THE SOUNDTRACK OF MY LIFE

Did you ever imagine your life had a soundtrack to it? Like you were in your own personal musical? There is always music running through my head. Oddly enough, I hate musicals. I always say how ridiculous is that – as if people just break into song at the drop of a hat. But there is always some song running through my head and sometimes just bursts out of my mouth. When I was little, I used to run outside to dance in the rain. Dancing and spinning around, getting soaking wet and loving it.

I seem to have passed this on to my son. He is always bursting into song. And dance. Quite loudly and publicly at times. I blame it on Guinness. Not the drinking of it, although that too at times. Guinness made the best of their commercials ever when my son was about five. My son had the dance down pat and was always humming the tune, through the house, under my feet in the kitchen, down the road to the next farm, down the aisles of the local shops. It was a brilliant commercial. It was as if a director dragged a rural Irish farmer into a studio and explained the concept of interpretive dance to him and then said, “Okay, now do the waiting for the pint to settle dance.”

Of course what is cute at five can be a bit… well… different at twenty-three. But still a lot of fun. I don’t know where it comes from. Genetic memory perhaps. From the dancing at the crossroads in my ancestors’ day.

I can remember, when I was not long here, sitting at a house showing with another real estate agent from the Dominican Republic and we were chatting about what we most missed here in America. And simultaneously we both said, “Music!” It is not that there is not music here. It just doesn’t seem to permeate your life in quite the same way. Folks may not go down and dance at the crossroads of an evening these days but you may be sitting around the kitchen talking when someone takes out a flute and a song starts and someone else runs to grab their fiddle… Or you may be driving your cab through the streets of Dublin when a group of people have left the pubs to enjoy the summer and take the music to the street…

But if there is any one soundtrack to my life, for most of my adult life, it has been The Saw Doctors. I have been reminded daily of this fact because they are uploading to their YouTube Channel. Not sure why. Would seem to hurt sales. But they are not touring this summer so maybe this is our consolation prize. Of course I already had all their CDs but now my iPod is full courtesy of their YouTube uploads. The soundtrack of my life. From I Useta Lover through all the rest, I couldn’t pick a favorite (well maybe sometimes, on certain days, N17) but that music is always there. 

It spent 35 weeks in the Irish charts including a record 9 weeks at #1 and became the best-selling single of all time in the country.
This Video is for the 2007 Re-Release for the RTE People In Need Telethon, when it charted again 17 years later this time reaching #7