Musing on…The Music is You

My mind wandered onto a John Denver song a few minutes ago. It’s title is: The Music is You. I couldn’t help thinking, “It’s good that it’s in you, ’cause is sure ain’t in me.”

I’ve had a love/indifference/hate relationship with music most of my life. It’s funny because I’m so often surrounded by people who embrace music with a passion unknown to me. My brother has thousands of records and spends hours tweaking a mix collection with just the right master of a song. Scarlet’s* passion, after the people closest to her in life, is music. She’s working on becoming a song writer. In college, my best friend, Bruno, was surrounded by music. He’d jones about the next Springsteen concert or record while we were taking a break from jamming.

And I could easily name many, many others whose lives seem to be filled with a parade of notes and melodies. Me, I seem to march to the beat of a different bagpiper.

My mixed emotions about music obviously started when I was growing up. My dad was very much a country & western sort. It was well understood that the house’s music was to be in that genre. No rock and roll for me. Trouble was, I liked rock and roll. I like the Beatles (they were still a recording band at the time). My favorite cousin slipped me 45s of the Rolling Stones and the Buckinghams and a few others both classic and obscure.

That all changed big-time when we moved to the D.C. area. There I got exposed to rock almost everywhere. And blues, and R&B, and soul, and jazz, and folk, and…well, it was overwhelming. And wonderful. Then disco came and punk. While I’ve come to appreciate disco more now than I did then, for me it mostly served as a prelude to New Wave. Then MTV.

And, for the most part, I’ve been musically stymied since the 80s ever since. I mostly blame rap in pretty much all of its forms. Most of the time, it’s not even good lyric poetry. But I also blame the record companies, radio stations, and other distributors and promoters of musicians. Again, I hearken back to the 60s and 70s when you never knew what was coming up next on a station’s playlist. It was wonderful. Heavy rotation meant a song was played maybe six or seven times a day, not every hour. DJs and station managers programed what made it onto the air. It wasn’t all some national pre-packaged pablum.

When did the music die for me? I’d say when MTV stopped being about music videos and started being about non-video entertainment. (I can’t completely damn them…they did give us Aeon Flux, after all.) Video may have killed the video star, but MTV committed seppuku not long after.

Anyway…clearly I’m somewhat cynical when it comes to commercial music. The odd thing is that I’ve played music for most of my life. I’ve dabbled with any number of instruments from keyboards to flutes, but the one I’ve had the longest continuing relationship with has been the guitar. I’ve been playing for about thirty-five years now, and counting. I have no illusion that I’m much good at it. It’s just something that I do. I often feared jam sessions as I have essentially no improvisational skills on the fretboard. I’m more than happy to keep my own place as a rhythm guitarist of barely adequate skill.

Still, I don’t fell cheated. I’ve been often kissed by a Muse (or perhaps more than one, and maybe a Goddess or two) on various art and writing projects, so I have no cause for complaint. If not enveloping myself in music to the degree so many of those around me do is the price I must pay for the joys of art and writing…well, I think I’m certainly getting the better of the deal.

I’ve often thought about what I do like about music. For instrumentals, I want to feel elevated. Music that depresses me or agitates me isn’t really my cup o’ Joe. Just this past Christmas, they were playing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah. It moved me. It might have been better had I not been moved while I was driving the car, but that song, like many other great classical works, evokes the feeling that there is something more than just our common experience.

One common experience I don’t share is the concert experience. I’m one of those few people you’ll meet who has never gone to a concert. It was just never my thing. It doesn’t help that loud music isn’t kind to my body. Too much bass and/or too many decibels, and I’m physically sick…even with ear protection. But having gone to a number of plays and such, for me the live experience is overrated. I don’t kick myself for not joining in with the stadium and arena audiences.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not much of a lyrics person. People oooo and ahhh about lyrics, even recite them to me, but the words alone don’t do it for me (which might account for my loathing of rap). I want the rhythm of the words to meld with the melody. As long as they do that, I’m pretty much OK with not knowing what the words are. That’s not to say I’m completely indifferent to the lyrics, just that they aren’t generally a priority for me. It also explains why I don’t have much of a problem with foreign-language songs.

And yet, I still have music with me most of the time. No, I don’t generally play it a lot. As I write this article, the only sounds are the clacking of the keys and the hum of the computer fans. Still, I hear music and and feel the rhythm of it as I type. What do I hear? Inside my head right now I’m hearing Best of Both Worlds by Hannah Montana. Yeah, weird. But I stumbled across it during New Years, there was nothing else on (thanks AMPTP for the strike), and it was cute in that Partridge Family sort of way. And that title song is catchy. Not Tubthumping catchy, but it sticks with you nonetheless.

I do find it sad that I have to lean on a 15-year-old singer to put new tunes into the musical mix stored in my mind and soul (wonder how long it will be before the RIAA tries to get royalties for that). It’s little better that I’ll watch the entire “Flower Power” informercial because I remember hearing those songs playing on the radio when I was a kid (yeah, my dad’s country music edict carried a LOT of weight with me :-). Maybe I’m just one of those relics Springsteen sang about, thinking back to what I consider music’s Glory Days. There are still great songs to be had. I do hear them, but sadly, not often enough. Perhaps its the times. When we hit another optimistic patch, then maybe the music will make pictures for me again.

To all of you who cherish the music around you; to those who think that iTunes and iPods are just the niftiest things ever — I doff my hat to salute your passion. And to the person who writes the next “Messiah”, or even the next Oh, Pretty Woman…I am in awe, I’m honored you are part of the same species as I, and I hope that a Muse or two comes by and visits you soon.