"Soundtrack to my life"

 DUE: Before class Monday, April 15

INSTRUCTIONS:
STEP 1
Title this post "Soundtrack to my life"

STEP 2 (worth 5 points)
Create a 10-song tracklist that would be on the soundtrack to your life movie.  The songs you choose will usually be one of two things: 1) the song that was actually playing during a specific life experience; 2) a song that perfectly fits the mood or action of your memory (think of it as 'background music' for a scene)
For each song on the list, include 3 pieces of information:
a. The title
b. The artist
c. a link to the song (if you choose a song that does not have a link - like a church hymn or a family song or some other non-famous piece - simply list as much information as you can)

STEP 3 (worth 5 points)
Choose 5 of the songs from your soundtrack and write an explanation of why this song is important in your life.

Here's an example for Mr. Cheng

Step 1
"Soundtrack to my Life"

Step 2
1. Canon in D by Pachelbel
2. Gasenhauer by Carl Orff
3. Raise Your Glass by P!nk
4. Piano Man by Billy Joel
5. Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
6. Annie's Song by John Denver (1974)
7.  No Rain by Blind Melon
8. Overture to Marriage of Figaro by Mozart
9. Days of the week song (no link)
10. Amanda by Boston

Step 3
Track 6. Annie's Song by John Denver:
 This was the first dance at my wedding in 1994. The second verse excerpted feels perfect for a wedding because they seem like vows ("Come let me love you, let me give my life to you..."). The whole song feels very true to my wife Shannon and me for many reasons. First of all, we both have a great regard for nature. Some of the lyrics of the first verse go, "You fill up my senses / like a night in a forest/ like the mountains in spring time / like a walk in the rain." While I would never call us "outdoorsy" types, we both appreciate and have a spiritual connection to nature. Neither of us is particularly religious, but we are awed by natural beauty. We spent part of our honeymoon at Glacier and Yosemite National Parks, and Yosemite Valley is probably my wife's favorite spot on earth. She even refers to it as "church." Some other key connects for us are that we are both children of the '70s, and this was a big hit then, so it reminds us of our childhoods. John Denver had a very squeaky clean image. He kind of represented wholesomeness and decency (his real name is Duesenberg, but he changed it Denver because he liked that city's vibe). Both my wife and I are kind of square that way. He had a popular Christmas album. That he did with the Muppets.




Anyway, Shannon and I see ourselves as kind of good, dorky folks who like things like kindness and nature and being polite, which seems out of fashion in contemporary society (that's probably more of a reflection of our insecurities than a clear-eyed judgement of American culture).