I Like to Listen

Besides TV, music has also been a significant part of my life. I remember the first time that I became a true music fan. I was listening to my mother's FM radio in the evening. I changed the station to an underground rock station in town with KUDL call letters, (they have been through multiple format changes over the years). I remember the songs that caught my interest. They were The James Gang, "Walk Away", and Led Zeppelin, "The Immigrant Song". I had never heard any soundlike that before.


Everything I had listened to in the past was my parents music. Dad like Elvis Presley and the Lawrence Welk Show, while Mom liked Tom Jones, Herb Alpert and other popular musicians. I had developed my own tastes, but they were always the current pop stars such as Glen Campbell or the Partridge Family. I had a crush on Susan Dey up until her LA Law days, and was depressed when I learned that she lip synced. I wanted to grow my hair long like David Cassidy. After all, he was the chick magnet of my childhood.

But now I had my own kind of music. Rock. I soon began to follow other bands. My first concert was to see Sugarloaf in the Shawnee Mission North High School gym. They had just released their first and only hit, "Green Eyed Lady". It was a bid deal to me. I bought their cassette and wore it out.

Once I starting working regularly, I bought my own stereo and increased the number of bands I followed. I began to support BTO, Grand Funk Railroad, Chicago, Steppenwolf, Alice Cooper, and others with my record purchases. Once I moved away from home, having the loudest, and best quality stereo system was a priority. I purchased a stereo receiver from Kennedy and Cohen for around $1,000. It had 100 watts per channel. When paired with the large speakers I had built, I could light up the night. Yet, it wasn't the best stereo on the block.


A friend of mine had an older (probably 25 years old) acquaintance who made great money and dumped it all into stereo gear. He had pre-amps, post-amps, tuner, turntable, reel to reel, equalizers, and to top it all off, the baddest speakers made at the time - the JBL Voice of the Studio. They stood 5 to 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep. The sound that came from them was the purest and loudest I had ever heard. This stereo was spread across the living room and dining room of a single family house. My friends and I would visit and bring our favorite albums, hoping for permission to play them on this incredibly awesome system. In those days, we were music snobs. Pop records were never played. Even suggesting that we play the Eagles "Desperado" (a classic) was met with boo and hisses. Glass Harp, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, and other alternative rock bands were the favorites. And we would turn it up. You could hear our music from blocks away.


I knew I could never afford gear like that, but it didn't stop me from constantly improving what I had. I added newer equipment, built new speakers, and even built custom speakers into a room at my house. And I never stopped building my collection of music. I still have most of that old vinyl in the basement. I find it incredible that the sound quality that required thousands of dollars of investment then, not to mention donating rooms in your house, can now be replicated in a personal digital music player. Even my entire library of music can now fit on my medium sized iPod.


My current sound systems double as the systems used for TV audio. I have two Bose surround sound systems. I have a 5.1 system connected to the 60 inch Sony HDTV. We use this system to watch DVD movies. The sound is pure and crisp and the power can rattle the windows. After moving into our new home I realized that I could not wire the great room for rear speakers, so a 5.1 system could not be installed. That prompted the purchase of a Bose 3.2.1 system. While not true surround sound, the audio is clear and crisp and the system has more than enough power for a single room. We have this system connected to the 50 inch plasma over the fireplace. Both systems are also used to listen to CD audio.


As my musical tastes have changed over the years, the one constant has always been my attraction to any musical instrument, acoustic or electric guitar, mandolin, banjo, piano, Dobro, or any other as long as the musician playing it had talent. Certain bands that had a unique sound might have caught my attention briefly, but if there was little musical talent I would quickly lose interest.

That means that my taste for music closely follows musicians who have talent and not necessarily the type of music played. I now listen to country and bluegrass music more that any other type of music. That was unthinkable in my youth, but when I see Brad Paisley or Keith Urban play their guitars, I know where the rock music of my youth is now played. When I see the talent of Alison Kraus and Union Station, or The Greencards, I don't think of it as bluegrass. I am simply entertained by the skill of the dedicated musicians.

What I listen to hasn't really changed that much over the years. There is very little difference between the music of the Grateful Dead and today's bluegrass. Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead cut at least 2 bluegrass albums late in his career. Today's bluegrass musician is a likely to play and old Grateful Dead song as something from Earl and Scruggs

Similarities between older rock music and today's country music can also be seen. One current concert TV show, Crossroads, points this out repeatedly. Taylor Swift blends in nicely with geriatric rockers, Def Leppard. Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles trades songs with Bon Jovi. If their music was that different, you would not be able to pull it off. I say, it's not that different.

If the musician has talent, I like to listen.