How To Disappear Completely

Life Musical

I have been inspired to recount my musical memoirs, or musical biography, rather. Perhaps one might even call the following account a genealogy of sound:

My earliest memories of music involve asking curious questions regarding my mom's music (Mom, why are those women's boots going to walk all over me? Why is Jack hitting the road?) or else listening to my mom sing popular songs with the words changed to fit the situation at hand (imagine my surprise when I discover these songs later in life, usually with quite different words--"Wait a minute. That's not how it goes...."). Rather than answer her children's curious questions regarding obscure lyrics, my mom simply stopped listening to pop music. Instead, Psalty the Singing Songbook, Colby (a singing computer, I vaguely recall), and Music Machine became standard listening fare for the family....in addition to Children's Guide to the Orchestra type of material. Classical music with plots was especially attractive to me: Peter and the Wolf, The Nutcracker. I joined the church choir when I was 11 or 12, mostly because all my friends were in choir, and music was a social thing for me. Music, at a young age, sparked involvement: dancing or singing along. I rarely just listened.

About the time of junior high, the popular singer in my circle was Amy Grant. And I listened to quite a lot of Amy in those days, as well as Mary Rice Hopkins. You'll notice that I never ventured beyond Christian or classical genres at this point. (Edit--I take this statement back. Perhaps because of my mom's theatre background, or perhaps because of the theatrical tendencies of some good friends, the material from musicals also formed an important staple of this period in my life: Camelot, Fiddler on the Roof, Sound of Music, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Phantom of the Opera, The King and I, Finian's Rainbow, The Wizard of Oz, My Fair Lady....the list goes on.)

However, in junior high, I also began to take piano lessons. Becoming immersed in a predominantly classical repertoire, I turned snobby connoisseur: CCM was trash. No more Amy Grant. I sneered at Rebecca St. James' lack of vocal clarity. Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith were innane. Newsboys were edgy (although I think I was attracted to their quirky lyrics even back then--now I will freely admit that I like them). I admired Twila Paris, but rarely listened to her alone (we had different music for family listening and for individual listening). I knew better, because I had TASTE. And so I listened to my Chopin and my Bach. 20th century music, for all I cared, might as well have been composed by a party of cats dancing on the piano, or by an orchestra falling down the stairs. Copland I could handle. But the rest lacked Beauty. Somewhere along the line, listening began to involve aesthetic rapture (I don't know how to describe this, except as the Romantic notion of Sublime).

I also liked stuff that was "older": Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Classic jazz like Ellington. But I never really explored much beyond that.

Then I went to Covenant. I was a music major. I met people who actually liked Stravinsky. These were intelligent folks. What was up? I listened with their ears. I embraced 12 tone rows and prepared piano. Modernity was suddenly hot stuff. Post-modernity (Glass and Reich) even better. But I was still running in High Art and Intelligentsia circles. All these composers conformed to my idea of TASTE. Listening involved intelligent comprehension of structure and form (or subtle subversions of those forms).

I made non-music major friends (yes, I had to double major in order to do this). What did they listen to? Suddenly, I was immersed in the electronica minimalism of Radiohead. I felt ignorant. "What else was out there?" I wondered. I asked. I got answers. And thus I broke into the indy scene: Giant Sand, Chocolate Genius, some Belle and Sebastien, White Stripes, Sufjan, Decemberists.....I ate it up.

My mom rediscovered her high school years and helped me find old new sounds as she returned to her "pop" repertoire: Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, The Supremes, Gladys Knight and the Pips. I had heard so much of this stuff before....it came flooding back. At this time, I also got some Elton John: my dad, who claims that his only musical talent is in having musical kids and who never listens to anything but mariachi bands on his own, could name nearly every single song on the "Best of Elton John" CD I had picked up from the library....by the second measure.

And somewhere in there, I discovered the Beatles. They made me dance. They made me think. They made me love and cry. I felt as if I, too, had been taken by storm, though that historical Ed Sullivan show had occurred years before I was even born.

I went exploring further.....Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, David Bowie, Nirvana (although, I could only handle some of their stuff--"From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah" was too abrasive for me. I did like "Nirvana," though).
Post-college, I made more music-loving friends: Nightwish, Metallica, Apocolyptica, Franz Ferdinand, and Johnny Cash ended up on my CD shelf. I was introduced to Rammstein, but never really got into them.

My sister suggested Avril Lavigne. Now, my youngest sister and I have very different musical identities. I consider her stuff to be too mainstream and "poppish" for my taste...but I gave Lavigne a listen. Now I own her stuff, too.

I wonder, now, as I am innundated with post-modern philosophy, whether or not TASTE is over-rated.....can music be good even if it is only fun? Or must it be well-crafted? Are our decisions of taste less than objective? How many times have I said something was good because someone else told me it was first? And I still can't get into country music because it reminds me of hicksville (with which I'd rather not be associated. I am a snob yet, you see). Do we have to listen to music in order to appreciate it? Or can music serve a vital role as the background panels of our sonic existance? The stuff that fills the malls, the restaurants, the host-and-hostesses' living room--that is the music that intrigues me now. Music is everywhere: why is it there? What is it there for?* Why do we lock some of it up in concert halls or seal it under indy labels and call THAT the good stuff?

*(And why the heck can we not get ringtones for our digital watches? :P )