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The White Creek - Texas County Mo. Click to Enlarge |
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Why Don't Juke Boxes Offer "None of the Above"? You know, it's getting where music really ticks me off. Okay, I know what you're thinking already. It's practically blasphemy to speak ill of music; music which "has charms to soothe a savage breast". Music, that which has been likened favorably to gold and diamonds, THAT ticks me off? Yes. Remember the old saying, "Anybody who likes kids and animals can't be all bad."? That's how people seem to feel about music. Well, that may be so, but give me a chance to explain myself on the subject. (I'll get around to telling you what's wrong with kids and animals some other time.) It's not as if I never listen to music, or even that there isn't a lot of it that I'd even admit to liking, but golly Moses! there's just so MUCH of it! I've often pondered why classical music, the most refined, seemingly the most evolved of all music came primarily from a period 200 to 500 years ago, whereas a lot of the most modern music seems so comparatively crude and brash. If you know anything about music, then it's already apparent to you that I don't, but like everyone else, that doesn't stop me from having developed several strong opinions. My explanation of this seeming incongruity is this: 500 years ago, man's existence was a coarse, difficult plight. The average life expectancy was about 23, famine and disease were the order of the day, and music prior to that time had consisted largely of sounds made by pressing, pounding or blowing through different animal parts. As the Baroque era dawned, man quickly sought to distance himself and his music from the grim chaos that had gone before and the more sophisticated, resplendent and celestial music became, the more he liked it. Who can blame him? If all you got to listen to all day long was the grunts and snorts of farm animals or the wails of your neighbors dying of bubonic plague, a string quartet would sound pretty nice, even nicer than it does today. However, as luck would have it, time continued, and more different sorts of music began to fill the air. Today, we have music played on all manner of instruments for people of all manner of taste, even those whose taste it is to prefer anything that will scandalize their parents. ...and I don't have a problem with that. If I weren't so sick of music, I'd like all kinds of it too. But sick of it I am, and the reason why is because I can't escape it. Okay, that's not exactly true. Living in a very rural location, I can easily slip out into the forest and spend a few hours among the chirping of frogs and the twitter of birds but, I can’t get my tires balanced and my wheels aligned out here, so try though I may, I can't spend nearly enough of my time where it’s quiet, and like most everyone else in the modern world, I wind up spending a lot of each day watching television with the family, or shopping, or having tech support pump tripe into my ear, or just minding my own business going from one place to another, and I can tell you, friend, that music is EVERYWHERE! You don't have to live in New York to be bombarded with it, it follows you wherever you go. Take yesterday for example, I needed to run into town to do a couple of things. Since I'm so sick of music, the radio in my truck is constantly tuned to NPR because I do enjoy an intelligent discussion. Unfortunately, in this neck of the woods, intelligent discussion ends abruptly at 10:00 am and classical music ensues until 3:00 pm. Okay, wait, I don't want to look like a low-brow. I can listen to the William Tell Overture and never once think of the Lone Ranger, but after about thirty minutes of this stuff, I start to feel like I'm attending a funeral, and if I move to any of the other stations out here in God's Country, I have fourteen other selections that come down to this: Tears- in-Your-Beer Country/Western or Golden Oldies Rock and Roll. Okay, that may not sound so bad to someone who just got off the plane from North Korea. I genuinely like Willie Nelson, and I'm absolutely convinced that Tammy Wynette isn't nearly as stupid as she looks, talks and sounds, but all day long?... everywhere you go? That reminds me of the story about How I Got to be This Way. A few years ago, I had to go into the hospital for... well, it's really none of your business, and not germane to the story, but anyway, I had to go into the hospital and when I did, I was put into what was referred to as a "semi-private" room. In case you've never had this experience, let me enlighten you. There is nothing even remotely private about a semi-private room. Having a semi-private room means that you have to share virtually every detail of your life with a total stranger lying five feet away. The only reason that it’s called semi-private is because it’s costing you more than you’d pay for a comparably-long stay in a luxury resort so they have to at least make a passing effort at making it sound better than it is. (continued)
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