The Day the Music Died

As this is the anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, I thought it only befitting to blog a little about this event, and how it affected me personally.

Of course I wasn't born when it happened; however both my mother and step-father were big music fans, my mom especially felt that both my brother and I should not only listen to all sorts of music, but to learn to appreciate the music by understanding what was going on in history at the time.  Those of you who know me, know that music has of course played a major part of my life and continues to do so.

However getting back to this particular day in history, February 2/3, 1959.  It wasn't until I was a soldier stationed in Germany in the late 1980's that I would truly understand the significance of this date.  I had a friend Bob DeRosa, a fellow soldier.  Bob was much older than I (I was in my early twenties and he was in his late thirties) – he had lived through the sixties and even lived in a commune in California during that time.  He was great guy, and was full of anecdotes about the music of that time.  One in particular was of course Don McLean's American Pie – I can remember a particular Saturday afternoon, where Rosie and I walked down to Baumholder and purchased some meat, cheese and wine and then sat on Baumholder Wall and listened to music (I always brought my boom box on our trips to town) – Eventually Don's song came on, and Rosie asked me if I knew the meaning of this song, I said that I understood it to be a tribute to the music of the 60's – he then said, well that is true, but do you know what all of the verses signify?  I said no, so over the next hour or so he proceeded to explain to me what all of the verses meant and what their significance was, I thought for sure the tape was going to break we re-wound and re-played it so many times 🙂

However after we finished, we played it one more time, and I was amazed at how much more I heard, it was a wonderful experience, and one I highly recommend.

With that said, here's your test, once you are done listening to the song below, click on the video link and see it, the way Don (and Rosie) did:

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James A. Restucci is the author of this blog. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Internal License.

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