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squamousA cat yowling away somewhere outside my bedroom woke me up this morning. I don't know what was wrong with it, but it was really emoting, for a cat. Maybe there were even 2 cats fighting, maybe it was genuine for-real 'caterwauling'. I don't know. I had the idea it was just one cat, upset about something. I looked around outside for it a little later - cautiously, there's lots of strays around here and sometimes one turns up with rabies - but didn't see anything. Anyway, it was time to get up. I had to get to Blockbuster to return some awful movies that some idiot had rented.
On the way to the video store I was listening to a little Neil Young. Me and Neil, rockin' in the free world. It got me to thinking again about music, and my tortured and largely uptight history as a listener, as a fan. So, I thought I would take a stab at writing about it. Some rambly, half-assed, off the top of my head kinda stuff no doubt, but I feel like, eh, 'thinking in text'. I feel so pretentious, yet awkward.
There was a time when I was so obsessed with music. Not actually playing it myself, not with mastering some musical instrument, composing or capturing sound, or with understanding in any way how music is made. Just some all-consuming interest in the, I dunno, Anglo-American hierarchy of popular music. Nowadays I don't care so much. I still like to listen, I still get a real thrill out of certain songs. I don't really try to keep up as I did at one time. I am sure I failed even then.
So where'd it start? I'll skip the earliest stuff, the kind of things we probably all first dug on - a Sesame Street record, some Disney 'Mouse Factory' thing, and "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". Eventually, "Really Rosie". Not much later though, I got ahold of a 45 record player, and a stack of my mom's old 45s. Somewhere in there too I got a tape recorder. I made a tape of the songs off the 45s that I liked; I knew what I liked, but I was just going by what was catchy, pretty much. "Taping" meant that I held the microphone of the tape recorder up to the little record player's speaker, by the way. So what did I wind up with? The Beatles, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Dave Clark Five, the Yardbirds. "Cover of the Rolling Stone", by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, which I thought was a song by the Rolling Stones.
What was it I liked about music, about some of these songs? What made me interested? I think one thing was I liked how music could make you feel. Usually it was just making you happy, or a little more upbeat maybe, but... it could 'move' you, you know? Not that I would've described it that way, or thought about it all, back then. Another thing it could make you feel though, was cool. As I slowly came to understand, I liked feeling cool. I wanted to be in with the good guys, and I wanted to feel cool. 'Cool', by the way, meant some 60s-psychedelic vibe, maybe even a little subversive feeling.
So, I needed more music. Somewhere, I got ahold of a radio. WEBN, FM 102.7 out of Cincinnati. That was the cool station then. Q-102, the more popular Cincinnati station? Well that was for fags. They played some hits - Billy Joel, and even some disco. 'EBN only played classic album rock from the 60s and 70s. Oh well and a few things from the 80s. Which we were just then entering.
I remember taking apart one of the radios I had and fooling around with it to try and make it work better. I had no clue what I was doing to it. Just tweaking anything that was tweakable. I would sit at this desk in my bedroom for hours, with the radio there and the tape recorder and microphone set up. I would draw (or later, paint), then when a song was about to begin, I'd quickly put my fingers on PLAY and RECORD. If it was something I liked, I would stab them both down. What was the pantheon in those days? Still the Beatles of course, and the Rolling Stones, the Doors and Neil Young, but also bands I still don't know much about, but whose radio songs I dug - Molly Hatchet, Lynyrd Skynrd, Black Sabbath, some Led Zeppelin, Rush, Bruce Springsteen, plenty of others that I am sure I am forgetting now. Some of this stuff they played over and over. Like "Mississippi Queen", by Mountain, or the live version of "Must of Got Lost" by J. Geils Band - you could get those anytime. But some stuff was a little more scarce; you could go whole days without getting another chance at capturing "In the Court of the Crimson King" or "Don't Fear The Reaper". Maybe you'd never hear them play it again, when you were there with your tape recorder all ready. Eventually there was also AC/DC, and Ozzy Osbourne.
