Pandemic Life: Sometimes Music is What Gets Me Through the Days!

Music has been a constant backdrop to my life since I was a teenager. So saying that "Music gets me through my day" during the Pandemic is perhaps a little misleading, because it feels like music has always been getting me through my day.

I grew up in a house that was mostly silent; my parents didn't really listen to music. Sure, we had a turntable, radio and speakers (this was the 1960's and early 1970's, before many of you were born!) but they were rarely used. My dad had a large reel-to-reel tape recorder but it only played "background elevator music" when we had dinner guests.

Nobody in the house played an instrument, including myself.

My Musical Life...

... really began after my parents divorced in 1973 and I moved with with my mother from Denmark to the south of Spain. Bring far removed from everything familiar — including the language — my primary connection to the external world was often my parents' handed-down ancient but very sturdy portable radio which took up residence in my room.

In the evenings, as I would get down to doing my homework, I would fiddle with the dial till I could pick up the English speaking version of RTL208 — Radio Luxembourg which came on at 7:00pm and went till 3:00am. It was actually very cutting edge at the time and had a huge coverage area from Spain to Sweden; from Ireland to parts of the USSR where it wasn't blocked.

Sadly, it went away at the end of 1992.

Radio Luxembourg helped me get through my "angsty teenage years," and I have many fond memories of listening to crackling AM radio in the wee hours, after my parents had gone to sleep.

Gone Across the World...

In January 1981 — at age 20 — I packed my bags and left for University in the USA. It was both comforting and scary to put 6000 miles between myself and everything I knew... Texas was a long way from home.

I'd had a couple of bad years; my father died when I was 18 and a few weeks, making me just enough "of age" to deal with a bunch of legal estate hassles... which took the better part of two years.

I brought a lot of my "Euro-trash" music with me, which was quite a change for my new local friends!

In fact, much of the time they had no idea what they were listening to, being used to country music and what I'd call "Southern Fried Rock'n'roll."

Music helped me find my way through this strange new world I had chosen to come to... late study nights and depressive episodes of pondering my existence.

As I aged, I wandered further and further away from the mainstream of music... finding little solace in "top 40 pop" and such sounds.

Gradually, I became more and more interested in techno, trance and electronica... and no, it's not all "mechanical dance music!"

Most of what I listen to today — what gets me through the days — come from fairly narrow chillstep/lofi and melodic house genres.

Thanks to the wonders of the web, an extremely talented group of musicians and producers now have a voice and an outlet... and for that, I am grateful.

As I sit here, writing into the night, music gets me through...

Thanks for reading!

How about YOU? Is music important in your life? Do you always have some kind of music going? Or do you prefer silence? Give me a shout back... Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20210311 23:22 PST
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