Music is kind of a special thing for me because more and more I realize that I need it. When I go a day without hearing some kind of music, the day seems to have been missing something. It wasn't always that way though. I'm not entirely sure when it happened. I suppose like most kids I grew up listening to whatever my parents were listening to. For some that can be downright painful. I'm pretty thankful that my parents listened to stuff that I liked. I grew up with Pink Floyd, Queen, and Journey. Most of it was on vinyl because back then cassette tapes were only just starting to appear, so the music had a unique sound to it that I think has been partially lost with today's digital age. Part of me misses the pops and scratches that came along with those songs. As a kid I just assumed it was part of the song. I think in a lot of cases music captures a certain time for us. It's almost like a Normal Rockwell painting, in that it recalls a nostalgic time that maybe didn't exist exactly how we remember it, but the music brings us back there anyway.
As I got a little older I started to stray away from what my parents were listening to. I found that the music on the few radio stations just wasn't my kettle of frogs. This was the 80s so you can imagine the type of music I'm talking about. If you like that sort of thing then good for you, but for me it was like listening to someone strangle a baby elephant. There was only so much Poison, Def Leppard, or Cinderella I could listen to before it all started to sound the same to me. At the time it felt like there wasn't anything I wanted to listen to so I did the only logical thing I could think of at the time; I just stopped listening to music all together. Sure I would hear the occasional song if someone else was playing music. I just wasn't actively looking for anything and mostly didn't care about music.
In high school each classroom had a television in it. This allowed for the faculty to broadcast various things on the closed circuit system. In the mornings students were able to get in front of the camera and basically do the morning announcements. Often they'd have some extra video or music before or afterward. For the most part these were things you could watch without thinking. One morning in freshman algebra they played a video from some band I had never heard of before. Some stringy blond haired guy was singing about the world's worst pep rally. When the video finished my algebra teacher said "What the hell was that?" That was the question alright. Before that moment I had never even heard of the band Nirvana or that music like that could exist. It was like a whole new world was opened up to me. I know that may sound like I'm overselling the impact of Nirvana on the musical world, but for me they were a big deal. I would imagine there are moments like that for a lot of people. It could have been they first heard The Beatles or Metallica. It's at that moment that you realize the world you thought you knew had so much more to offer.
From that point on I wanted to know more music, even if it didn't sound like what I heard just then. Not long after I bought my first CD, which I bought from a guy on the bus for ten dollars. I listened to AC/DC - The Razor's Edge over and over, not because it was exactly a great album, but because it was my first CD. It started to snowball from there. New music just kept appearing seemingly out of nowhere. All the time prior to that I had just assumed what was being played on the radio was all there was. My friends became a great source for new types of music. Every time I would go to their house it seemed they somehow gotten a hold of some strange new band I would have never even known to look for. Most of this stuff wasn't the kind of thing that they played on any radio station we could pick up. It was up to us to go out and find it on our own. Even now when I see my old friends they still manage to challenge me musically, playing stuff that I had no idea was out there. One of my oldest friends is a DJ so it's kind of his job and passion to discover new music, something I still haven't found a knack for.
At one point I got the idea that maybe I wanted to create music. My friends, who were infinitely more musically talented than me, were playing guitar and drums so I figured I should try something. I managed to convince my parents to buy me one of those electronic drum pads for Christmas. It didn't take long for me to realize that I had no musical talent. When I was in elementary school they put me on triangle because I couldn't play anything else. As for the drum pad, I might as well have been standing on the back porch banging pots together and yowling like a cat for as good as I sounded. I resigned myself to be more of an appreciator of music than a creator of one.
I've talked about the state of FM radio today. It hasn't changed that much since I was a kid. If a person only listened to what was playing on FM radio they would be missing out on so much music that's hiding out there. I'm not saying all radio is bad. For the past ten years I've been listening to the college radio station in Boulder (shamelessly plugging Radio 1190). While I don't like everything they play, they have consistently played music that I would have never heard otherwise. If I had to choose only one source of music for the last ten years, they would have been it. It's nice to still manage to be surprised by music when sometimes it feels like everything has been filtered down to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
