Got to have music.

I love music. I've been exposed to music all of my life. My father played piano and we were all required to take lessons. Except my youngest brother, Phil. I didn't keep up with the piano as I should have but, in 7th grade, began saxophone. I did pretty well and played until I joined the Navy. I would have kept it up but youngest brother and his friends destroyed my saxophone. I don't know why. I never got a valid reason.

My sister kept up with the piano for many years.  She and I used to sing together quite often. I used to know a lot of Christmas music with lyrics in Latin. Mimi and I used to sing those in August. Drove Mom crazy. Ahhh, fun times.

There was a lot of classical music in our house. My father was particularly fond of the operas of Richard Wagner. I still get chills of fear when I hear any Wagner. Mom liked Mozart and the other classical composers. We had to listen to it all during dinner. There was eventually a quiz. We had to know who wrote what piece of music. In some cases, we had to know what greater work it came from. You didn't want to fail that quiz.

It was torturous at the time, but I can still amaze my wife when I can name the composer of a particular piece of music in a movie. 

I do have some Mozart in my iTunes library. 

Once we were able to escape to our rooms as kids, we were permitted to listen to "our" music.The Beatles, Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel were staples for me. My older brother leaned more towards the "hard rock"genre of music.It's hard to believe that "The Who" was "hard rock" back then.

As the 1970s dawned, our tastes moved on with the top 40, to the Carpenters and Elton John, etc. Mickey still liked his harder stuff. I remember that he was very upset when Jimmy Hendrix died. I couldn't stand his music, at the time.

Now, I feel old. I have no idea what the top 40 is. Frankly, I have no interest in the top 40 of today. I know I am going to sound like my parents but, most of todays popular music sounds like noise to me. The stuff that my son listens to in his truck sounds like electronic noise to me. I can't listen to it. Trust me, I've tried. Strangely enough, in addition to the electronic noise, my son also enjoys Italian Tenors. 

We were watching TV and a character began singing a love song in Italian. My son really loved it. What's not to love? It was beautiful.

That's what I like. Beautiful music. Give me a nice melody any day. I like humming a tune as I go through my day. From what I hear, you can't do that with much of the modern music of today. I'm glad I have my iTunes. I can listen to what I want.

I miss "American Bandstand". The kids used to rate the song by simple criteria. It had a good beat and you could dance to it. Don't even get me started about Dancing!