Old Music

I didn’t listen to music much as a teenager. I gave it a shot, but then we got involved in ATI and it all had to be tossed out lest I find myself headed directly to hell because someone hit a drum with a stick. I hated loosing some of that music because I really appreciated one artist especially (and now, I confess, own a couple of her albums again), but what I really hated was the guilt trip and the idea that my salvation was based on keeping a list of do’s-and-don’t’s that I knew I could never keep perfectly. All in all, though, whether this song or that one was right or wrong didn’t matter to me a whole lot. Music was never an essential in my life. I realize that more than ever when I come across some simple song I sang as a child that my children have never heard. Because it rarely crosses my mind to sing with my kids (or without them, for that matter) and then I feel guilty because I’m sure my kids are lacking in their education. But the guilt doesn’t last very long…because then I forget about music yet again.

When I get in one of my parents’ vehicles, XM is always on and nearly always set to my mom’s favorite station of the 60s. Songs she grew up with when she was a teenager. And she loves to listen to. When I get in our car, Ed has it on a station that plays mostly songs of the 80s when he was a teenager. And if he turns music on at home on his phone, it’s the same music. Some of it I actually remember from when I was a small child. Most of the time, I don’t understand what the artist is trying to say anymore now than I did when I was seven. Rock artists really don’t bother to annunciate our beautiful English language. Or they drown it out with drums and loud guitars, On occasion, though, it actually dawns on me what the person is saying and I’m usually left a bit appalled or shaking my head at the stupidity of it all. The other night he had a song playing from the 90s that I don’t believe I had ever heard and it didn’t take me long before I told him,

“Ed, that is the dumbest song I have ever heard.”

“What?” he asks as he stops the music.

“Listen to it,” I said and quoted, “ ‘Next time I fall in love, it will be with you.’ That’s idiotic. I’m not in love with you now but if you stick around, next time I will be. Really?”

I honestly don’t think Ed considers the words of half the songs he knows. He grew up with them. They just echo in his head, something like Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star which most of us don’t really think about, just sing. But now he did stop, a look of realization dawning.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “That is stupid.”

It’s really hard, at times, to consider musicians as artists when all they can think of is idiocy to write about. But maybe that’s just the consequence of too many drums constantly banging in their ears…