A musical musing

I’ve been a music lover for as long as I can remember. It’s always been a staple in my life, from my mum’s random late-night disco drum assaults – myself and my sister bitch-slapped from slumber by Donna Summer’s ‘Hot stuff’; or the questionable product of my Saturday night Hot 40 countdown tape ‘dubbing’.

Why the hell did the DJ have to talk right at the last second? And more importantly, why did I care?

For some inane reason, I feared I’d be lynched by my peers for not owning the actual ‘tape’. Mind you, I still took the odd mix tape to school, and I distinctly remember running for the boom box one day to avert the DJ announcing my dirty secret to the entire class, by way of his encroaching on the last two seconds of RATM’s ‘Killing in the name’. I failed. *sigh*

Anyway, I’m sure I’m not the only person that felt that way, and in respect to the whole ‘tape’ thing, and the fact that such things are now deemed ‘old school’, it leads me to ask...

Is something considered ‘old school’ if it was originally ‘too cool for school’ whilst you were in fact, at school?

Back to the tapes, though; I had lots of blank ones as you could probably imagine, but I did have a handful of legit ones. There are only two that I recall by name. One was ‘Hits The Girls’ – an 80’s compilation I received for Chrissie at 9 years old, and it was through that and the spiffy double sided Teac tape player I also received, that I was introduced to the likes of the Bangles’ ‘Hazy shade of Winter’, as well as a few other good tunes, and a few not-so-good tunes. 

The other was a hand-me-down copy of Stevie Nicks’ ‘Bella Donna’, given to me by my step-dad and his girlfriend around a year after the last. I was staying with them over the school holidays, and they’d taken my sister and I on a camping trip in the spectacular Tassie wilderness. We even bathed in the freezing cold river; crazy cold, but it was an awesome experience all the same, and one I’ll never forget.

Anyway, we listened to that tape repeatedly in the car on the long trips down and back. I remember telling them how much I loved it, and straight away they said ‘if you love it so much, it’s yours’. I was so stoked that I listened to it non-stop thereafter, with ‘Edge of Seventeen’ being my favourite song for ages. I didn’t understand it though, and at my age, I figured ‘Seventeen’ must as have been some precarious place this guy was thinking about jumping over the edge of. Plus it didn’t help that Stevie went a little Bob Dylan on it, and to this day, I still don’t know a lot of the correct lyrics. It doesn’t change the fact that I'll always love it, though. ;)

Moving on, from listening to music came an interest in singing it, playing it, and subsequently writing it. I’m shithouse at reading music though, and in the time it’d take for me to complete one bar, someone better skilled would have turned the page. This is why I never lasted long in school bands, and it comes down to that fact that what I learned, I learned by ear.

When the flautist next to me played, I observed. Then I’d start to mimic her, and eventually I’d have learned the piece directly from her. But it was a lengthy process that saw me pretending to play a lot of the time, or simply staring at my music with a frown during an assembly performance, as if someone had replaced it with sheets of Chinese road rules.

I’m not sure if any of my music teachers cottoned on to my ‘vulture’ act, but I always slackened off after a while anyway, because I just couldn’t grasp it. Musical Dyslexia is my diagnosis.

Even so, I'm in heaven around musical instruments, and one day I intend to have a room full of them, simply so I can teach myself to play ‘Mary had a little lamb’ on every single one. :D