Rediscovering Music

Lately, I’ve found myself wanting to listen to music again. Not totally engrossing myself in it, but having it as a “background” to whatever it is I am doing. I hate dealing with changing discs in the CD player every hour or so. And some of the disks only have maybe one or two songs I like. A few years back, I ripped a bunch of my CD collection to MP3 and burned them onto CDs. I’ve got about four CDs worth of MP3 from
the artists I like. While almost all of the music I own the original CDs for, I have a few “concert recordings” thrown in for good measure.

Earlier today, I plopped my CDs into my Linux computer, copied the files over into my hard drive, pointed noatun at the files and said play randomly. Turned the volume down to almost “background” level and went about my day. I might go through some of my other CDs and burn a
few more tracks.

One thing I definately need to do is go through my MP3 collection and remove a few of the more innappropriate tracks, such as a few things from Frank Zappa — I don’t think my 3-year son needs to hear just about anything from the Joe’s Garage album. A few other things that might have to go include Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper’s I ain’t gonna p— in no jar, possibly any Monty Python, The Nails 88 Lines about 44 Women, Nine Inch Nails Closer, Pink Floyd’s Not Now John, and the Smoke Two Joints song.

I got exposed to “adult” music at a very early age. In fact, I can remember almost none of the “kid” music I listened to except for maybe stuff from Sesame Street. Some of my better memories of my father are music-related, either singing with him when he performed in a pizza place (where I made my first dollar!), or watching him and his bandmates practice. One of the first “adult” records I remember putting on the turntable (yes, I am old enough to have had records) was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, specifically Side 2. The first song on that side has the word bullsh– in it (and no, I was smart enough not to sing that word until I was older ;). DSoTM was my favorite album when I was five, followed closely by Wish You Were Here. My mom had a cassete tape with both those albums on it and I probably wore that tape out.

My son’s first “adult” music disc is the soundtrack from Shrek. He likes the Smashmouth tracks (I’m a Beliver, which is a remake of an old Monkees song written by Neil Diamond, and All Star), the “Halleluyah” song (which has some pretty twisted lyrics in it), and the “I’m on my way” song. At least he can’t wear out a CD, but he can scratch it up. I wonder if he’ll remember that when he’s older.

The vast majority of the music I enjoy listening to has some connection with my past. The last song I heard was Save a Prayer
by Duran Duran, which I remember from right around 6th or 7th grade. I remember some “happier” times with my best friend at the time. The song I am listening to now is Echoes by Pink Floyd, which has lots of college memories — I didn’t much expand my knowledge of Pink Floyd until I got to college where I had a credit card and wasn’t afraid to use it to “acquire” the catalogs of artists I liked such as Pink Floyd. For some reason I associate the John Lennon song Woman with my mother, probably because she had the Double Fantasy album. That song came up in the rotation today more than once and it got skipped each time.