The Thing About Music

Awhile back, I was talking to my book reviewer/editor (Kate) about how writing about something is like a high-level view of the real story and is often just a catalyst to a memory. Even in my book, my love of music and the eclectic nature of my taste got overshadowed by the many other things in my life considered favorites. Music, however, has a resonance with me like no other favorite thing. Symbology items come a close second for the same reason, it transforms me to another time and place and I’m immediately there again. That bus ride to a basketball game playing name the band member or something like it to which I had many of the answers. I remember having an encyclopedic history of rock music that I read from cover to cover at least twice. In my late teens, I could have told you anything and everything about any rock group, literally. At some point, I lost the book and over time lost most of the information in my mind. The Dr. Demento Show, every music award show, my early transgression to country, then blues, fifties, sixties, early 1900’s victrola’s, western, jazz, and now coming full circle to classic rock and the music from my teens and twenties, mix in a little Bocelli and Brightman for the culture. Music is part of me, it is in my head when I least expect it and when I’m fully aware that I want it there. I’ve been brought to tears, laughed hysterically, and reflected deeply all by a few notes of music. I know I’m not the only one that feels this. I am not sure that for many, music is a part of the background conversation in their head though. I literally can have a song in my head and while it is playing, I’m running a memory or designing a path for the future.

I can remember very early in my youth listening to these little red records at 78 speed that my mom had from the forties and fifties. I’m pretty sure I still have them somewhere along with Elvis Presley, The Platters, and many more from the late fifties. All on original 45 speed records. I still have over 100 vinyl records, a bunch of eight-track tapes, cassettes, and now a reel-to-reel player along with Dad’s full collection of six-hour tapes. Of course, enough CD’s that it was necessary to buy a sleeve catalog for them. For the last ten to fifteen years, we just stream services such I-Tunes and if you want the whole album, you just download it. LOL, now Jen and I get in our swim spa and Bluetooth music from our phones to the speaker system that rivals the several hundreds of dollars I spent on systems at various times in my life. Radios, Hi-Fi’s, turntables, tape players, or modern-day marvels all do the same thing, they deliver our favorite tunes to us when we need them most.

In my late teens and early twenties, I lived for Sunday night and listening to the Dr. Demento show. Grandma getting run over by the reindeer, Weird Al Yankovic, and a cast of loonies singing parodies would have me laughing in bed instead of going to sleep. Long trips would be planned by radios stations and what music would be available. WBAP out of Ft Worth on the AM dial, KOMA out of Oklahoma City on top of the cliffs in Kremmling at night while making out with a teen-age heart throb interest. Later we could pick up a station out of Omaha that introduced country music to me when I was receptive to it. I grew up with my parents listening to country and western, fifties bob, Engelbert Humperdinck, and of course Tom Jones. I despised them all and yet when they’d come on over the radio, I’d be singing along with every beat. Today, I consider these prime listening memento tunes and transport me to a time of simpler life with no worries of bills, medication, back pain, etc. Music is and will be the transport to a better place and time.

I have two complete collections or libraries of artists. They are Alice Cooper and Led Zeppelin. Schools Out, Leather and Lace, Billion Dollar Baby, I’m Eighteen, and No More Mr. Nice Guy are just a few that would be rocking the basement much to my parents’ displeasure. Many nights my dad would sneak down and turn Alice off after I fell asleep. I still do this but instead of Dad turning it off, I usually drop my phone next to the bed or my earphone comes out and pokes me in the side of the face, sometimes both. Led Zeppelin II was my first album. Maw bought it for me when I was around ten along with my first turntable for Christmas. That was an amazing Christmas filled with music and my grandmother dancing like a 20’s flapper to Whole Lotta Love. Then I heard Immigrant Song, and I was hooked on heavy metal. Then came Black Dog, Kashmir, Going to California, and everyone’s favorite, Stairway to Heaven. I get lost listening to them and as recent as last night, I listened to Thank You with John Bonham’s son on drums and seventy-something Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones. They can still rock, but somehow, I’m glad they stopped making records when they were on top unlike groups like Rolling Stones still churning out new music with less energy nearing eighty. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Stones, but they were so much better twenty years ago. Bad Company, Foreigner, Tesla, and on my darker side, Type-O Negative, Godsmack, and getting caught recently with Cradle of Filth singing Nymphetamine when the car decided to play music off my phone instead Sirius/XM. It was embarrassing for me for some reason, but Kate, Joshua, and Jen all got a good laugh at my expense.

Many years ago, while working on airplanes in the Air Force, we’d have music blaring so loud that conversation was impossible in the shop. I loved it! Some people might not be able to think, but those of us in the shop seemed to channel our best work with music. It reminds of Jen asking me tonight about how you can write and watch tv at the same time. I listen to it with my ears and think about the writing with my mind. I know what is going on with the music or tv program and somehow never get them confused. I never seem to write what I’m hearing, lol. I still do this when working in my shop or garage, the music is blaring usually with classic rock or country music because that is all I can get on the radio. Very soon as I get everything together in this new space, I’ll get a Sirius/XM radio or even better, just a docking station for my phone.

I just remembered that I even put in my death book instructions for which songs are to be played at my funeral service. I hope I’ll be listening from above to the reaction to the few that will be in attendance, chiefly my kids! Maybe a few more, but I really do hope I’m there singing at the top of my apparition and maybe I’ll knock over a vase or something. I just want everyone to know that Heaven is rockin’. I was going to finish this here, but I just remembered one of my favorite things that happens to me occasionally. Well, it used to happen when I was younger and allowed to have music playing all night and now, since getting a cpap, I dream again and again about being on stage and performing. I wake to find the same song is playing in my headphones or when the music was playing out loud. In my earlier days, I really felt I would be a performer, maybe I was in a previous life and I’m sure to be again in one of my future lives. Music is everything, all things respond to it, and we all have a song that just makes us stop everything, listen, dance, and hopefully we all still sing at the top of our lungs. Rock On Y’all!!