I've Got the Music In Me

Tonight in the car on the way to pick up Annalisse from work, ELO's Living Thing came on the radio. I was swept back to my bedroom on Roosevelt Street by this song that reminded me so much of my teen years when I would listen to the radio all night long. To think of that now is amazing, seeing I am the type of person who has to have absolute quiet when I sleep. Looking back I know now that I really wasn't sleeping very soundly in those days with my favorite songs seeping into my subconcious all night long. I remember waking up many times a night savoring one song or another on Chez 106 out of Ottawa or CHOM out of Montreal. It think I may have talked in the past about the Canadian influences on music as I was growing up, and once in a while at work I will listen to Q107 out of Toronto, which plays all that great Canadian rock that I grew up with.

As an aside, one aggravating aspect of growing up in the 70s was that most music (not listened to on the radio) came in the form of 8-track tapes (cassette tapes did not really become popular until a little later when they overtook the 8-track, which was in turn overtaken by CDs, which was taken over by .mp3s...but I digress). "8-tracks," as they were called, had the annoying habit of "changing tracks" mid-song where the song would fade, you'd hear a loud "click-click," and the song would fade back in and resume. Two standouts come to mind: Going to California by Led Zepplin (on their untitled fourth album) and Vienna by Billy Joel (from The Stanger); both awesome songs forever burned into my mind with a "click-click" in the middle that I still anticipate to this day every time I hear them.

So, yes, the music is in me, even if I wasn't fully awake to hear it and even if it's remembered fondly in the form of old technology.