A Riff On Music

I really like Billy Joel's It's Still Rock and Roll to Me, so I was taken aback to discover that it is the "epitome of B.J. badness" by "The Worst Pop Singer Ever."

My feelings for It's Still Rock and Roll to Me have nothing to do with the merits of the song. I like the song because it came out the summer I turned 16 and the last summer that my brother spent the entire break at home. It is forever associated with being very young, learning to drive, and getting to hang out with my brother who was unbelievably cool and who I worshiped.

I am hard pressed to think of any music that I like that I don't like because it brings back some great memory or reminds me of someone. My brother's musical tastes included jazz, Jethro Tull, and The Eagles. If you poke through my CDs, you will find that all are in my collection. When I listen to Aqualung, I am actually thinking about listening to the albums my brother let me borrow while he was away at college.

My father's taste ran toward big band, and he is responsible for my copy of the 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert. About five years ago, I began to listen to a lot of Art Tatum. I brought the CD over for my father to borrow and found that the CD I wanted to give him was actually the very first album he had bought for himself.

My mother introduced me to opera and to Handel's Messiah. I cannot argue the merits of opera and choral music, but listening to it reminds me of going into Kansas City with my mom to the Lyric Opera. She would generally take us to the Italian Gardens for supper, and I always felt very grown up being on the town with her. As a small repayment of this debt I have been taking my mom to performances in Boston for birthday and Christmas presents. So far we have seen The Messiah and Don Giovanni. I hope to take her to see either Carmen or The Soweto Gospel Choir this Christmas.

My roommate in college had the biggest impact on my taste in music. Fred was really into the LA Punk scene, Ska, and Devo. I can't explain why I enjoy this music as much as I do, but it probably has to do with breaking away from suburbia and Top 40 radio. To this day I will listen to anything by the Clash or Elvis Costello or the Ramones.

From my wife I developed a taste for folk, Tom Rush, and The Chipmunks. My children have absorbed a portion of my varied musical tastes, but they have also started introducing me to music that they like.

Like so much in my life, my favorite music is just random bits from the lives of people I have bumped against. If they bumped against me at a time holding some special significance, the music seems to be strongly embedded in my psyche.

If I am generous, I would like to think maybe 10% of my life is under my control. My family and my roommates were selected by pure happenstance. There were bits of their personalities which affected me strongly and I tried to absorb. I met my wife through a ridiculous set of coincidences, and my only contribution was the determination to not let go of this person who was willing to go out with me more than once. (See John Hodgman's proof that aliens exist.) The particular children I ended up with were the result of a particularly fascinating lottery (talk to my friend Doug Sweetser about lotteries and children.) Again my only contribution to this random event is the effort to spend as much time as possible with such cool people.

The importance of random events and music in my life is why I think the MP3 player is the ultimate piece of Western technology (actually, it ties with the closely related flash drive.) I have an eclectic music collection. There are many CDs that I own, that I really wouldn't want to listen to more than one song at a time. Shuffle mode on an MP3 player is perfection. I enjoy listening to a steel band playing Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, followed by Ernie singing Put Down The Ducky, followed by California Uber Alles, followed by Habonera.

It was actually the odd conjunction of The Shangri Las singing Remember followed by Blood, Sweat, & Tears singing That Old Sweet Roll this morning which led to this post. The last time I heard this combination was about 25 years ago on the mix tape that my future wife had sent me.