A Rebel Nomad’s Anthem

Music plays such an integral part in our lives.

Ever since we were babies, our mothers or other adults sang lullabies to us as they rocked us to sleep. Then even before we went to school we were learning and singing the alphabet song and other nursery rhymes. As we grew older, we sang at church or whatever religious organization we belonged to, listened to the radio, went to sock hops, and then night clubs to sing and dance.

Over the years we were introduced to many forms and genres of music, both instrumental and song versions. We are influenced by the music and the songs, whether we realize it or not.

As an adult, occasionally we look back and reminisce about the songs we grew up with and how they influenced us and what they mean to us today. You will be hard pressed to find someone in my generation who wasn’t influenced by the Woodstock and the music of its time. John Lennon’s Imagine became an anthem for a generation opposed to wars and Vietnam war in particular.

In addition, there are songs that are personally meaningful to us for various reasons. One of such songs for me is Grand Illusion by Styx. During my career with Pizza Hut, where I was a successful manager in the 70′s and 80′s, I had a supervisor who always pestered me to buy a new car. To me, a car is a mode of transportation; nothing more, nothing less. To him, it was a status symbol and it bothered him that his top manager was driving a car that was several years old. (I drove a 1973 Plymouth Satellite, and this was in 1981)

So when he got his new company car, he came by to *inspire* me to get a new car. I had recently bought a new camera, so I took a picture of it and had it enlarged to a 5×7 and wrote the final stanza of Grand Illusion on the back of it, and presented it to him as a gift during the next manager’s meeting. In case you’re not familiar with the song, here are the words to the final stanza.

America spells competition
Join us in the blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car.

Someday soon, we’ll stop to ponder
What on earth this spell we’re under
We made the grades and still we wonder
Who the hell we are

He never pestered me after that. But, there is one song that I always related to like no other song. The fact that I am a Classic Rock junkie and this song is a Country and Western song, is a testament in itself that it is not the style of music or the genre, that influenced me so much as the thoughts expressed in the lyrics.

I recently came across it on Grooveshark, and was pleasantly surprised to see that they offered a Widget function to embed the song on a web page. So turn up the volume on your speakers and listen to A Rebel Nomad’s Anthem, as I like to call it, or Long Haired Country Boy as Charlie Daniels called it.

What are the songs that have influenced you over the years. You can share them with us in the comments below.

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