Valhalla

Music is a huge part of my life. Unless I’m at work or watching something, chances are, I’ll have a CD playing (or, er, a cassette tape >.>), or the radio on (usually on the internet, especially one of these, because the local and regional radio stations all suck – yes, I know Rockantenne is Bavarian… something good had to come out of that place at some point, and that thing is definitely not Crazy Horst).

Music, to me, is an emotional outlet and a comfort all at once. I have a whole long list of Bawl Your Eyes Out and Feel Better Afterwards songs, another of Songs to Do Katas and Shadow-Punch Things to, and of course a Run Like It Will Solve Anything playlist. I also have specific songs and bands I’ll listen to in particular moods, or to go with particular fandoms. Songs that remind me of people and/or places. And I know I’m hardly the only one to do this, but I’m pretty self-conscious about it anyway. (Which is unusual for me – I don’t do self-conscious. Or its inevitable consequence, good manners.) It’s just such a teenage thing to do and I’m roughly a decade too old for it. Plus, most of the music I like isn’t exactly “cool”, not even to hipsters or retro enthusiasts. (There’s one too many Bonnie Tyler albums on my shelf for that.) I blame my, er, eclectic taste on the fact that once I like something, I won’t stop liking it. Ever. My favourite songs have been my favourites since I heard them for the first time, and my Top Ten List of Songs hasn’t changed all that much since the time I was thirteen. Much like with fandoms, once I love something, it’s going to stay with me for life.

At the same time, I’m not fannish about music the way most music lovers are. I’ll read up on the lyrics if they seem interesting (or I need a fic title…), but I won’t go hunting for details about the context of songs, singers’ private lives, changing band-members, record chronology, etc. So I could probably tell you who was in the Beatles and which of them are still alive, but I wouldn’t have remembered the anniversary of Lennon’s death if you hadn’t mentioned it. And that’s the bloody Beatles! I may know the lyrics to all my favourite songs by heart, but if they’re published by a band, not an individual, you’d better not ask me the singer’s name.

Among my various groups of friends, I’m one of the more tolerant ones, who’ll head out to a Goth club this weekend, to a hip-hop one the next. (Though I don’t actually go out that much anymore these days, what with all my friends having grown up and settled down, and me having, well, not, and being broke most of the time.) I can find something I like at least a little in most types of music, though I wouldn’t willingly listen to rap or techno if left to my own devices, and to classical music very rarely, though that’s what I grew up with. The only thing I absolutely can’t tolerate is Schlager, that special accordion-fuelled German atrocity some people like to pretend is what passes for ‘traditional folk music’ in this country. (In response to which I point at my distant Irish step-relatives and unapologetically claim their far superior folk music for my own.)

But the music I genuinely enjoy? Will always contain a guitar or five, whether acoustic or electric. There’s something about guitar music that just speaks to me on a fundamental level no other music does. I like the English expression “pluck my heartstrings”, because that’s what it feels like: like something deep within me is resonating with the chords. I’m not someone with a normal relationship to feelings, as far as I can tell; my emotional responses are often… odd, compared to other people’s, but the right kind of music bypasses many of my barriers and speaks to me directly. There are songs I can’t listen to without getting close to crying, no matter how chipper my mood before they started playing.

Additionally, lyrics are important to me. Words are my key to understanding the world. And with rock music, you have a much better chance to get interesting, thoughtful lyrics than with other types of music. All this “yay, party people, put your hands in the air” or generic teenage angst pop music stuff simply doesn’t do anything for me. I want the melancholy, the anger, the grief, the yearning, you know?

When it comes to sub-genre, I’m not picky: I love the aggression of hard rock, the social criticism of punk, the nihilism of grunge, the sexiness of hairspray rock (yes, I have great taste in men, why do you ask?), and the larger-than-life epicness of metal. But my heart will always lie most with the bluesy early-day classic and folk rock of the 60s and 70s: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, Simon&Garfunkel, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, The Dire Straits, The Eagles, The Doors, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Cream, and those many smaller bands who only had a hit or two… I love the deep longing for freedom and a better world that later generations either forgot or simply got too jaded for. It’s, I suspect, the main reason I feel so out of tune with my generation most of the time: I want that here-today-hitting-the-highway-tomorrow, jump-on-a-train, never-going-to-see-you-again, driven-by-my-ghosts wistfulness, but it’s in short supply these days where everyone’s government-registered and GPS-tracked, always under surveillance and permanently on Facebook, and you can’t just up and leave because you’re fettered to your shitty job and unlikely to find something new elsewhere (except in places you don’t want to go, like big cities). Where sorrow gets therapised away, because mindless happiness (or what numb, neo-conservative boredom, interrupted by regularly scheduled binge-drinking and consumerism excesses passes as such) makes for better-adjusted citizens. (The mere fact that “well-adjusted” has become a positive descriptor while no one was looking says it all, doesn’t it?)

Anyway, that got away from me. So much on the topic of music from underinformed-but-enthusiastic me. :)