Recently I have been researching the top ten songs or albums on the charts since the early 1930's. It is fascinating to go through the years, assuming your old enough or know your music, and see how musical history unfolded. The absence of many black artists in the early days as they rarely got a chance to record until the days of the brilliant Barry Gordy and his "Motown" sound. For those of you who do not know the name Motown derives from the words motor town, which Detroit is know for. It says a lot about the success of Gordy when most people know Detroit today as MOTOWN rather than the home of the auto manufacturing business.

The top ten takes us through the many changes in the music industry but also gives us an idea of how we danced and how we fell in love. Way back when dance floors were huge, when the beautifully colourful juke box gave out swing, jitterbug, and the ever romantic two step...when kids danced the night away using the back beat to free the body for movement that came from within....not contrived, but the pure pleasure of physical movement to great rhythm. Then came the power of Rock and Roll....equally as freeing as it somehow reached even deeper parts of ones soul or psyche and yes aided by a new phenomenon....drugs. To be fair we had are booze but from where I came from, we new nothing of drugs until the 60's. Not to say they were not around, just not so around as they later became. From swing to rock and roll some of the greatest modern music was produced....Lennon and McCartney, as composers have been compared with the genius of Mozart.....in that the creating of a song was as serious and intense for them as it was for "Wolfgang" This could most certainly be said for many of the great songwriters of that era, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond and so on. Like the great classics, these songwriters will be listened to for generations to come, their lyrics will continue to give food for thought, their arrangements and the purity of voice will never fail to move or excite the soul. As I moved along through the decades I came eventually to the 80's when the search for choice of good stuff became somewhat more barren....By the time I reached the 90's and the first ten years of the new millennium I found myself indeed in a barren wasteland.

My youngest son knows his music like few others, he has brought me to "Chiciane" and a few others that still retain the richness of a good sound...but for the most part...it's a bust! If you disagree, I welcome your comments for the purpose of dialogue and my education, but please spare me the overdone concept that those of us who are over 40 do not understand...Indeed young ones, we do get it! So if you have any suggestions that can equal some of the above mentioned I welcome them. If not, give yourself a real treat....instead of spending all your time on face book....get into I tunes and go back over the years for some of the most enjoyable sounds you will ever hope to hear.