Listening to Music

When I were a lad, listening to music was a long and involved affair. There was next to no music worth mentioning on the radio so to hear any decent music involved a bus trip to town, then to a record shop (early Virgin) where you would search through racks of albums for something that you had heard or been recommended. If lucky and things were not too busy you might be able to get the shop to play you a track or two. Then it was back on the bus and home. Once there the LP was lovingly removed from its sleeve and checked to be scratch free. The put on the turntable, wiped clean of dust, the player switched on and the stylus, oh so carefully, placed in the lead in groove.

The you could listen, but not for too long, around 20-25 minutes at most before having to get up to turn the record over. Listening to a single track was possible but only with a degree of danger as many a record had been ruined by an inadvertent slip of the hand whilst trying to skip the pop single intro.

As a result when you played music you spent a lot of time listening to it. This was often made all the more enjoyable by perusing the album cover, whose 12" square size allowed ample opportunity for artistic license (and made the lyrics easy to read). (Top marks on this front went to Jethro Tull's Thick as A Brick, where the album "cover" was in fact a full on spoof local newspaper..)

OK once you found a record you liked you could put it on repeat play and have it on in the background as less important tasks like homework were performed, but even then the 20 minute repeat meant the music was thoroughly absorbed.

As a result the music of the late 60s/70s has become part of me. I can still recite, word for word, the lyrics of even the most bizarre prog rock opera, "Really don't mind if you sit this one out, my words but a whisper your deafness a shout...I may make you feel but I cant make you think, your sperms in the gutter, your love's in the sink.." to quote the opening of the aforementioned TAAB.

How time's have changed. Now its dead easy to get music and listen to it everywhere. Which is good in some ways but means I just dont listen to it any more. So, far from knowing the lyrics to songs, I often don't even know the titles of the songs....


So.. I have made a sort of late 2009 near year resolution to start listening to music again. So sitting down and paying it attention, CD cover in hand (along with magnifying glass to read the lyrics). And I must say so far this has proved a very rewarding experience.


But I thought this was meant to be about cycling...well it is, sort of. One key time I listen to music is when on the bike. I've found that listening to a CD makes me appreciate it more when I have it playing while training. So I pay it more attention, which in turn has a benefit as it makes the training easier. Which will be the subject of my next post...