Conversations With Myself — "There Was Always Music Playing" (HiveBloPoMo Day 6)

I suppose I could have made a "Music Monday" post, but I am one of "those people" who annoyingly tends to strike out in my own direction! And since the #HiveBloPoMo prompts are just helpful suggestions, I'm going to follow the music theme somewhat loosely.

Joshua Tree

The Soundtrack of Our Lives

It's interesting how much variation I encounter when someone tells me "they really like music." It means so many different things!

For some, it means they love going to concerts and live music venues, but then I'll discover that they otherwise barely listen to music. One friend — from back in my 20's — used to say "I just don't feel CONNECTED to the music unless it's being played live!"

Interesting enough, I'm pretty much the opposite. I think the studio versions of most music sounds better than live versions. There are some exceptions, of course...

Again, what's important to us? My focus tends to be on the aural experience more than the event experience.

Terrace of our house in Spain; 1976. Scan from an old snapshot

Music as Anchor in the Insanity

I grew up in a largely "silent" house. I honestly can't remember anyone in my family listening much to music when I was a kid.

Sure, there was music... meaning that my dad would would turn on the big reel-to-reel tape recording and run a "background track" of largely non-descript "elevator music" during parties. It wasn't music to listen to, it was just atmosphere.

It was a strange and solitary life, my childhood. I often look back at it, and it reminds me of a surreal book or movie, not of an actual kid's life...

Aside from escaping to nature, I also found an oasis of sanity in listening to music, from about age 12 onwards.

Joshua Tree National Park, California

When we moved to Spain in 1972, I got my parents' old Bang & Olufsen Beolit transitor radio, and for the first time connected to something other than background elevator music.

I sat in my small room and listened to the (sadly) long gone Radio Luxembourg English transmissions at night while doing my homework and writing in my journals.

Hard to describe what Radio Luxembourg really was, but in a Europe dominated by "national" broadcasting services, it was a form of "pirate radio" that broke the mold.

For me, it was a window to a world I'd never known.

The Harmony Motel in Joshua Tree, CA; circa 2008

Places Have a "Sound"

As the years have rolled on by... it has been 50 of them, I'm alarmed to say... music has always been a consistent tapestry or backdrop to everywhere I've been.

To this day, I always work with music; it's one of the things I share with @cosmictriage; and our tastes rather miraculously overlap. Which is a blessing.

The tribute to Joshua Tree that's woven into this place is also music related; the Harmony Motel (pictured above) is one of our favorite spots to stay when we visit the California high desert; it's also where the band U2 stayed during the video filming for their 1987 album "The Joshua Tree."

Small world, and all that!

The soundtrack has changed, over the years, and it continues to change.

Early on, it was Punk and Ska; then it became Post-punk and New Wave; gradually it became more techno and trance mixed with occasional modern jazz and folksy "chirps;" these days I'm often listening to Progressive House, Synthwave and a fair amount of Dreamhop and Lofi.

Never much got into mainstream pop/rock/top-40 or country; never went through a "metal" phase. In one of those oddly humorous manifestations of life, if it's "popular" and on the radio, chances are I haven't heard it; if I'm listening to it, chances are it has never been played on the radio!

And such is life!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

Graphic by @traciyork

---

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT posted anywhere else!)
Created at 2023-11-06 20:44 PDT
0980/2235