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Musical Inspiration…

Musically speaking, I’ve always been attracted to music with a good beat. I’m talking the kind of beat where the ground shakes underneath you. The kind of music that you can feel vibrating through your bones.

I attribute this to my mom, who owned a Ford Mustang with an 8-track during the late 70’s. during those years, we lived about an hour drive from the family, so those long drives would be filled with loud, LOUD music. My mom can’t hear worth shit now and I also blame her loud music on that. She still likes the music loud, but these days I think it has more to do with not being able to hear it. Of course, if a song’s got a good beat, you can bet she’ll jack the volume up.

Growing up, I tended to stick with the safe stuff. There was a stigma attached to certain types of music, as there is now. If you liked KISS or AC/DC you were probably smoking pot, and if you liked 2 Live Crew you were probably a drug dealer. As a preppy kid, that kind of music just didn’t fit my image, whatever that was. So I tended to stick to whatever was popular on the radio at the time—the top 40. What’s kind of funny though is that I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC. What a thing to remember. It’s not like the lyrics touched me in any special way, but for some reason that song has always stuck in my head.

Other songs I remember liking were songs by 69 Boyz like “Daisy Dukes” and “Tootsie Roll”, as well as, “Hoochie Mama” and “Me So Horny” by 2 Live Crew. Again, I can’t explain the reason why. Maybe because they were just so different to what I’d been exposed to. Maybe because they were so different from what people thought I’d be listening to. Who knows.

At work, we can all share our music through iTunes rendezvous—meaning we can listen to music that other people own. It’s great because you don’t have to own the song to listen to it, and if you like some of their stuff you can go out and buy it for yourself. Also neat is that I’m getting reaquainted with a lot of the rock and rap that I used to like back in the 80’s and 90’s but never bought. On the same token, there’s a lot of music by lesser known musicians that I might have never had a chance to hear.

It also gives you an insight into the people you work with. You see their playlists and it let’s you know about their tastes and personalities, musically speaking. I can’t concentrate in a quiet environment, so having music around at work is a must have. If they take my radio away, I’d probably quit.

Depending on my mood, I’ll either be listening to something with a good beat and crazy lyrics, or something soulful and melodic. Just depends on the project I’m working on at the time. And when you need to concentrate, there’s nothing better than some instrumental magic.

Personally, I like all types of music from Rap to Rock to Alternative to Country. Now there are extremes to all of those types of music and I’ll admit that I tend to stick to the more mainstream songs within each of those categories. I certainly don’t need to hear a rap song about someone eating out a girls stuff or a country song that drones on and on about a gun rack in the back of a pickup that went off and shot someone dead. But for the most part, I’m fairly open-minded when it comes to music. In fact, if you have any recommendations let me know and I’ll give them a listen.

For me, music drives deep into a person’s soul. Music can convey frustration or sympathy, sadness or jubilation. It can help with concentration or to distract from the daily frustrations. There’s nothing better on a long drive than pumping up the volume of your favorite songs and singing at the top of your lungs, which is something we’d do a lot back in the 70’s blasting The Commodores “Brick House” or “Funky Situation” from that 8-track in my mom’s Mustang.

Tags: music, rap, instrumental, funk, beat, youth

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