Music

I have written many posts about Music and my association with it. Over the years, I have listened to countless songs by countless bands playing those countless songs. From my music appreciation beginnings listening to the Country music on the only AM radio station we could receive clearly in Colorado Springs to the Hip Hop/Rap I am finally now giving a chance, I have embraced or at least deeply tasted countless kinds of music. 

I have decided that every genre of music offers music worth listening to. It just might take some perseverance and turning a deaf ear to some tunes before that first gem finds the surface. Unless of course, you are talking about KISS or the Nooge. Hate both bands to their very core. I use both of them as the low bar place holder for music I deem unnecessarily terrible, 

It took me maybe twenty years to settle on a loose group of music genres. The list was all over the map I guess, but I was never bored. I could always find some old musical friends to pick my day up. I was content to stay within the box I had created and for the next thirty or so years, I did not wander much. Glam Rock, hah, never listened to it. Rap in the 1980's , no way. Decent new music eked in at a snail's pace. I had totally given up on the current pop 40 music Country had turned into. Music seemed to have become totally homogenized, paseuterized, cookie cuttered and boring.

Then I found the Internet in the early 1990s. I spent stupid amounts of money to pay by the minute to begin my trek through the World Wide Web. Along with the overwhelming surge of information, I was inundated at times, exposed unwillingly it seemed to music I was sure I had no connection or feel for.

 .............. Hmm.

My daughter was also finding her music. She had been weaned on Classic Rock mostly, but in the early 1990s she began to expand her range of choices. Her influence corrupted my comfortable co -existence with music from years ago. Every so often she would toss a new tune, new artist in front of me. I began to break out of my self imposed shell.

And now, over the last two decades, I have had the pleasure of falling in love with new wonderful music like I did as a young man. I am pretty sure there is more great music I haven't heard yet than all the music I have so far enjoyed. 

The Internet is responsible for that.

About the time I have once again had a tough time dealing with the continuous 24/7  animosity that runs rampant through the Social Mediums, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc., and I have decided the Internet is a den of evil assholes out to get me and destroy mine...............  I turn on my music list or punch up a YouTube video and soon I am no longer gritting my teeth and my urge to go ballistic has been nipped in the bud.

Like so many others, I have enjoyed or endured more than a few phases over my lifetime. Through all of those phases, good or bad, two things sustained me ....... Music and the Written Word. As long as they exist I will continue to hold out hope for Humanity's future.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ..................................

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II don't know what to do here. New music I haven't heard yet? Or an old favorite? Should I seek a tune of deep serious shit or something fun? Lazy pick would be an old favorite like "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver", by Primus. ......... Yeah, Lazy it is.

And with second thoughts I decided to make this a two fer. I have been trying to remember the name of the first famous singer I had ever met. I met her on a beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida when I was nine. My family was enjoying a comped weekend there and Patty Page was the act performing that weekend.

I was doing what youngsters do on a beach when not getting wet. I was collecting shells. Patty (who I had no clue who she was) came over to me and asked what I was doing. I had not learned to be snarky to an adult stranger yet: I said, "Collecting shells".

She asked if she could do it with me. I remember thinking "this is weird", but again, at age nine when dealing with a strange new adult, I was polite and said something to the effect, "Sure, why not?" We scavenged that beach for a couple of hours or so. Filled my little bucket to the brim and the pockets in her beach robe to the hilt.

Patty was a really nice lady and had a way of making conversation with an adult fun. I had a great time. After I had returned to the hotel room and showered, when I came out, my mom asked who I had met on the beach. I only knew her as Patty.

"Well, she sent over some free tickets to her show tonight.

"Here is Patty Page singing the song that made her career, "The Tennessee Waltz" .The song I liked more that night was "How much is that Doggie in the Window".  But hey I was nine years old ferchrisakes.