Old show (missed dearly) and a new category for Aye Wonder.

As you undoubtedly know if you’re a reader of this blog, I love music. I don’t stay within the friendly confines of the music I know. I love to discover new sounds and I am constantly on the look out for them. I read once that listening to music as a child helps with brain development, Now, studies show that listening as an adult may save your brain. That’s as good a reason as any to keep listening.

I realize that my love of music has been an obsession for years. It began innocently and relatively normally with a  regular weekly purchase of 45’s. It was hit song or bust for me. I had to have them. (I still have a box with all of my old singles, most of them by either the Beatles, Stones or Motown.) Then, I bought my first two albums, Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon by James Taylor and Who’s Next by the Who. It was at this point that you could stick a fork in me. I was hooked.  But the problem was money. How could I buy more music? While I pondered that, I went to the library to see what else I could score. My excitement brimmed over thinking about what I might turn up at the library but it all quickly turned to disappointment when I discovered that the library didn’t have any popular music. I didn’t want to leave the library empty handed so I blindly checked out a 1955 performance of Verdi’s romantic Italian opera, Rigoletto, featuring the great Maria Callas. The moment I first heard this opera was likely my biggest watershed moment. I was gobsmacked at the beauty of Callas’ voice, the intricacies of the music and the sheer power of the story. I walked around the house singing at the top of my lungs:

La donna è mobile
Qual piuma al vento,
Muta d’accento — e di pensiero.
Sempre un amabile,
Leggiadra viso,
In pianto o in riso, — è menzognera.

I didn’t know what it meant but I could sing it. Constantly. Loudly. Annoyingly. I knew the lyrics to Act 3, Scene 1 as well as I knew (I can’t get no) Satisfaction. Clearly, I needed to buy more records. I stuck my head through the door and there was no turning back. I tried every job that I could that was related in some way to music reasoning that if I worked in music I was exposed to more new music (it continues today).  At age 16, I started All Ace Attractions, a booking agency finding bands for local school dances. A regional agency found out about the inroads I was making and gave me a signing bonus to join them. I leaped at the chance to begin booking colleges and national acts. During this time, I was balancing high school and subsequent to that, university. During college, I would drive back to school in order to DJ a nighttime radio show. I collected more and more records.

My record collection peaked just before the floor boards gave out at 0ver 10,000 albums. Regretfully, I sold all but the collectibles in 1995-6, when I realized that I couldn’t continue to store them all and also, when MP3s or digital recording were replacing even CDs. Now, I have built back my collection. I have 75,394 songs in 11,592 albums over 30 different genres, a Capella to Zydeco. All are in digital files. They are backed up in triplicate. 1/3 of my collection was released in this century, most by new artists. The artist with the most entries is Elvis Presley at 574 tracks. The Beatles are lurking right behind Elvis with 570.

Big and Rich offered some advice in their song, Save a Horse…Ride a Cowboy. While my advice doesn’t have the same catchy ring to it, it does have some longer lasting implications.  Save your brain…listen to music.

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