soundtrack

INPUT
My iPod is the soundtrack to my live. I also have a very few other trusted sources. I tolerate no other music- unless it is that periferal, ambient buzz that is backround to life in public. The instant the character of that noise becomes decidedly teenagery (not to exclude well-crafted Pop, Rap, and Thrash) or too 'Southern fried' I make my objections known. I can tolerate Jazz or Reggae for about fifteen minutes at a time. The thing is; I don't think there's enough yodeling, bagpiping, Gregorian chanting, accordion playing, dense German techno, dittys from the Pirates of Penzance, Nordic supergroups, Japanese girl bands, Chinese opera, organ, harpsicord, french horn, tuba... I mean!, There's a cap on the number of times a person is going to let "China Grove' invade their neurons, and I have definitely surpassed it. A long time ago. And Easy Listening is anything but. Commercial radio is designed to milk the life out of a song (placing no value judgements on quality here) over the period of a year and then continue to sell it as something connected to a memory. Sure, 'Snowbird' by Anne Murray is a lovely song. But it deserves about four listenings through out one's life, not four hundred. I have my own Anne Murray memories, thank you. Green Day was good for about a hundred listenings- but they're over. See what I mean? Repetition and familiarity are wonderful things, but just due to the enormous stock of it we really should be rotating a little more heavily.


OUTPUT
Of course I uploaded a bit today. My recent rampage through the Virgin megastore's 'Going out of business' sale netted new fruit, over-looked gems, and discs I had previously thought twice about. I am so distraught about that particular Time Square vacancy that I can bearly enjoy my phenomenal savings. My soundtrack required purging of about two hundred songs that had reached their expiration date. The occasions to dick around with itune windows and make crucial, almost hisorical decisions are few. They require the ability to hear what one is doing and my family can drown out the train that runs through our back yard. freight. So after a month and a half of my (puny) nano running the same nine hundred songs I began feeling a little self-conscience. That's because I play it at work, real loud. I'm still teenager that way. But I aim to keep the program fresh and varied. It is because of my clumsy transition into the new age of gathering music that I had bearly enough time during the age of the CD to replace all the bagpipes and yodeling I had on vinyl. But if my future includes enough time here on my ass, gathering the proficiency to reharvest it all from the tubes, by Christ's wounds Building 120 shall ring with Latvian sheep calls.

AUX
I managed the online purchase of replacement needles for my turntable (in the house for a month before the needle grew legs and wandered off). It's silver plastic and looks like a launching pad. (I lament the loss of wood cabinetry too). I've decided that vinyl is a little too tactile a listening experience. The packaging is certainly an art form in itself, never successfully replaced by the little four inch pages of tiny print and godawful artwork in CDs, but honestly, records are a nuisance to unsheathe. And constantly jumping up and down to flip sides- records definitely warrant the excersize I didn't ask for. I'm not married to my vinyl but it plays it's part in my soundtrack, which is basically this;
Home: All CD players have taken the modern option to stop working two years out of the factory. The power cord to the boombox went missing as well. So the three hundred pounds of LPs and CDs cannot be played. But as I've said, we'll be hooked with vinyl again in a matter of shipping days. And I can listen to my itune library from the family computer, but it fails to understand that I need it to jump the ten feet into my laptop and from there into gigantic speakers that can really rock my world. So Home is more or less a repository for the hundred pounds of CDs that rotate to the
Car: No cable recepticals- it's a one disc changer that doesn't like cold weather. I can't tell you how many times I've nearly lost my life wrestling with 'ERR'. So I bide time listening to WMPH or WRPM... WPSI... WOMG, whatever- Delaware doesn't keep tidy airwaves. But when the player deigns to function properly, I treat myself to my favorite purchases. Being Michael's
passenger involves an entirely different playlist, but he has a six disc changer so I usually have one of mine loaded. And I trust him, (in the way you trust anyone who still listens to Stevie Wonder).
Work: I bust the tunes. I shake my groove thang. I do wincing Richard Butler impersonations. I do the Hokey Pokey AND the Boney Maroni! (laquer fumes play their part). I make people shout detailed instructions to me over the Laibach cover of 'Jesus Christ Superstars' [sic], (choral,it's loud). I do have a Db threshold and it lowers as the years pass but I have the din from propane blasters and chain saws and heavy equipment being driven through a noisy carpentry shop to drown out, (not to mention the conversation of LAssholes who just think they invented cinema). I chose my current docking station the way I choose all audio players; going through the store cranking all systems to MAX. It ensures prompt sales help as well. I don't mean to be dismissive or anything, but if anyone at work should be the DJ, it's better me than the guy with the Milwakee boom box that looks like a Jeep who doesn't even bother to turn the volume down for crappy FM blathering. I've devoted decades to musing over the term 'radio personality'. I do have pity for people who don't enjoy dance music, it's their sorry lot to be located anywhere near me. But hey!, I 'dance my eight (and four more) 'n skate! "Yall can buy ear buds, or go to hell." So there. I'm sensitive- but, ultimately not.

ON/OFF
Music turned on for me in Kindergarten with "I Want To Hold Your Hand". Scarcely a day has passed since then that I haven't wanted to know what my friend's older sister was listening to, or hitch-hiked many miles to hang out with someone who couldn't grab up new music fast enough, or turned the volume up to the tippy-top of any given municipality's written laws. As a painter I'm filled with jealousy about the accessability of music. People don't contrive such detailed plans as I to ward off the glimpse of an ugly painting (although I plan that too). We've whelpt two younguns on every brand of deserving music out there- they can sing along with Blue Oyster Cult. The oldest is drumming for a program (at the 'school of rock') of Woodstock hits. He made his debut at the tender age of three singing in the Gramercy Park Hotel Lounge with the incomparable Phyllis Love. He did 'Hey Big Spender" and "Now I Know My ABCs. The youngest is learning a dance routine (the only boy in his class) to that scarecrow song from The Wiz (he's in fourth grade now; he knows all about Michael Jackson). And he treats us to recitals on the violin (at home) and the recorder (in the car). On the Steinway, he is capable of haunting, Varese-like compositions. The oldest never really stops drumming. Both sing their little hearts out. They'll do 'Food, Glorious Food" for you in a hearbeat. That's our legacy. I admit that they are now as trusted a source for new music as any other. The down side? They don't have an off switch. They want to sing and dance at the most inappropriate times. Really now, there's more to life than all this gaiety. There's.....?