Posts Tagged ‘music’
Musical Likes and Dislikes
Last weekend I made a point of pulling one of my guitars out of its case and spending some time tenderizing my fingertips on the steel strings. It has been a very, very long time since I played a guitar. It saddens me, but it is something that I face as a function of the limited number of hours in a day and the ridiculously large percentage of those hours which a day job consumes, and the variety of other interests which occupy the minutes and hours left over.
The calluses on my left hand never seem to survive the hiatus between periods of activity. It really is a shame, because I think music really deserves to be my first love. I guess it is no surprise that if I am not making my own music, the next best thing is listening to the music of others. Some nights I like to make a point of avoiding the visuals of television or video and put on a random shuffle of my collection of music to fill our space while I go about my activities.
Yesterday at work, late in the day, I had put on some background music for a part-time helper who arrives after most of the regular crew has gone home. In a work setting, it can be a challenge to select something that isn’t elevator muzak and also isn’t offensive to anyone within earshot. I noticed that my iTunes Radio had been left on something from the 70’s, which seemed to fit the general age group of the people on hand at the moment.
I was occupied enough with my own tasks that I was paying only sideways attention to what was emanating from my computer speakers. Then a song came on that sounded completely different to me, as compared to the previous too-many-hundred times I’d heard it before. It was “Roxanne” by The Police.
This is the kind of song that played so often on the radio that my senses just glazed over when I heard it. Like all over-played songs, in time, I didn’t want to hear it at all. Now, some 30-plus years later, I was hearing it from a fresh perspective. I find myself amazed every time this happens, but given a span of time, and the random happenstance of any moment, one song can suddenly emerge anew in my ears. That song really has some great moments. It’s as if I can suddenly discern what all the fuss was about back in the day. No wonder so many people were fans. At the time, I barely noticed anything about their music that deserved more attention.
Now I am trying to imagine how to define my tastes in music. One possibility is by revealing what lies mostly beyond the fuzzy area of my interest. Even though I can appreciate hearing some orchestrated classical music, it is a rare occasion that I will purposely put it on. I don’t care for most country music, nor heavy metal rock or acid rock or electronica or hip-hop or rap or radio favorites of any genre or pop or punk. I do find isolated moments from each category which do appeal, however.
I guess the next question might be, is the bulk of my interest defined by the music that I didn’t itemize there? I’d probably have to keep going on listing categories to which I don’t listen to achieve a more fitting result (latin, disco…?).
So, what is it that does strike my fancy? I’ll look into that in a future post…
Musing on Music
Have I mused on music already here? I don’t remember.
It was 40 years ago now that the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held. Three days of peace and music. I was 10 years old. I don’t have any recollection that I had any clue it was occurring.
I’m not clear about what point in my life it was that I got hooked by the music being made by artists like the ones that were so well represented at the Woodstock concert. The first album that belonged to me was a gift from a sibling or siblings (anyone remember?). It was the Monkees, “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. That album was released in November of 1967, so maybe I got it Christmas of that year. I remember it was a trick where they taped the album to the cover of the box the present was wrapped in so when I lifted it and looked in the box, there was nothing there.
The next record I recall was one that my sister, Linda, allowed me to select for myself, as a gift from her. I didn’t have a clue what to pick and went with what I saw before me when walking the aisle of the local record store. Black Sabbath’s “Ironman” was something that I recognized as having heard on the radio and it was in the front of a stack down at my eye level. I picked it and remember her trying hard to make sure that was what I wanted, I’m pretty sure because she could sense it was not a well thought out selection. But I held firm, trying to portray that I was making an informed decision. I wasn’t.
Eventually I came to revere the music of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The first concert I ever saw in person was The Allman Brothers Band. I was a fan of The Beatles, Derek & the Dominos, America, Loggins & Messina and a wide range of related groups. I have always liked live recordings and I think my favorite albums from all the above artists or groups are their live concert recordings.
Impressionable years
Somewhere in my very impressionable music years, I heard the live recordings of Santana, The Who, Richie Havens, Country Joe & the Fish, Canned Heat, Ten Years After, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joe Cocker, John Sebastion, and I’m sure others that performed at Woodstock, and those songs all locked in my consciousness as foundation blocks. I probably heard them from the movie and its soundtrack. But from those songs, I built a fascination for Leon Russell and the recordings like Mad Dogs & Englishmen, The Band, “Rock of Ages” and “The Last Waltz”, Little Feat, “Waiting for Columbus”, George Harrison and the musicians he recruited for “Concert for Bangladesh”.
This wasn’t music that was played on popular radio (remember the AM band?). This is what record albums were all about. Eventually, I got a job at a retail record store for about a year and became immersed in more albums than I could comprehend.
I wasn’t old enough to be aware that the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was happening at the time, but it became a very significant part of my music world by the recordings of the music that was made there. And the music that was made there came from the spirit of that moment. Woodstock was a very important event for me, after the fact. And it became more so, in the accumulating years after it actually happened.
Relative Something 