My parents played both classical music and “beautiful music” when I was growing up. I can remember the full body revulsion I felt when a familiar pop tune was rendered in 101 strings, so I pretty much tuned out anything that had violins in my teen years. Of course I still liked classic cartoon music and I went to a few young people’s orchestras, more because I was fascinated with the orchestra and the orchestra house than the music. There was a time as a youngster where I gave up popular music for Lent and I started listening to talk radio. The local classical station was in between the two talk stations on the dial. So as I was tuning between them, I would hear some classical music, but this station was fully into atonal tunes (late 70’s) so there was nothing to pull me in there.
Tunes my older sisters played on the radio by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath resonated more with me and I started liking heavy metal music and stuck with it pretty much as my favorite music thought my 20s and early 30’s. Metal died an ignoble death in popular culture, but I kept my head banging for much longer in private.
I still respected other brands of rock and listened to classic rock stations when metal went off the air.
By the time I was in my mid thirties, I was really growing intellectually and spiritually and I was becoming less and less satisfied with metal. My tape library got played less and less and when I did dive into it, I came away saying “What was I thinking?” I also got a new job about that time and wanted some background sound to make the tedious parts of the day go faster. I could never listen to rock and do focused work because it would distract me. I thought that maybe if I played some classical music in the background, I could work without distraction. So I googled classical web stations and b.com was the second on the list, but the first one to work reliably for me. I liked the hosts and the “top 40” approach to classical where the tunes were familiar from my childhood or from usage as background music in films or commercials. I started listening every day at work. Then I found the forums and the hook was set. So I can truly say the b.com and all you folks on the forum have made me fall in love with classical. Thanks.
I still dip into the heavy metal waters, but I only listen to those bands who use intellectually stimulating forms of composition. For me now, it’s about the composition more than anything else in both classical and rock. I’m always asking, “How do they combine the notes and the rhythm to get that sound?”
<small>[ 03-21-2006, 12:15 PM: Message edited by: BigJon@Work ]</small>
