Music Meme, and Musings

Oh, it's SO nice to have some free time!

(Thanks Glennykins)

1. Total amount of music files on your computer?

Hm. Last count was around 1000. Not really a lot by today's reckoning. All but a handful are ripped from CD's that I purchased at full price, so the RIAA can go fuck itself.

2. The last CD you bought was...

I never buy just one at a time: a collection of Renata Tebaldi arias, Spike Lee & Co.'s Do It Accappella, a Tom Petty album (the one with "Mary Jane's Last Dance" on it), Carole King's greatest hits, and I think a copy of Sting's Ten Summoner's Tales, for a friend.

3. What was the last song you listened to before reading this message?
Right now I'm listening to "I Was Brought To My Senses" by Sting. It's off the album Mercury Falling, which I keep in the CD changer. I never get sick of it, it's great dinner music, and everyone I've played it for likes it.

4. Write down five songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.

(Just five?!)

4.1. "Trouble In the Fields" sung by Maura O'Connell. It's a song about farmland, but it's also a song about relationships, community, family, inner strength, and faith.

4.2. A cover of the theme song to the Mary Tyler Moore show sung by Joan Jett. "You're gonna make it after all..." It was done for the made-for-TV reunion movie that came out a few years ago. I ripped it off the TiVo back when I lived with a guy who knew how to do that sort of thing. I swear it could make Steven Wright smile and bop down the street.

4.3. I can't listen to "All Out of Love" by Air Supply without crumpling into a sobbing mess

4.4. When I'm really in bad shape I sing along to "Blood and Fire" by the Indigo Girls, but it's been awhile since I did that.

4.5. I celebrate life events with "Walkin' on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves


5. What 3 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?

Frank, because he could use a little pointless fun.
Jonathan, because for all our shared past, I'm betting we have opposite tastes in music.
Crash, because the man just has such great taste. Culture Vulture.

I'll even go so far as to see if I can't get Amanda to do this, even though she's on hiatus. (I know you're reading, Amanda...) Like me, she feels deeply, she ain't from the big city, and she's been THROUGH IT sistah.

Music seems to reveal a great deal about people. Why do we like what we like? Why do certain music genres (country, for example) make some of us want to bash our heads against the wall, while others will limit their collection to nothing but? Why does someone prefer Ella to Bille, Dean to Frank, The Bee Gees to Abba, the Mamas and the Papas to just about everything else?

Next time you look over your music collection, ask yourself who you see in that pile of art. What does it say about you? Does the rest of your home reflect your taste in music? Do your clothes? Do you see your friends in your collection? Your parents? You old lovers?

Being a singer myself - who refers to herself as a musician - I tend to read song lyrics like the script to a play, and see a song as a story being told, even if it's instrumental. But then I also have times when I just want to bop around to "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", and that's part of being human. (And that song almost made the top 5, for just that reason.)