Music fiend

For those of you who might not realize it, I am a music fiend. There is a radio in every single room of my house, though at present the kitchen radio isn’t hooked up. I even have a shower radio so I can listen while I’m getting clean.

I’m a pretty equal-opportunity listener as well. I will listen to nearly everything, except really obnoxious gangsta rap. But there is some rap and some R&B I do like. I will listen to classic rock, I will listen to hair bands, I will listen to 80s pop and 90s grunge. My rotation of XM channels right now is 90s on 9, U-Pop (international hits although they are playing far too many American pop hits for my taste), Ethel (new alternative rock), Big Tracks (70s and 80s classic rock), and Lucy (90s alternative and grunge). I will even throw channel 110 in there, traditional classical music.

I didn’t play the cello for ten years without gaining an appreciation of classical music. The 1812 Overture (part 1 and part 2) by Tchaikovsky will give me chills, especially when I remember the thrills I got from playing it to an audience, all fifteen minutes of it, from the quiet, serene beginning to the thunderous finale. Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens reminds me of tenth grade, when our orchestra teacher pushed us far enough so we played it well. Every so often, a song will come on, and I’ll get all excited because I played that! How cool is that?

I have a new favorite song, though. Of course, it’s from the UK; I seem to be fixating on songs from across the pond lately. First it was the Kaiser Chiefs, then it was Kate Nash, then Lily Allen. I also love The Twang, though they’ve seemed to have gone out of rotation on U-Pop. McFly is another good band, and in fact Kurt has ordered their CD from our local record store. And yes, it is indeed a record store. I came this close to buying “Fluorescent Adolescent” by the Arctic Monkeys (yet another British band) on vinyl just because I could. Then I remembered I don’t have a record player at the moment, so I passed. For the time being, anyhow.

Have I lost you yet?

So my new favorite song is by Hot Chip, and it’s called “Ready For the Floor.” I love the video, though it makes very little sense to me. But it reminds me so much of the 80s, when nothing had been done before, and everyone was making these wild, way-out, crazy videos.

It took me so long to figure out what song this is. WBRU, which I have already ranted about, does not have a simple Javascript on its page to tell you what song is playing. Why, I don’t know. So many other radio stations have one. But I did manage to find a log of what songs they’ve played in the last few hours, and by process of elimination (ie, clicking on all the freakin’ links) I managed to figure out the title and band.

Now I love it, and it gets stuck in my head rather easily. It’s catchy!

Here’s another song-related story for you. Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” came on the 90s on 9 channel tonight as we drove home, and of course, my dear husband starts singing Weird Al Yankovic’s “Amish Paradise” instead. He’s weird like that. I think he owns almost all of Weird Al’s CDs.

“Gangsta’s Paradise” reminded me of what happened in tenth grade, though. One night my friends and I decided to go to the movies. We were all 15, and all of our parents had dropped us off at the mall. Looking back on that, I’m rather surprised, since my parents were pretty protective of me, but we were good kids who got good grades. We tried to get into Dangerous Minds, the Michelle Pfeiffer movie about a former Marine who goes to teach in an inner-city school and tries to get the kids to see the value of an education. “Gangsta’s Paradise” was featured in the movie. However, it was an R-rated movie, and they were actually checking IDs at the ticket counter!

Embarrassed by not being old enough to buy tickets, we raced down to the other movie theatre (our mall had two separate movie theatres; I have no idea why) and bought tickets for the next movie playing. Instead of seeing Dangerous Minds, a semi-educational movie whose aim was to show the dangers of gang membership, we ended up seeing To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, a movie about drag queens. I guess that could be considered educational.

Later on, I was able to see Dangerous Minds. It is an amazing movie, and if you haven’t yet seen it, it definitely deserves a place on your Netflix queue.