Music from my childhood #4: Big Yellow Taxi



I often turn back to the sonic essences of what clearly seemed to me, even as a child, living on the Middlefield Lane estate, a very modern world. It might be difficult for anyone to believe me now, but when I was eight or nine years old, I was acutely and precociously aware of certain sounds from 1968-69-70 that seem to be absolutely redolent of those halcyon days. I remember Love is Blue, and another beautiful, string-laden tune from 1968 called Soul Coaxing, by the Raymond LeFevre Orchestra, which I always associate with a memory of putting stickers of photographs of the Moon and the Universe into some kind of Scientific American book on space travel. I remember my teacher playing us Fleetwood Mac's Albatross while we did a painting of whatever thoughts or images came into mind while listening to it. And I particularly remember bombing around the estate on my bike with Joni Mitchell's wonderful Big Yellow Taxi running on a constant loop in my nine year old head.

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