As far back as I can remember music flooded my soul. Even the name is poetry. Mmmmusic. A mystical drug that evokes a hodgepodge of emotion. It will bring you to the peak of the highest mountain and you will open your arms to the sky and shout, “Halleluiah.” The sky will open up to a rush of light and the hand of God will reach down and fist bump you. Music energizes, inspires. Music will make you laugh and cry. Nostalgic, a trip back through time, and then straight into karate kicks and summersaults. Go to a live concert and it becomes a church, people dancing, speaking in tongues, a community sharing their love for a higher power. Music is a fantastic drug and the world is filled with talented drug dealers all whispering, “Psst. You want a taste of this?”
When I was a wee lad, every New Years Eve I’d hunker down and listen to the top 100 songs of the year with a bowl of potato chips and a Pepsi. Weekends I’d be glued to the radio listening to the top 40 hits of the week, most evenings you could find me listening to the Top Nine at Nine on my local radio station, and before bed I would snap a cassette tape into my tape recorder and listen to music while I fell asleep.
A special kind of nerd would call me a melophile or a melomaniac. Someone that’s addicted to music. I don’t know about all that, but one thing’s for sure: Me likey da music! Hummina hummina awoooogaa!
Back in the olden days, which is to say the 80’s, you could phone a radio station and request a song and they would play it. Tadaaaa! Now everything is prerecorded. I talked to a DJ one time and he told me about how he was trying to cash a check at the grocery store. They denied him because the clerk didn’t believe it was him. The radio was playing in the store and this guy was on at the time. Mr. DJ tried to explain to the clerk it was a prerecorded show but she was having none of it.
When I was twelve, some blah, blah years ago, my local radio station ran a contest. Call during the week and request a song for the Top Nine at Nine and you’ll be entered into the draw for an $800 CD player. Just imagine it. My twelve year old brain couldn’t handle it. Eight hundred smackers. Each night I requested Paradise City by Guns N’ Roses. The day of the draw we sat around the radio and when my name was called my head exploded a piñata of gummy worms and Skittles. My friends cheered and I was thrown upon their shoulders and paraded around the house chanting, “Hip, hip, hooray!” Or at least that’s how I remember it. I had a few minutes to call and claim the eight hundred dollar prize. I launched to the phone but was met with a busy signal. “C’mon,” I yelled. I called again to another busy signal and roared, “Consarn, dagnamit,” or something like that. The announcer was still announcing and wasn’t ready to take my call. Eventually I got through and became a local celebrity for about twenty minutes.
Seems ridiculous to say a CD player cost $800. You can’t even give them away these days, but back then it was new technology. State of the art. My first CD was Guns and Roses’ Appetite for Destruction. Standing in the record shop holding the CD staring at the thirty dollar price tag I had become a man. No wonder everyone started pirating music. You needed a full time job just to buy music, and after CD’s came, one couldn’t be expected to go back to the prehistoric cassette tapes that cluttered my closet waiting to be rewound. Balderdash! I marched into that radio station a man, one day away from shaving. Sadly I walked out a child absolute gobsmacked with disappointment when I saw the CD player was a stand alone unit with no speakers. This was meant for rich folk with a separate amp to run it. I felt absolutely swindled. It was a life lesson that nothing is ever free. Especially a Guns N’ Roses CD.
Before the CD player I had a Double decker ghetto blaster, oh my. The thing was huge. Took twelve D batteries. Also the tape deck detached to become a portable player. Speakers disconnected. The beast probably weighed twenty-five pounds. Then came the Walkman with those terrible foam headsets. Then the discman. Then the iPod, then the streaming services, and here we are. We have everything at our fingertips, and it’s just not the same.
I eventually figured out a way to hook up that $800 beauty and it provided me with countless hours of clear, fast paced rock full of swears and impressionable themes that my mother wouldn’t approve of, but hey, that’s what headphones are for. Oh, how I miss those naive days of yore.
Most mornings I wake up with a song in head. There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not ingesting music. I’m not sure I could go without. Maybe the nerds are right. Am I a melomaniac? Best not look too deep into it. If I could travel back in time, and my brain would allow me to focus, I would like to play music at an early age. Learn an instrument and start a band. Back in the olden days I would never have had the confidence or thought that such a thing was possible. I’m not sure I have the mind to create music, but then again I never really tried. My son is six and he’s been playing some form of music since he was two. There’s always a steady stream of music in the house. He plays drums, guitars, keyboard, his bum. He has the knack for it. I taught him how to master the bum, it’s the one instrument I can play extraordinarily well. (Insert fart joke here) When he was taking drum lessons his teacher was amazed by his natural rhythm. I watched while he played his first drum recital in front of a group of people when he was five after practicing for only a couple months, and I was so proud of him. He was doing what I could never do, and isn’t that all we really want for our children? To be better than us?
Over the years my taste in music has taken many twists and turns. From Huey Lewis to Michael Jackson to Phil Collins to Dead Kennedys to Suicidal Tendencies to Bell Biv DeVoe to C&C Music Factory to Metallica to Supercar to Boys to Men to Sex Pistols to Ministry to Pearl Jam to The Cars to Anberlin to Stone Temple Pilots to Chevelle to Johnny Cash to Nothing But Thieves to Guns N’ Roses to Wham! to Muse to Iron Maiden to Foo Fighters to Hall and Oates to Culture Club to Pantera to NOFX to Nirvana to Nine Inch Nails, to the Wiggles, and so on and so on and so on…
For the last six years though, I’ve listened to a boy. A reflection of myself. A snapshot of the past I imagine is of me. I’ve been there from the beginning. From flutes to tambourines to harmonicas to ukuleles to guitars to drums to keyboards to stone cold beats. I live through him now creating music for a world awaiting his arrival, the legend, my Son…
The rock star.
Absolutely love your writing style and content! Keep up the good work.
"For the last six years though, I’ve listened to a boy. A reflection of myself." This had me feeling all the feels. Music takes me back to many memories with you and the boy as well. Awesome piece.