For more variety and better songs though, you had the Get Back show. This was a Sunday night thing - the music of the 60s, for 3 or 4 hours every Sunday night. They would play the best stuff then, I thought, the stuff with that cool vibe. Sometimes they even played Frank Zappa, who everyone knew was very cool, and whose songs were actually funny. There was also Dr. Demento on Saturday nights, which had some fun stuff too, but even then I was wary of novelty songs.
Eventually I delved into my mom's LPs. A lot of them, I was just fascinated by the covers and never actually played them. But any that were by a "name" band? Those I had to hear. She had some British Invasion stuff, some hippie stuff. She stopped buying music sometime in the mid to late 70s. I think the last artist whose record she bought was for some Fleetwood Mac hit. I never got into that and to this day think of Fleetwood Mac as 'grown up music' and can't listen to it. The first LPs that I ever picked out for myself, that I got ahold of by choice? I think the very first was Supertramp, "Breakfast in America". After that... hmmm... Charlie Daniels "Full Moon"... the Rolling Stones "Tattoo You"... Bruce Springsteen "The River". I dunno what else I might've picked up in those days if I'd had regular access to cash. Heh.
The taping continued. Sometimes WEBN would play entire albums at midnight. So, if it was something I was interested in, I would get in the bedroom closet with the radio and the tape recorder, all cramped and sweaty in there - add tape the broadcast of the record as best I could. So, I was a little mooch even then. This pattern was to continue, unto this very day, as we will see.
As a little postscript to 'part one' here, if I was so taken with music, why didn't I ever really try to play it? I think even from the earliest age I got the idea that some people were specially blessed and ordained to play music, and others just weren't. We had no instruments in the house. I even lost my 'flute-o-phone' from school (or someone stole it out of my desk, is what I suspected at the time). I didn't know too many musicians, and my mom still conveyed traces of a schoolgirl's reverence for the Beatles. These were people... well... not everyone could do what they did. They were special. You had to be touched and charmed in that way, or start learning at some really young age, like 4. Either be a prodigy, or a gifted genius. I was neither. It would've been a grave transgression for me to try and pretend. I didn't know you could just play or sing for the joy of it, or some such. I figured it was all for attention, or the broadcasting of your special message. Even with Charlie Daniels, I guess, now that I think about. He was probably some child prodigy, right?
I took it all so seriously. But, I will also admit, it wasn't like there was talent or inclination on my part. Except I did used to fantasize about being in some band with my cousins, back when I was listening to the tapes I had made of my mom's old 45s.
to be continued, ha ha, oh yes
On the way to the video store I was listening to a little Neil Young. Me and Neil, rockin' in the free world. It got me to thinking again about music, and my tortured and largely uptight history as a listener, as a fan. So, I thought I would take a stab at writing about it. Some rambly, half-assed, off the top of my head kinda stuff no doubt, but I feel like, eh, 'thinking in text'. I feel so pretentious, yet awkward.
There was a time when I was so obsessed with music. Not actually playing it myself, not with mastering some musical instrument, composing or capturing sound, or with understanding in any way how music is made. Just some all-consuming interest in the, I dunno, Anglo-American hierarchy of popular music. Nowadays I don't care so much. I still like to listen, I still get a real thrill out of certain songs. I don't really try to keep up as I did at one time. I am sure I failed even then.
So where'd it start? I'll skip the earliest stuff, the kind of things we probably all first dug on - a Sesame Street record, some Disney 'Mouse Factory' thing, and "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". Eventually, "Really Rosie". Not much later though, I got ahold of a 45 record player, and a stack of my mom's old 45s. Somewhere in there too I got a tape recorder. I made a tape of the songs off the 45s that I liked; I knew what I liked, but I was just going by what was catchy, pretty much. "Taping" meant that I held the microphone of the tape recorder up to the little record player's speaker, by the way. So what did I wind up with? The Beatles, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Dave Clark Five, the Yardbirds. "Cover of the Rolling Stone", by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, which I thought was a song by the Rolling Stones.
What was it I liked about music, about some of these songs? What made me interested? I think one thing was I liked how music could make you feel. Usually it was just making you happy, or a little more upbeat maybe, but... it could 'move' you, you know? Not that I would've described it that way, or thought about it all, back then. Another thing it could make you feel though, was cool. As I slowly came to understand, I liked feeling cool. I wanted to be in with the good guys, and I wanted to feel cool. 'Cool', by the way, meant some 60s-psychedelic vibe, maybe even a little subversive feeling.
