A Tribute to National Music Day

As most of you Music Heads will already know, today is National Music Day- hurrah! I hope you all are somewhere that you can stick on your favourite tunes and experience multiple eargasms all day!

In celebration of today, I thought it might be nice to put up a little post explaining what music is to me. Then I realised that I had already done that, way back when I first created my blog. I'm going to repost my ramblings today for two reasons: 1. There is no need to be repeating myself when I think I effectively explained how much I love music in this post; 2. I think it's interesting to read one of my very first posts back when I was a shy and inexperienced blogger (ah, who am I kidding- I still am!).

Anyway, here be it. Enjoy your Music Day folks! 

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain...

First published November 2009

I always thought that Bob Marley was a very wise dude. One good thing about music is that it can, for a while at least, make you feel better. I'm not saying that it can fix all of life's problems or anything, but it can definitely help. There is always going to be a song out there that can relate to what you are feeling at any given time. Granted most of these are about breaking up or unrequited love, but there are some exceptional artists out there that can take certain human emotions and represent them perfectly. They can take a feeling that seems impossible to express and capture in a few lines exactly what it is you would say to someone if you were to spill the thoughts out of your upset brain. Sarah McLachlan is one artist who can do this very well. Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Tom Waits (to name but a few) all deserve a mention here. There are heaps more. But whatever kind of music you're into, there are always those songs that make you sit up and shout, "Damn straight!", at your CD player/iPod/laptop.

I have been obsessed with music from a very early age. For this I blame (thank) my mother. When I was born, my elder sister was 18 months old. She didn't like me. No actually, that's an understatement- she hated me. So much so that she used to throw coal into my moses basket, straight at my little head. I still have a forehead dent to prove it. When my mother spent time with me, as need be with newborn babies, my sister would run into the kitchen and cause havoc- by the age of two she had learned to turn on all the knobs on the cooker. My mother's solution to this 'problem' was to put me in my own room between feeds, completely out of harm's way and out of reach of the female Damien. As I was a very placid baby and couldn't get into much trouble due to my little fat, inactive lump of a body, I was happy out just lying in my cot. But, for entertainment purposes and so I would not feel completely alone, my mother put a cassette player/radio yokey next to my cot and let it play most of the day. Now before you judge, I wasn't mistreated- this isn't a Bertha Mason-type scenario and I didn't grown up to be emotionally scarred or crazy (well...not very). My Dad says I loved it. From that very small age, music was one of the only things that could calm me.

This resulted in me having very early obsessions with particular artists and albums. By age three I knew every single word of The Bangles' Different Light. I was also obsessed with Michael Jackson, Madonna and anything my Dad had lying around the house, which included The Beatles, The Eagles and Neil Diamond. Going around in the car with either of my parents was one of my favourite things to do because it meant listening to the radio or whatever tape was in the player. I would hum the intro of the next song from Tina Turner and Diana Ross albums before it even started. I wrecked people's heads with my constant singing, especially because at such a young age my pronounciation wasn't perfect.

For Christmas, when I was five, I got a brown-coloured Fisher-Price cassette player and I thought it was the most awesome thing I had ever gotten in my life. I carried it everywhere by its convenient easy-grip handle. I brought it to bed every night and hugged it close like a teddy. My Dad used to come into our room to tuck us in and he'd take it off me and put it on my bedside table and tell me not to touch it until the morning. But once he left I'd turn down the volume, switch it back on and put it under my pillow. I used to drive my sister insane! Thankfully she had resorted to less violent means of communication by this stage. I remember when I was eight and became obsessed with Chesney Hawkes; I wrote his name down the side of my cassette player and strutted around singing The One and Only at the top of my voice. Damn, I was cool. I brought that Fisher-Price cassette player everywhere with me for years. When I was seven I ran away from home (to the very back of my garden) and only took that cassette player and our pet Rottweiler, Kieko. My Dad never got rid of it- it's still sitting in one of his sheds. The play button is missing and it doesn't work anymore, but you can still see the faint outline of Chesney's name on it. He would be so pleased if he knew...

When I made my communion I was adamant I had to make enough money to get a guitar. It was the only thing I wanted. On the day of my communtion, after a very lovely lunch in some restaurant in Shannon Airport which was very popular back then all them years ago, I insisted on going shopping for my first acoustic guitar. I went to lessons, lost and gained interest every few years and tried many other music ventures, but to sum up, I was hooked. On everything music.

So I guess what I'm trying to get across here is that it's always been about the music. It's always on my mind. I tend to relate music to my life a lot- some music (like The Bangles and other 80s Pop) reminds me of when I was young and braving the world as an unloved sibling. Other songs and albums remind me of friends and boys that I liked/loved at particular times in my life. There's the music that makes me happy and giddy, music that relaxes me when I am a ball of stress, and music that makes me sad because it draws on memories of people that aren't here anymore. Any song that reminds me of my mother makes me grateful for the memory, but also very sad that she is not here anymore to share it with. One of my favourite types of music is music that makes me feel that things will be ok because someone else once felt the way I do, enough to write a song about it. Music is very powerful that way. And when it hits you, you feel it. It fixes things. Well, for a while anyway.

Bob Marley started this post; it's only fitting that he finish it.