University of Southern Maine (USM) President Dr Jacqueline Edmondson dropped in to WMPG to be a guest on USM, Music & ME on Wednesday.
DJ Jackie with host Margo Mallar
Dr Edmondson is a music fan who has authored many books, including two on musicians Gerry Garcia and John Lennon. We were unsure what musical choices to expect. Here is what she shared with us:
- DAYS LIKE THIS by Van Morrison“I picked the song ‘Days Like This’ for a number of reasons. Most importantly, this song is what I danced to with my son, Jacob, when he got married last year. I wanted a song that was happy and cheerful because we were so happy for him to be getting married. And as Jacob was growing up, our house is always full of music, that’s just what we do, we play music all the time. And Van Morrison is one of our favorites and so it fit with that. And Jacob plays the saxophone, we love music with saxophones in it. So it just hit a number of notes for us. But I really didn’t want to be one of those moms dancing to a sad song with my son. I wanted it to be a happy, cheerful song. And it was that.”
- WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD by Louis Armstrong“This is the song that Michael and I danced to when we got married. . . Michael and I have been married almost 32 years, it will be 32 years at the end of this month. And we love this song. We love Louis Armstrong’s music generally. But this is one that’s special to us and we still dance to it.”
- ALL I WANNA DO by Sheryl Crow“My first faculty job when I earned my doctorate was in Minnesota. At the time, Sheryl Crow’s album was a huge hit. The whole album, we would dance in the kitchen to. And there was this one restaurant in this little town where we lived. And the jukebox had this particular song. My son, Luke, who was in kindergarten at the time, this was his favorite song to dance to. So, I had to have a song about Jacob, a song about Michael, and this is my tribute to Luke. Had a lot of good memories of this song with him when he was in kindergarten.”
- THANK YOU by Chris Cornell (covering Led Zeppelin)“I picked this song because it connects different times of my life. I loved Led Zeppelin when I was younger. I still do, actually. But I also loved grunge when that happened in the ‘90s. And so, this song links Led Zeppelin to grunge. And I think Chris Cornell has absolutely one of the most beautiful voices that I’ve heard. And I think that the lyrics to this song are just so beautiful.”
- LIFE DURING WARTIME by Talking Heads“This one takes a little bit of a different path than the others. . . I live in Gorham, I see our students walking across campus, I see them getting on the Buskey (Metro bus). They have their headphones on and they’re listening to something. I remember when I was a first-year student, I had a Sony Walkman, and I had a cassette tape with the Talking Heads’ (album) Stop Making Sense. And this was one of those songs when I had an eight o’clock in the morning class, I listened to at top volume as I stomped my way across a parking lot through the campus to get to my 8 a.m. class.”
