Since you asked, and it sure beats thinking about the monstrosity in Washington.
I’ve got a funny relationship with music. My childhood home was immersed in it and radio WFMT was always turned on. My dad played multiple instruments, belonged to the Chicago Musicians Union, played cello in quartet, base cello in orchestra, Hammond organ as solo performer in dinner clubs. Chicago’s classic classical station WFMT got to know him by voice, because when he called in regularly to ‘name that tune’ by its first couple bars, because when he got through, he never got it wrong. (from being there in person I know he was also never wrong when didn’t get through) Five kids, the man had, and not a one of us possesses any musical talent beyond a deep appreciation for it.
Dad hated rock’n roll and I liked it, in teen years learning to love it, Almond Brothers, Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Loggins & Messina, country rock, old time western, hippy music and with time Grateful Dead. The only real musical instrument I possess is my ears and backbone, and when the music is right I’m a dancer, the kind that the band recognizes because its the music I climb into, and since all bands are natural show offs, let them know you’re really tuned in and appreciative of what they are doing, and they will get lit up and return the favor by taking the music into higher realms of energy and expression.
It’s how I’ve become convinced that music is the most beautiful pure religious expression humans are capable. It can definitely take you into the heavens and bring you back down to earth and land you with smile on your face and warm tingle in your body, in way nothing else can. Few things in life are better, IMHO. But during my day to days, I don’t have music on in the background, and most the time if I’m listening to anything, it usually a book on tape.
Oh and thank you Freddie Mercury for Bohemian Rhapsody, and Elton John for Funeral For a Friend, they finally put a crack in Dad’s absolute rejection of the rock’n roll.
