Music and Myself
Music and Myself Through Time
One of my earliest memories is of riding with my father in his yellow Toyota Celica and digging through his tape case and picking out music to listen to. He had the Stones and the Eagles and Waylon Jennings in his tape case. Fleetwood Mac, but we never listened to that one. My dad liked music that was masculine, and with an edge to it. I remember listening to music with my mom, too (Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a favorite album in my mom’s car); her music wasn’t dangerous like my dad’s. “Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.� “Satisfaction.� “Hotel California.� These were songs that were about adults. Even as a kid I knew the Stones were singing about sex. I still don’t really know what the hell “Hotel California� is about, but my dad gives a great interpretation that it’s about addiction.
See, my dad was tough. Hell, he still is, even though he’s sixty and can barely walk because he’s got arthritic hips. My dad owned guns. He hunted and fished. His dad had been a Marine, and died when my dad was only twelve. My dad grew up poor and got rich the old fashioned way: he worked his ass off, constantly. My dad had friends who drank beer and listened to rock and roll and outlaw country. His music was always tough, too. When my dad got home from work (always after we were done with dinner), I’d know he was home because I’d hear his music from his car all the way in my bedroom. He’d be blasting Elvis or the Stones and singing along. My brother and I would run out to see him. Later, when he took us hunting, it was Johnny Cash and Waylon and Willie. Kris Kristofferson. Conway Twitty.
It’s interesting, because I don’t remember him ever listening to a woman singer. Now he loves pop country female vocalists; I tell him he’s going through a second adolescence. But all that early stuff stuck with me. I’ve got all those old artists (except the Eagles, I guess) on my iPod today. And when I’m headed to deer camp, I still listen to Waylon and Johnny and Willie. But my dad always loved music. He’d tell my brother and I stories about Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels in concert. The Beatles. Sinatra. My brother and I both became music nuts as a result.
I branched out. I grew up with my dad’s music, but I also was there for the birth of gangster rap and metal. Guns N Roses and NWA were tough, too, and I listened to them in middle school. Hell, I still listen to them. I grew to love rap. It was music about protest and being tough. And you could dance to some of it; I’m a dancer, too. My musical tastes know no bounds. So I got into West Coast rap – Snoop Dogg, Dre, Eazy E, Tupac. That was my soundtrack for parties all the way through college. But I was also simultaneously exposed to folk stuff; my roommate was similarly eclectic, and introduced my to James Taylor and John Denver. And we both loved Sinatra, so that got played constantly, too.
So in the end, I listened to almost everything. I literally listen to it all. Crazy house parties with Michael Jackson and Snoop Dogg Soundtracks. Dinner parties with classic stuff like Dean Martin and Sinatra. Folk-y music from James Taylor sung to my kids at night. I sat up all night once in college with a group of friends, drinking beer and listening to Bob Dylan and then Pink Floyd and having deep conversation. I’ve gotten drunk to Jimmy Buffett more times than I can recollect. I’ve driven at night with the sound of “Riders on the Storm� and “The End� from the Doors freaking me out. I’ve had my heart broken and the soundtrack was anything cheesy on LITE FM.
And now I’m married with two kids, and I go back to it all, and still pull in new stuff. My daughter loves “The Year 3000� by the Jonas Brothers. My son listens to John Williams’ themes from Star Wars and Superman and Indiana Jones and hums along and smiles. And whenever Lionel Ritchie comes on the radio with “You are the sun / you are the rain / you make this life a foolish game� I crank it up and my wife and I smilingly sing along, because that’s our song. It has no significance for us at all; it was just on the radio one day and we decided it was our song.