Music

Gilly Frank's Record Collection is about a girl that inherits her grandmother's record collection, and discovers it holds more than music.

Have you seen those memes going around the internet that list out things that happened twenty years ago, so that people in their 40s feel incredibly old all of a sudden?  Like, "Did you know that Terminator 2 came out more than 20 years ago?"

http://xkcd.com/891/

That got me thinking about music, time, relationships, and people.  A grandparent of today could easily have been into all kinds of great music of the 70s.  Ten years ago, grandparents in popular media were more likely to have been ex-hippies, Beatles fans, or attendees of Woodstock.  Now, we're looking at people who grew up with Disco, punk, prog-rock, hard rock, early metal, and early new wave/goth.

So growing up, Gilly was mostly exposed to these types of music because of her close relationship to her grandmother.

The song that really started me thinking about music, and time, and people, and relationships was "Hold On" by the band Yes.  This is the second song on the album 90125, and it came out in 1983.  This was the eleventh album by Yes, so anyone who loved them through the 1970s would have picked it up.  The band had broken up in 1980, and gotten back together in 1982, and this was the result.  It was different from their work in the 1970s, but sing Jon Anderson has a pretty distinct voice, and there's some great prog-rock jams and intricate musical work that takes place on the album.

The hit from this album was "Owner of a Lonely Heart," and it probably still gets radio play.  "Hold On" is strange, amazing, and epic.  It's not a perfect song by any means, but it has qualities that I think would be worth exploring, if you were in a band that was making music today.  There are other moments on this album that I think would provide a similar springboard, like the first 6 minutes of side 2, with the great build during "Cinema" and the transition into "Leave It."  I like the song "Leave It," but like "Hold On," it's not perfect, and some of the vocal stuff that happens is a little kooky for my tastes.  But listen to it.  Invest yourself in the moment that occurs at about 2:00 - 2:30: