Love this song and even from the first few notes, it evokes in me a mental image of a sandy beach. Maybe where I was when I first heard it. OTOH I clearly remember the circumstances of hearing I Wanna Hold Your Hand for the first time. Having been saturated by, on one hand, folk singers like Peter, Paul and Mary and on the other hand by Motown performers like Sam and Dave, the Crystals, I was riveted by the sound of the Beatles' music. It was so different than anything I had heard up til then.
________________________________ From: turquoiseb <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, May 18, 2013 10:44 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Stand By Me On another forum far more limited in scope than even this one, I occasionally chat with a handful of people who went to the same high school I did. This is not quite as lame as it sounds, because the whole school had 30 students, and was located near Casablanca, Morocco. It was a cool place to go to high school, and made the experience more bearable. Anway, on this forum, one of the people I remember well from that time has been entertaining people by posting links to old songs that we literally used to dance to in the Teen Club during that period. It's been a veritable nostalgiafest. Today he posted Ben E. King's classic song, and folks went wild. Below is the original version of this song, followed by a number of cover versions. John captures the magic of the song best in the intro to the first cover version, but the last one is the best. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbg7YoXiKn0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4_ghOG9JQM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYt0ZScWZDI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bGqeZZt98o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM It's fascinating to me how popular this song was at the time, and how popular it still is today. It has touched so many people, over so many years. I can remember *exactly* where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard it. It stopped me in my tracks and forged an indelible impression in my mind. I can remember the lyrics 52 years later as clearly as John did. I guess the the music stands by us, even if little else does.
