Music

I love the sound of harmony. It could be almost anything that has rhythm and it’s a plus if accompanied with great lyrics. 

My earliest memory of music is listening to soothing instrumental music (what I now know as an album by a French orchestra leader - The Best of Paul Mauriat ) Dad would play an LP every evening and my favourite lp was the aforementioned album. I probably didn’t know how to construct a sentence to save my life at the time. 

Weekends would be spent with my maternal grandparents and I would be glued in the evening to the Philips tube radio ( the interest would be to change stations and look at the “cats eye” tube when the radio was turned on) the radio or rather radiogram also had an Gerard lp changer ( for those that are clueless- it allowed you to load up a ton of lps and would play them one after another). 

The exposure to both Hindi film music and western music was at the same level. While in school my preference was western music - a combination of great pop artists from the 50s to the 80s and some level of what is now know as big band orchestra music. Very early on was disappointed by Hindi film music because I could make out that the big names lifted and copied tunes ...this is way before the advent of the internet ( Burman, Bhappi da and the lot lifted or to be politically correct were inspired by a shit load and there are a limited set of great original compositions by them; they lifted stuff from English albums and other languages too - their original compositions are phenomenal. The current lot are equally inspired and have taken to being inspired by music from Korea, China etc - it’s a shame that they don’t acknowledge the original composers). 

While in high school it was great; between two very close friends and me we had tons of western music - courtesy our families travelling abroad and an interest in listening to BBC on the shortwave “ this is the bbc...” . I started to listen to German and Swedish radio (music charts) too and till a couple of years ago had QSL cards that the broadcasters had sent back to me after I had sent them details of what I had listened to and the quality of the signal. VOA was a broadcaster that I was always unsuccessful in getting back a QSL card . I started collecting cassette tapes around the same time; using the saved up pocket money on tapes and books (my first tape was Staying Alive and the second by A la Carte; surprising choices given that Madonna, Sam Fox and the lot were ruling the waves) and at peak had a collection running into close to 600+ tapes. Alas what is left now is a pittance of about 100 tapes. Still listen to them on a technics deck which is coupled with a marantz amplifier.  

Tapes gave way to mp3s around 2000/2001 thanks to napster and I have over 2 TB of music again connected to the marantz. if I have to listen to each song once it would last a lifetime and more.  

I am back to listening to music on LPs.; have 3 turntables - the one connected to the marantz is a pioneer. There is an attraction to the physical interaction with the information- I can’t skip a song , the entire process of putting an lp on the record player is almost like zen like and I have to respect the medium unlike on Spotify which will allow me to skip ahead. 

My taste in music has expanded too and the only genre I cannot and will not listen to is Rap and it’s derivatives- the lyrics don’t make sense. (WAP by cardi b is a recent example) Love listening to Indian classical music on some nights esp if it has great tabla and sitar work . My go to music is rock and roll and I love stuff from the 60s and 70s. Metal helped me clear engineering math ;). Trance helps me focus when wanting to think about something. Western classical when I want to change my mood. In popular music I prefer UK and European artists and bands over US based ones. Going with my current preference to listening to analog music I go vinyl hunting every time I travel to Europe or to Mumbai and have managed collecting over 200 lps in the last 2 years.

Like the words of a song from the 80s by Samantha Fox - if music be the food of love play on . (This sentence was originally written by the bard and not by the Sun page 3 celebrity) 

C 

p.s - it’s a shame I never got good at playing an instrument- learnt the trumpet while in school from my 6th std class teacher Mr Shepherd, later learnt how to play the harmonica and the guitar too ( I can play the basic scale on all 3 instruments even today) and for a short while was teaching myself the drums but unfortunately I cannot keep time which is really the essence of good music.