Music Memory

A busy summer ago I decided to upload my entire album collection on to a separate hard drive along with copies of alphabetized USB cartridges for mobility. There was steady progression but with society’s normalcies and personal routines (work and working out) taking precedence most of the time, I couldn’t give the project the desired amount of attention. It wasn’t just about uploading the albums; also cataloging them and organizing them alphabetically and by year of release. That was a personal preference; most people would have settled for just the upload – I wanted to admire the history of the music.  

Fates Warning - Awaken the Guardian

For the longest time, my love for music fleeted away. It went from a mood enhancer to busy noise I used to fade out all the stupid in life. It doesn’t help that all new musical acts in 2015 are ravaged, overproduced trash with auto-tune being the king breeder of the idiotic and famous. As a young boy during the 1980’s, listening to the radio in the car as my mother drove to drop me off at elementary school is a special time for me. Belinda Carlisle told me I lived in Heaven and WHAM whispered carelessly – I didn’t know that a few hundred miles away a psycho was becoming a murderer after being inspired by that same song - pop music was fantastic. But I stopped listening to public radio during the late 90’s aside from a rock radio station that played heavier material after ten o’clock at night, but eventually I grew out of that as well. I didn’t stop listening to radio because the pop charts were filled with recycled sonic sewage, but because I was completely enamored by the stuff I was hearing underground. As a teenager in high school I started expanding my horizons. I was definitely a rock ‘n roll/heavy metal guy, but my love for hip hop (especially the New York style) exploded as did my appreciation of classical and jazz from Handel's "Messiah" to John Pattitucci's smooth,  bass-oriented jazz trio. The world was full of amazing musicians and writers, thinking about it now, it’s hard to remember how I found so many of the bands that I did before the internet’s uprising and eventual destruction of the music industry. The typical way was through music magazines and special ordered catalogs from different record labels. Metal Edge magazine and it’s cousin Metal Maniacs were a monthly acquirement. I spent countless hours reading descriptions of all of the bands, looking for guest appearances from familiar names or checking who produced the album. The majority of the time I picked a band based solely on the album’s cover. If it was cool, I bought it.

Jon Pattitucci

Whenever on road trips, whether with family, friends, or school, it was mandatory to hit any and all used book and used record stores. I never had time to engulf the culture of the record store world because I was always on the clock and the hunt was always calling. Plus, I think the fast pace kept me from associating with hipsters. I am forever grateful. But, while in the store, I would flip through every single cd and vinyl they had in that place – yes – every – single – one; the same went for books. I always had a list of specific items in hand but there were always pleasant surprises along the way. The bargain bins were my diamonds in the rough. 

The coolest part about the whole experience was that you met like-minded people. The best friends I had back in high school and the best friends I have today, I can truly say that music brought us all together and our personalities just clicked.  The same for total strangers that I would meet just hanging out at parties or on the beach – they would hear the jams I was playing and freak out, “Hey! You like that band too? I thought I was the only one.” Bands like Zebrahead that rarely tour America despite being from southern California – it took me over ten years to find another person that had heard of them on their own and not from me or a friend of mine. 

Nearly a year after I uploaded my first album on to the hard drive, I was back on vacation and finally had the appropriate time to dive fully into the logging process. It took my whole vacation and then some, but I’m finally at the tail end of the project and it hasn’t been just a work in progress; I’ve been time traveling through music and memories. Buying albums in music stores was so much more fulfilling than simply typing it on to your search engine and clicking a button to buy and download it. The thrill of the hunt was far more excitable sometimes than the actual purchasing of the album, and occasionally even more intense than the actual music on the album. All radio is pretty much dead to me now, both traditional and internet – it’s all the same junk on a preset loop – the same songs played in the same order time after time. I miss the hunt. I miss the catalogues. But I am loving my music again,  and it’s available to me any time I want. I am loving it all over again.