Listening to music can be a ritual experience. It can also be like perfume in the air, just wafting around the general ambiance of a restaurant, an office, a grocery store, the waiting room.
If you're a listener, as I am, a critic and dissector, than your emotions and intellect are amused and provoked by music. Music is cut with surgical precision in my mind into places, experiences, hopes, memories, or just accentuating a pleasant day or a lowdown mood.
Music may come from the emotions and intellect of one or many people, made only to exorcise those demons or celebrate that moment. Yet the most memorable music reaches out to strangers across the continents and oceans, curving around languages and cultures to those minds and hearts the sounds speak to.
I listen to music to sooth or energize, different bands or styles depend on the mood or what else I'm doing while the music is on, which is usually my computer game. Regardless of band or genre, music fits. You can choose happy sounds or sad, to reflect the mood, as catharsis or to console.
Through my efforts to only include certain styles and bands, I at least want what you hear any time of the day to be cohesive, to energize or to hug, to provoke or to reflect, to make you think and to inspire you.
I get so much out of music and it truly found me around the age of 12 when I began to record onto cassette whole albums from KLOS 95.5 FM in Los Angeles on a show they called The Seventh Day. They'd play 7 albums each Sunday night, though double albums were considered two albums. We'd get the DJ's thoughts beforeand and after each side, including historical details. Jim Ladd, with his personality-filled and deep voice was my guide to some of the bands I still love and listen to today. One of my classes in junior high (7th-9th grade for you middle school goers) was Music Appreciation and the teacher, who was likely younger than 30, had album art stapled to the sides of the classroom and had us listen to the Beatles, The Police, and bands of the late 70's and the turn of the 80's. I had to write a music diary every week, where I'd listen to the local classical station for at least an hour. MTV was just starting and we got cable TV (what came before streaming services and Satellite. [Do you even know what Pong is? Never been to an arcade? How about Blockbuster?] I'm done explaining things). Sure, there were only a handful of music videos but thanks to Duran Duran and A Flock of Seagulls (OK, one more explanation: MTV had these things callled Myou-zick Vid-ee-ohz back in the 80's and 90's) and other photogenic acts like Def Leppard that helped reach that many more new fans.
As I grew and evolved, my musical taste expanded, I wrote for a music fanzine for a couple decades and more, reviewed many live concerts, interviewed musicians and critiqued records (you do know what a reh-cord is. Those are a thing again.) So I've got good taste, my taste, curiosity and a willingness to bring in sounds and artists I might not have accepted at a different time in my life. That all goes into the station.
The DJ's I trust to do what they do, with the places they've been and the experiences they've learned from. And I love their choices of bands they play on their shows. Their songs are a window into their personalities and passions. You can really tell who somebody is based on their music collection.
I thank you for reading this far and I do hope you enjoy listening to the station! Send me some feedback or a request at: bret@eardrumbuzz.net
Bret
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