If Music be the Food of Life...

Yes, yes, I know.  Apologies to Mr W. Shakespeare for stealing his lines and then misquoting them.

Mrs F and I are the proud owners of a Squeezebox radio which some very good friends bought us for Christmas a couple of years ago.  It pretty much does what it says on the tin “A compact all-in-one network music player—that lets you rock the house with digital music.”

I’ve been listening to it at home today.  I started off listening to Radio Paradise, which is just the best radio station, internet or otherwise, I’ve ever come across.  Reader, get yourself over there and listen!  Your ears will love you forever.

After a while (you can only take so much of a good thing) I moved to our own music library.  We don’t have everything ripped to the PC yet but (I’ve just checked) there are currently 396 albums to choose from (5,180 tracks with a total playing time of 373 hours, 37 minutes and 16 seconds!)

I set it to random play, just to mix things up a bit and, as I’m typing this, it’s playing the Amen chorus from Handel’s Messiah which was preceded by a track from the Jimi Hendrix Experience from the BBC Sessions album recorded in 1967 but not released until 1998.  I’ve also had JB Lenoir, a fair bit of Peter Gabriel, some Sheryl Crow, Albert King & Stevie Ray Vaughn, Rod Stewart, Gregorian Chant, Rolling Stones, Slade and a load of other stuff I can’t remember or didn’t even recognise.  (Mrs F and I both have wide-ranging musical tastes which overlap in places but are widely different in others, which makes for an interesting random play selection.)

Anyway, I got to thinking about how important music is in my life.  How it’s always been there in the foreground and in the background and I suspect it always will be.

Some random ‘pictures’ from my musical life:

The earliest song I can remember hearing was “Hang on Sloopy” around late 1967, early 1968.  I have no idea which version it was but I can remember wanting to delay going to school so I could hear the end of the song on the radio.

I got my first turntable at around the age of 10 or 11 and one of the records I cherished was my mothers copy of “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper.

Moving forward to 1973-74, most of my school friends had musical tastes influenced by their older brothers so we are talking about Yes, Cream, Steve Hackett, Genesis, Rainbow.  It all left me completely cold.  However, salvation came from one friend whose musical tastes were influenced by his older sister and were somewhat more avant garde.  Hello David Bowie!  “Diamond Dogs” was a real revelation, as were Devo.  I owned three copies of “Are We Not Men..?” all in different colours of vinyl and I think I bought every album up as far as “Shout”.  All gone now, sadly.

A couple of years after that I joined the school choir and was introduced to the joys of Baroque music and Gilbert & Sullivan operettas (yes, yes, I was the Major General in 1979).

From there it was on to college where I flirted very, very briefly with rap – “White Lines” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five being a particular favourite which made it to my Desert Island Discs playlist.  (My imaginary list, you understand!  I’m not famous enough to have made it on to the actual programme.)

Post-college (mid-1980’s) was a bit of musical desert for me for reasons I do not know.  Even now, I struggle when asked to identify music from late-80’s to mid/late-90’s (and I’m very good at identifying musical tracks from very few opening notes, he said modestly.)

Normality returned after that, with music accompanying my life as much as it can.  Every room in the house (except the downstairs cloakroom) has at least one radio, there’s a radio/CD player in both cars as well as a DAB digital radio that can be used in either, both Mrs F and I have MP3 players and we fall asleep to music every night.

The musical tastes are still pretty catholic though.  I was just thinking about the last few albums I bought or had bought for me.  You’re looking at ‘Madrigali Erotici’ from Monteverdi, ‘Sigh No More’ from Mumford & Sons, ‘Bud, Sweat and Beers’ by Devlin, ‘Come Around Sundown’ by Kings of Leon and a full recording of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ by the Taverner Choir and Players.

So there you have it, my life set to music.  What rocks your boat day-to-day?

(and as we fade to black, it’s to the sound of ‘Blues for New Orleans’ from ‘Rockinghorse’ by Jools Holland & his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra.)

…play on, give me excess of it.