A Very Brief Essay About Music in My Life

As much as we may not realize it, music always plays a role in our lives. It has the power to ignite crowds of people in less than a second. It is synonymous with passion and love and has helped fuel revolutions. We tie memories to it and use it as a tool to spark creativity. Music is not of mans creation, the morning song bird will show you this. Music is ubiquitous. This is a divine gift.

In my life, music has had a close supporting role. Never completely out of reach but more like a passenger in the car of my mind that may not be right beside me but is always there, in the corner of my eye.

My love affair with music started at a very young age. One summer morning in 1978 when I was six years old, I woke up a little earlier than my father’s old Navy buddy and his wife who were visiting and sleeping in the room next to mine. I promptly went over to my white plastic general electric record player and presented their sleeping souls with Rod Stewarts “Do You Think I’m Sexy” at near maximum volume. With near toy like speakers I’m sure it didn’t sound too good but it was my favorite song at the time and I thought if I loved it so much then they would too. My little white plastic record player with matching speakers gave me the first taste of musical freedom. The freedom to jam out to the likes of Steely Dan, Eddie Rabbit or Bruce Springsteen, in the comfort of my own room at any time I wanted.

In the early 80’s we had taken a family summer trip out to colonial America in our two tone blue Ford Econoline van. I had taken my favorite audio tape and was privileged enough to listen to it on my dad’s new state of the art dual adjustable bass and treble silver boom box. He had received it as an anniversary gift from Ford Motor, so it was treated with very careful hands. The tape was a collection of songs I had made from fastidiously listening to Casey Kasem’s Top Forty Countdown every week and used the new boom box to record it. I had been happily grooving away, somewhere in West Virginia, when my mother turned around from the passenger seat, looked back and said “Do you know what a centerfold is?” I now realize it must have been a rhetorical question because I was only ten and all I knew is that the J. Geils Band had some really good songs.

I spent a lot of dedicated time in the 80’s religiously listening to Americas Top 40 and kept track of all the movements on the billboard. I would wait anxiously, with a properly cued blank tape in the tape deck. Finger poised over the record button like a nervous gunslinger palming the butt end of his pistol as he waits for his seasoned opponent to draw on him. I had to catch my favorite songs at that right instant! That nanosecond of silence between the announcer’s voice and the opening riff is where I had to be. I was obsessive to the point of therapy about this, but this was the 80’s in blue collar Ypsilanti and no one I knew had even heard of such a thing.

I attribute my love of music to my parents, who had a small stack of records they kept in the living room next to the full sized mahogany encased record player. Those Beatles, Bee Gees and Bob Segar albums helped form my musical taste buds in my early life evenings while we relaxed together with a fresh bowl of hot air popped pop corn in the living room. Even to this day there will be times when I hearken back to the songs of my youth and strangely feel the animosity I have long since forgotten but have somehow harbored away only to be brought back by this wonder of music.

Long two lane dirt roads surrounded by whisper thin white pines on the way up north is where the haunting lyrics of “The Edmund Fitzgerald” takes me. With the smooth sounds of Barry Manilow, I will be whisked away to the sand bars of Elk Lake where my sister and I used to swim on an occasional summer afternoon. Throughout my life I have always been empowered with music. I have used it to spark my creativity. I have used it to fuel my revolutions. I have used it for passion. I use it to enhance the love affair with my wife. It is everywhere, you see. It is even present in the cries of a new born child.