exposure

in which I connect emotionally with pop music for the first time ever.

 

Due to my father’s hatred of pop music, as previously discussed, I didn’t really hear pop music in any meaningful way until I was six.

 

Now that I’m a parent and watching my daughter’s burgeoning awareness of the world around her, I realize this was probably also a function of being a kid. To some extent anyway.

 

It is really fuckin cool to rediscover the world through my kid, by the way.

 

For the most part my friend’s parents were also classical music listeners so I didn’t really have any exposure there either.

 

In winter 1982 when we went to Colorado for our annual ski trip. As always we stayed at my parents’ friends’ house, and these friends had a pair of  magical creatures called teenaged girls, as well as a son who was about my age.

 

One non-skiing day, apparently us kids were being obnoxious little shits, or the adults wanted some day time wife swapping, or to drink themselves into an alcoholic stupor in peace, so we were locked out on the deck together.

 

Did I mention this was Colorado? In the winter? And that we were literally locked out? God, parenting in the 80s rocked. I’m happy to report that no one died of exposure.

 

So we’re out on the deck in five feet of snow, and like all brilliant kids, the boy and I planned ahead and packed roller skates. The magical teenagers packed their record player. Which, I suppose was slightly more practical than fucking roller skates.

 

Anyway, while their younger brother and I were unsuccessfully trying to skate in three feet of packed snow, the teenagers were busy digging out the outdoor outlet to plug in their record player. Once we’d finally given up on our fruitless enterprise, they had plugged in and started playing the one record they’d managed to get outside.

 

It was Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic, which apparently was the right album at the exact right time for me. Something about the music reached out and grabbed me, and I clearly remember Walk This Way and Sweet Emotion. It was an epiphany and I remember sitting in the snow listening with the same weirdly rapt attention I’d give to a major symphony orchestra. 

For the rest of the trip when I wasn’t terrifying my ski instructors, I was begging the girls to play me more records. They got annoyed, but I was completely entranced by their baseball sleeve concert ts, posters and record collections. Even the cover art was a revelation. I’d sneak into their rooms to flip through their albums, and run my fingers down the track lists memorizing the exotic song names.

 

I also started to explore other music voraciously. I got a Columbia record club membership, much to my mothers chagrin. I discovered that radios played music other than classical and spent hours holed up in my room with a shitty clock radio listening to every station I could get a decent signal for.

 

And I loved everything. My friend’s dad introduced me to AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Simon & Garfunkel (go figure). I watched MTV in my allotted 30 minutes of TV per week, and absorbed music videos. I listened to the poppiest of pop, heavy metal, hair bands, the blues, alternative stuff, dance music…

 

Still do. Still love it all. I’ve steadfastly clung to my childhood openness to everything.

 

Now, rather than voraciously consuming everything all at once, I tend to go through phases. Right now, it’s alternative rock, but I’m seeing EDM looming on the horizon.

 

"You say, "Now what’s your style and

Who do you listen to?” Who cares?”

(pardon if there’s any weird typos, I wrote this whole post on my phone. Which is hard.)