Jay's View

MUSIC

I will say that Jay is defiantly the amazing writer in our family, but he is unwilling to document our life daily LOL. In return I have asked him to write one blog a week about anything he wants. Here is the first one.

So I am told that I need to write something in Laura’s blog, but she forgets that I (we) are private people. So for the last 2 hours I have been struggling to find something to write about. I have been sitting here listening to some random music on rhapsody, actually it’s all music I have picked so in no way is it random, but the mix of music is random. Here are some of the artists whose tracks have graced my ear drums. Sublime, The Who, Journey, Fleetwood Mac, Areosmith, Kansas, Bob Seger, Cee Lo Green, The Eagles, Black Eyed Peas, Dire Straits, Enrique Iglesias, Little River Band, Boston, Rihanna, Beyonce and a bunch of other stuff. Yes I have an ear for late 70’s early 80’s AOR music. Props to the first person to know what AOR is.

You will have to forgive me if I burst out in song. It’s a habit I have. It baffles Laura how in the middle of a conversation I will hear a few words from a song and I will instantly break out singing that song. I have learned to control this around most people, but have found myself in front of a class slipping in a few lines of music to songs. Most of the kids will stare at me like I am from a faraway place. I will tell them the song and the stares continue as I realize most of these kids’ parents were 10 when the song I am singing was popular. I usually laugh to myself and continue on, however, every once in awhile I will have to stop what I am doing and go listen to that particular song to appease my inner music soul. Movies also have a way of getting me to listen to random music. If I hear a song in a movie that I know, I will usually go listen to that song when the movie is over. Many times I will listen to that song and many others by the same artist for days on end. One particular movie was Reign over Me. It was an atypical movie of Adam Sandler’s but it struck a chord in me. Without going into too much detail, I can say that I could see myself in his characters role if I ever, God forbid, faced what his character did. He listens to The Who’s 1973 Quadrophenia album over and over throughout the movie. As you can guess, I listened to that album for weeks after watching the movie.

Music, especially the older stuff, takes me back to memories in my life. I remember the first album I ever got. It was in 1980 when my mother came home for a business trip. Not sure if Corey or Sarah ever got gifts, but this particular time I did. It was the Billy Joel’s “Glass Houses” album. I spent hours playing that record. I am sure this is where my love of AOR came from. I think my mom owned half of the albums listed above. I always wondered where my love for music came from. I know my father and mother listened to music but why did I pick it up and run with it? I never desired to play an instrument, but have always loved listening to music. My dream job would be working as an executive at a record label signing new talent, or producing records or a DJ at a radio station. The last job is one I actually had while attending college in La Grande. KEOL 91.7 was the local college radio station. One of my roommates and I decided that we needed to take the FM Broadcasting class and get licenses to be radio DJ’s. We passed and got our very own show. It was the best 4 hours spent; Thursday mornings from midnight to 4am. We were low on the totem pole so we got the worst shift. The best part, we could play whatever we wanted and the station had over 10,000 albums and 20,000 cd’s. Not to mention this was all during the height of Napster. So we had all the music we wanted at out disposal. All we had to do was read PSA’s and every 30mins, top of the hour and at xx.30min mark, we had to read the call sign, “97.1 K-E-O-L La Grande.” This was required by the FCC. The worst part was the 4 hour Chem. lab I had Thursday mornings. Maybe that is why I changed majors to computer science. Or it could have been Physics and Biology that buried me the same term. I digress. I love music. I can sit with my headphones on listening to music for hours on end. Most nights I fall asleep while listening to my mp3 player and will wake up at 4am with the headphones still in. And yes if it’s a song I really like, I will listen to it then fall back asleep. It is safe to say on any given day, there is some form of music piped into my head for extended periods of time. So here it is now well past my bedtime and I realized I have been rambling on here. I also realize that I have opened the window to my private life just a crack. Hope you enjoyed.