[78-L] music making a big difference to residents in rest homes

[David Lennick]

For a few years I emceed Toronto jazz and dance concerts as part of a "Music in 
the Parks" summer program. Great stuff and I got to meet and hear a lot of the 
best Toronto musicians. Groups would come and do line dancing, a Toronto 
eccentric named Clem Hambourg (jazz promoter extraordinaire in previous years) 
would come out and do a lot of solo dancing, and so it went. But the very first 
time I was about to start one of these evenings, a minivan pulled up and 
several nearly comatose patients from the nearby Baycrest Hospital were ushered 
into places immediately in front of me. They hadn't the foggiest idea what they 
were listening to.

CKFH had that format for a few years. All programmed from badly duplicated 
stretchy tapes. Folks used to refer to it as "The Music Of Your Mother's Life".

dl

On 4/8/2012 4:17 PM, Anthony G Pavick wrote:
> A number of years ago I was involve in a vaudeville style troupe that
> did 30 minutes shows at rest homes. I used to sign My Blue Heaven,
> whilst wearing a cowboy get-up. We always had a sacred number and
> always ended with God Bless America. They'd wheel people who looked
> sullen and lost into a recreation area and we'd make a point to
> specifically play to those who seemed so far gone. I can still recall
> seeing a spark of life in a person's sad eyes when we'd sing as if
> that person was teh only one in the room.
>
> To a certain extent this type of musical presentation was attempted,
> albeit half heartedly, via Bonneville's "Music of Your Life"
> satellite distributed radio format. That, as do most corporate radio
> formats these days, had even less animation and life in it than the
> most moribund of patients in any rest home
>
> T
>
>