So, I needed more music. Somewhere, I got ahold of a radio. WEBN, FM 102.7 out of Cincinnati. That was the cool station then. Q-102, the more popular Cincinnati station? Well that was for fags. They played some hits - Billy Joel, and even some disco. 'EBN only played classic album rock from the 60s and 70s. Oh well and a few things from the 80s. Which we were just then entering.
I remember taking apart one of the radios I had and fooling around with it to try and make it work better. I had no clue what I was doing to it. Just tweaking anything that was tweakable. I would sit at this desk in my bedroom for hours, with the radio there and the tape recorder and microphone set up. I would draw (or later, paint), then when a song was about to begin, I'd quickly put my fingers on PLAY and RECORD. If it was something I liked, I would stab them both down. What was the pantheon in those days? Still the Beatles of course, and the Rolling Stones, the Doors and Neil Young, but also bands I still don't know much about, but whose radio songs I dug - Molly Hatchet, Lynyrd Skynrd, Black Sabbath, some Led Zeppelin, Rush, Bruce Springsteen, plenty of others that I am sure I am forgetting now. Some of this stuff they played over and over. Like "Mississippi Queen", by Mountain, or the live version of "Must of Got Lost" by J. Geils Band - you could get those anytime. But some stuff was a little more scarce; you could go whole days without getting another chance at capturing "In the Court of the Crimson King" or "Don't Fear The Reaper". Maybe you'd never hear them play it again, when you were there with your tape recorder all ready. Eventually there was also AC/DC, and Ozzy Osbourne.
For more variety and better songs though, you had the Get Back show. This was a Sunday night thing - the music of the 60s, for 3 or 4 hours every Sunday night. They would play the best stuff then, I thought, the stuff with that cool vibe. Sometimes they even played Frank Zappa, who everyone knew was very cool, and whose songs were actually funny. There was also Dr. Demento on Saturday nights, which had some fun stuff too, but even then I was wary of novelty songs.
Eventually I delved into my mom's LPs. A lot of them, I was just fascinated by the covers and never actually played them. But any that were by a "name" band? Those I had to hear. She had some British Invasion stuff, some hippie stuff. She stopped buying music sometime in the mid to late 70s. I think the last artist whose record she bought was for some Fleetwood Mac hit. I never got into that and to this day think of Fleetwood Mac as 'grown up music' and can't listen to it. The first LPs that I ever picked out for myself, that I got ahold of by choice? I think the very first was Supertramp, "Breakfast in America". After that... hmmm... Charlie Daniels "Full Moon"... the Rolling Stones "Tattoo You"... Bruce Springsteen "The River". I dunno what else I might've picked up in those days if I'd had regular access to cash. Heh.
The taping continued. Sometimes WEBN would play entire albums at midnight. So, if it was something I was interested in, I would get in the bedroom closet with the radio and the tape recorder, all cramped and sweaty in there - add tape the broadcast of the record as best I could. So, I was a little mooch even then. This pattern was to continue, unto this very day, as we will see.
As a little postscript to 'part one' here, if I was so taken with music, why didn't I ever really try to play it? I think even from the earliest age I got the idea that some people were specially blessed and ordained to play music, and others just weren't. We had no instruments in the house. I even lost my 'flute-o-phone' from school (or someone stole it out of my desk, is what I suspected at the time). I didn't know too many musicians, and my mom still conveyed traces of a schoolgirl's reverence for the Beatles. These were people... well... not everyone could do what they did. They were special. You had to be touched and charmed in that way, or start learning at some really young age, like 4. Either be a prodigy, or a gifted genius. I was neither. It would've been a grave transgression for me to try and pretend. I didn't know you could just play or sing for the joy of it, or some such. I figured it was all for attention, or the broadcasting of your special message. Even with Charlie Daniels, I guess, now that I think about. He was probably some child prodigy, right?
I took it all so seriously. But, I will also admit, it wasn't like there was talent or inclination on my part. Except I did used to fantasize about being in some band with my cousins, back when I was listening to the tapes I had made of my mom's old 45s.
to be continued, ha ha, oh yes
