if i remember i'll ask around when i get out to the states in the fall - try and
look it up -


>
> I think her point was that those songs taught us in childhood stay with us
> much longer than those we learn as teenagers or adults. And those songs are
> the songs of our cultural hertitage.

not sure if you're implying some kind of long-term memory thing but you just
made me think of something else (more cultural mechanism): when we get kids we
basically don't have anything else to sing them other than the stuff we heard
when we were them - i'm not going to crank up the pearl jam and led zepplin when
i want to get junior to fall asleep -

>
> So perhaps the Beatles and Elvis will pass down in our cultural memory, but
> not very much else?

i wonder about that - i'm quite often baffled and/or astonished at the stuff
which turns up on the "golden oldies" retro radio stations (is there anything
else these days?) - not necessarily anybody's "greatest hits" or any "number 1"
but often chosen (i assume) because it is the kind of mindless pap you can play
in the background (and maybe not have to pay royalties for?) and no one really
pays it any mind: another form of muzak - so i think there might be other forces
at play -
        do we remember things better when there are pictures there too? will
remember the soundtrax to all the commercials (the way we all know sitcom theme
tunes?)...? something with words easier than instrumental...?
        in some ways the guy who started this whole line of discussion week was
very manipulative: pushing a lot of buttons, most importantly the one which said
"nostalgia" - picking songs which anybody from the western hemisphere must have
heard somewhere/sometime before - why he wasn't singing german songs (as someone
else asked) was because this is the former east germany, and there are a lot of
west germans about - couldn't sing one set of cultural references without one
group being left out, so he remained neutral by singing in english...
        anyway: something to think about - not necessarily archaeological in the
strictest sense but... cultural...


geoff carver
http://home.t-online.de/home/gcarver/
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