My Music Journey Part 1

Part I: My beginnings the 70's

With the way things are today with digital technology permeating the landscape, as portability has made music as a always connected, and dedicated construct. There was a time when one could sit down, pop open a record, read the liner notes, marvel at the artwork, and listen. In this post I write about my foray into music. As we all are accustomed to with time, things have changed considerably. Gone are the 8 track tape players, cassette tapes, laser discs, mini discs, and soon Compact Discs and DVD’s. Through all the changes, where we are currently with file formats MP3, OGG, M4a, Flac, and streaming, LP’s still stick around. Now before I get all teary eyed, and reminisce I must set the stage of where my introduction to music came from.

My introduction to music was through my father and his LP’s. Records like Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow brick Road, Jim Croce’s You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, Life and Times, The Animals, The Beatles, The Carpenters, and ABBA. With those records the warm timber resonated from an analog format long forgotten in today's world. My father was a huge audiophile. Nothing would skip past his attention, yet sadly he lost the drive to continue moving with the music in terms of change, he always had a fondness for those classic records.

Quadraphonic setups were all the rage of the 1970′s, I would sit in front of my dad’s Goliath speakers and feel the pops, tones, varied pitches, bass, and drumming of those analog records.  Through my father. my introduction to music was in my early youth (during mid 1970′s), some songs would stick in my head. Melodies from Jim Croce’s song Time In A Bottle for example, employs a note from the acoustic guitar, which is jarring as it is eerily haunting.

Whereas The Animal’s song House Of The Rising Sun uses a crescendo vocal style, and a side stepping guitar riff.  Then there is Elton John’s Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding a varied note which drags out into a monolithic progression inside an ever changing landscape of sound.  Some of those songs would stick around in my head.  Hearing other groups like The Carpenters, and ABBA would supplant more weird compositions, and would implant within me the typical cliche type song structures.

I was often left with this curious question: How could a person harness the ability to contain, wrangle, or throttle something one couldn’t see, but can feel and hear? Since I was really young I didn’t understand the inner workings of science, or the concepts of what sound is, I had to trust my lack of understanding of what I was hearing. At that time, I was supposed to be playing with other children,  and learning about being a kid. Why was I listening to these crazy records? Pure innate curiosity.

At an early age I didn’t have the ability to discern what was considered appropriate material, so anything I heard was without a filter. This meant I was exposed to records that were created under political motivations, storytelling, or altered states of being. Not that I could understand what the lyrics to some of The Doors songs. or trying to figure out what the hell the Beatles were yammering on with Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds. I had questions to what was I was listening to. I wanted answers, but I had no way to effectively convey the right question, or how to ask it. If I did ask it was often met with blank stares, and scolded.

This would start my eventual dislike of the era. I was bothered by the love movement, it irked me that the concept of sharing, peace, harmony, and altered states of consciousness. I disliked disco because of the spastic, redundant, and party time atmosphere. I was too young to understand the complexion, undertones, and motivations of the work. It was when I became older, more aware of the world around me to really get what was out there.

Next up part II...Thanks for reading.

B.