shook his head, no was all he said.
Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And you put the load/put the load right on me.
Could make no sense out of these lyrics but I don’t think I was in the mood for things to make sense. Cut loose from family pressure I spent a lot of time, as I said, laying on Mark’s couch and listening to him interpret this stuff.
Life could have been a lot worse. It had been worse and it was time for me to have some fun. What the music makes me remember most is how responsible we “rebels” were. No drinking, no drugs. Earning good grades and having jobs. Plus, when I got myself some birth control pills, and the doctor said I had to take them through a whole menstrual cycle and abstain, we did as we were told. I wasn’t taking any chances where that was concerned. So much for “living in sin.”
lgmwriting 