Music and memory
Jul. 30th, 2009 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beetigerAbout a week and a half ago, I bought a Zune, because it was on sale at Woot, and because I've been decluttering and the overloaded CD racks were getting to me, and because my tech enabler lediva has been bugging me that I should for a while. I'd been avoiding getting a portable music player for a long time mostly because --well, because I don't like earphones, mostly, and I don't like being tuned out from my environment. But I noted that Microsoft has done a pretty functional FM transmitter for it, and I noticed that I'd been taking long drives listening to my Sirius radio, not on the hundreds of stations available on it, but basically only on 4 stations: contemporary jazz, 80s, 90s, and kids.
I was pretty impressed with the organizational abilities of the Zune software, once I ripped a pile of what was on those overflowing CD racks. Then I went ahead and started the 2 week free trial of the Zune Pass, Microsoft's music rental service. I've been having fun downloading all this stuff that people have told me I should listen to but never have --Polyphonic Spree, Great Big Sea -- and finding out what some artists I liked a while ago have been doing for the last few years.
And suddenly, I'm all nostalgic, downloading all the stuff I had on vinyl before CD's existed. I downloaded a pile of Blondie. And I downloaded Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell.
Bat Out of Hell was the very first record I bought on my own, with my own money, when it came out in 1977, which means I was not quite ten years old. I don't recall at all why I bought it, whether I'd heard songs on the radio, or someone had told me about it, or whether the biker chick genes from my mother that I didn't realize I had yet were starting to surface, or if I just saw the album in the store and thought the name Meat Loaf was funny or something. But I do remember listening to it over and over on my little Peter Pan turntable in my bedroom, being fascinated by the images of love and relationships it presented, nodding my head to the drums, unaware of the level to which everything on there was really tongue in cheek. I imagined sitting in a car, Paradise By the Dashboard Light-like, and I think it was the first time I realized that boys were supposed to say yes, and girls were supposed to say no.
I played it for my son, in the car, while I drove him to camp yesterday. He told me that they shouldn't really say "ain't", and that it would be funny if they called it "Bats Out of the Summerlands". He loved the sound, and utterly missed anything about the lyrics entirely.
And now I'm playing "Heart of Glass", which a boy from the Catholic school down the road from where I went to school used to play for me over the phone, while I sat on my little bed and somehow wished I could be Debbie Harry. And it makes me feel like I've been around a while, and like that's a good thing.
lediva has been bugging me that I should for a while. I'd been avoiding getting a portable music player for a long time mostly because --well, because I don't like earphones, mostly, and I don't like being tuned out from my environment. But I noted that Microsoft has done a pretty functional FM transmitter for it, and I noticed that I'd been taking long drives listening to my Sirius radio, not on the hundreds of stations available on it, but basically only on 4 stations: contemporary jazz, 80s, 90s, and kids. I was pretty impressed with the organizational abilities of the Zune software, once I ripped a pile of what was on those overflowing CD racks. Then I went ahead and started the 2 week free trial of the Zune Pass, Microsoft's music rental service. I've been having fun downloading all this stuff that people have told me I should listen to but never have --Polyphonic Spree, Great Big Sea -- and finding out what some artists I liked a while ago have been doing for the last few years.
And suddenly, I'm all nostalgic, downloading all the stuff I had on vinyl before CD's existed. I downloaded a pile of Blondie. And I downloaded Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell.
Bat Out of Hell was the very first record I bought on my own, with my own money, when it came out in 1977, which means I was not quite ten years old. I don't recall at all why I bought it, whether I'd heard songs on the radio, or someone had told me about it, or whether the biker chick genes from my mother that I didn't realize I had yet were starting to surface, or if I just saw the album in the store and thought the name Meat Loaf was funny or something. But I do remember listening to it over and over on my little Peter Pan turntable in my bedroom, being fascinated by the images of love and relationships it presented, nodding my head to the drums, unaware of the level to which everything on there was really tongue in cheek. I imagined sitting in a car, Paradise By the Dashboard Light-like, and I think it was the first time I realized that boys were supposed to say yes, and girls were supposed to say no.
I played it for my son, in the car, while I drove him to camp yesterday. He told me that they shouldn't really say "ain't", and that it would be funny if they called it "Bats Out of the Summerlands". He loved the sound, and utterly missed anything about the lyrics entirely.
And now I'm playing "Heart of Glass", which a boy from the Catholic school down the road from where I went to school used to play for me over the phone, while I sat on my little bed and somehow wished I could be Debbie Harry. And it makes me feel like I've been around a while, and like that's a good thing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-30 11:27 pm (UTC)I had a picture disc version. I think I may have sold that vinyl. I've got it on CD, though. And, of course, ripped to my iTunes.
I *still* put songs from it on mixes. "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth" was the first track on the last breakup mix I made, not for the song itself, but for the spoken word intro. "I bet you say that to all the boys."