Musical Eclecticism

Someday!!

I am very eclectic in my musical tastes, the rest of my family, especially my children, would label them as just plain weird.  This probably explains why whenever I am driving the car with my children they immediately seize control of the radio.   I was reminded early this morning when I got into the car to leave for work forgetting that I was playing the Bay City Rollers at maximum volume the night before when I drove back from the gym.  I’m sure my sleeping wife as well as the neighbors and any canine within a 1 mile radius appreciated the short excerpt of “Saturday Night” that came booming out.  It certainly ensured I was wide awake for the drive.  Anyways, I do have a very wide range of music types that I like, they are weird to a certain extent.  I know this because I can get very few people to listen to all of it with me without groaning.  The single most divisive type is bagpipe music …I … just….love…bagpipe music.  It really speaks to me on a certain level.  It even led me to claim I was Scottish when I was young, despite genealogical evidence to the contrary.  Eventually we did establish that I had about a quarter’s worth of Scottish blood, but it must be pretty dominant because bagpipe music just does it for me.  One of the most memorable nights in my life was in the 1980s in an Irish bar in Alexandria, Virginia with my sister and brother in law when a bagpipe band came in and played a couple of numbers, playing right next to where I was sitting.  I can remember my sister looking over and just knowing how happy I was at that moment.  One of my lifelong goals has been to go to a British military tattoo where I could hear a full band of bagpipers but I have never been able to convince anyone to go with me.  I think the next opportunity that comes up I’m just going to go by myself.  I also love hard rock, some country songs, oldies (50s and 60s), ballads, some folk music, salsa music (thanks to the wife for that), patriotic music, and in a huge surprise to any one that knows me, movie music.  About the only music I cannot stand is rap, which isn’t really music anyways.  I’ve often thought life would be much more interesting if we had a musical score to accompany every day life.  Music does inspire me; certain songs evoke memories, some with enough emotional power to bring tears to the eyes, such as the song I danced to with my daughter at her wedding.  I have used music throughout my life to psyche myself up – in college before water polo games I would play the theme from Jaws, in the military I would play the theme from Conan the Barbarian before big runs, and if you play a bagpipe rendition of Scotland the Brave I would be up for jus about anything.  I’ve accepted that my musical tastes are not even a minor tributary of the main stream, but I still love it, it’s more personal that way.  On my solitary drives I can still blast Springsteen followed by the Wake of the Edmund Fitzgerald and feel at peace.