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RSSThe Nature of Musical Addiction?
#1GF! said to me, “I’m always amazed by people like you. I just don’t understand how people get so into music. It must be genetic.”
As far as I know, I don’t think my parents were music junkies. Actually, I think that musical addiction is like a scar left over from a some previous social affliction. Think back to High School. The popular kids didn’t wander around with headphones on. They had plenty of people to talk to. It was the misfits that replaced communicating with tuning everything out with a set of headphones.
And it’s a vicious cycle. The more you wear headphones, the less you talk. The less you talk, the worse the social skills become. The worse the social skills become, the more you wear headphones…
And then headphones become less of an escape method than an escape of their own. And at that point, the brain is re-wired, and the scar is formed. And the injury might be healed, but you can never get rid of the scar tissue.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s genetic.
How can you explain your musical addiction?
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November 15th, 2005 at 8:47 am
I don’t understand how people can NOT be obsessive about music.
I explain mine in four ways:
#1 - My father was obsessed with music. I have an encyclopediatic knowledge of 60’s British rock. There was music on every day.
#2 - As your entry pointed out: shy kid with slight music obsession + headphones = me listening to music on the way to school, at school, and on the way home from school.
#3 - Overly dramatic personalities are suckers for indie rock/faux poetry lyrics.
#4 - Now I spend a lot of time in my car for my job. It would be terribly boring without a 6CD changer.
November 15th, 2005 at 10:06 am
All I can say is… I not-so-recently bumped into an old friend of mine, a childhood friend. Catching up with this friend with whom I had spent many an hour listening to the latest Rush release (a new album seemed to be released every October), I came to realize that his life now has no time, nothing to do with music. The very notion of NOT having a stereo, a turntable, or CD player at arm’s length at every available moment just really bothered me.
We have since managed to lose touch with each other once again. Can’t stop thinking about how different my life might be if I didn’t obsess over music. This is not to say that I think we should all be listening to Rush. Believe me, I’ve moved on. Just seems like life without music is kucka-poo-poo. There. That’s my two cents.
November 15th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
the only things i genetically inherited from my folks is bad bone joints. Music sucks. I sit around all day listening to PAINKILLER thinking of ways to dispose the bodies…… try it! I bet you don’t last 2 minutes through a PAINKILLER song. It’s fun like lite-brite.
November 15th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
For me, I think it all started at the age of 5 in Alabama with KISS’ Alive and Double Platinum on LP. One of my earliest memories is of me as The Demon and my older brother was Starchild for Halloween. Then Van Halen, Def Leppard and Iron Maiden were discovered when we moved north. My first cassette tape was The Who’s Face Dances. My brother and I would take our Legos and build our favorite bands’ stage setups with this really cool suitecase stereo our Dad had as the “Giant Marshall Stacks” behind the drum riser. MTV used to play music television all day and all night. The HeadBanger’s Ball and Friday night concert videos put an official end to bedtime. In the 80s when the Hair Bands ruled the Earth, I remember one Halloween with the buds in the neighborhood all decked out as Grim Reapers and Whitesnake’s Bad Boys Running Wild blasting out the boombox. Good times. I found Seattle in high school with Alice In Chains and Soundgarden hot on the heals of The Screaming Trees, and the phoenix of Pearl Jam from the ashes of Mother Love Bone. My girlfriend and I would fool around in her car to whatever was on the radio. We didn’t care what was on, as long as it wasn’t our clothes. To this day, when I drive to the Cape, I have to listen to WMVY with a smile. The Digital Age arrived on Fridays at Spinnakers in Hyannis with most of my paycheck converted to CDs. College lead to jazz, more bad metal than I care to recall, and the jam-band revival after the passing of Jerry. I used to like Phish. A real career has permitted me to induldge in my inner audiophile and spend vast sums of time and money on speakers, amps, and more Miles Davis and John Coltrane than I care to admit. Its not like *I* have a heroin problem. I’m benefiting from musicians who did. Now I have an iPod and it makes the train ride to and from the career go by in wonderful, random, bliss.
Thanks for the memories man!
-d—
November 16th, 2005 at 9:29 am
It’s your mother. You were constantly exposed to music throughout your life you big dummy. From songs that were sung to Sesame Street tunes. Then there was some classical, some soul music, some church music, pop rock, etc. Your grandparents loved music and did your most wonderful friend Dick! Remeber listening not that long ago to jazz, big band etc that you would select for him. If it isn’t genetic it is certainly exposure. I’ll go for genetic since that would probably be one of the only GOOD things that you inherited.
November 16th, 2005 at 9:48 am
I blame my parents—not only did they listen to music (mostly 50’s pop and rockabilly), but they embarrassed the hell out of me by dancing at weddings–I mean boogie-woogie, swing stuff. This was trauma to a 12 year old. If I didn’t emerse myself in the tunes, I’d have to actually acknowledge that those were relatives out on the dance floor! Second in line is my oldest sister, who took me to a KISS concert at the tender age of 10…who could not like music after seeing Gene Simmons tongue, freak make-up, and blood being spit across stage!