Tuesday February 10, 2009 I think I may have baffled my neighbors Sunday.  They are used to it being pretty quiet all the time over here.  Everyone stays to themselves doing their own thing, usually on the computer with headphones on.  Sometimes on weekends I’ll turn Prairie Home Companion on as I am outside in the yard.  When I listen to music, it’s typically very soft, low, meditative type sounds.  But yesterday I began surfing thru Rhapsody.com and re-discovering music I’d not heard in a long time.   So my neighbors had a little taste of industrial metal and probably wondered where it was coming from.

I have a wide range of taste in music.  I missed a lot of it during the 70’s when I lived in monastic communities where tv and radio was not played.  I got to hear pop music at work if the radio was on in the coffee room and that was about it.  When I wasn’t living in community, I’d go out at night with friends to clubs and hear the dance music.   I liked it all.  Pop country was never a favorite, but I even like the old Johnny Cash and Hank Williams (Sr.) and classics of that era.  It was mostly folk and rock for me.

In the late 80’s I became involved with the local college radio station WFIT 89.5FM in Melbourne, Florida.  I’d discovered the station when I moved up from Miami in 1983 and I particularly enjoyed their alternative music.  As volunteer staff, I got to work a lot of the shows and was surprised to find I really enjoyed some of the industrial metal music.  I liked the trance dance quality of it.  I remember Ministry played at I think it was Palm Bay Rec Center at Turkey Creek.  They were loud even with my good earplugs in.  The good news is that likely most of the residents at the nursing home across the street from the Rec Center were too deaf to be disturbed by the concert.

One of my all time favorite songs by Ministry is Every Day is Halloween, so I found that on Rhapsody.com and began listening to it and a few more songs.  At one point I went outside to turn the sprinkler off and was surprised at how loud the music was outside!  I went in quickly and turned it down.  Sheesh, who knows what was going to play next for the entire neighborhood to hear coming out of my home.

It reminded me of an on air mistake made at a radio station one early morning about 20 years ago.  At least in my memory it was early morning.  Back then you’d play vinyl and there’d be the flip side with another track.  The band A Split Second had a popular cut called Colloseum Crash.  The flip side was Muscle Machine, a very earthy cut with explicit lyrics, not to be played on air.  I seem to recall the play copy was mislabelled but there was bold marker all over the flip saying to not play that side.  It was well labelled.

So one early weekend morning I hear the unmistakable sound of Muscle Machine coming out of the radio and I quickly called the station and let them know what they’d done.  As usual they had friends in the booth and weren’t listening to their own show.  They quickly put something else on.  They were lucky no one complained.  There were a few friends from staff that caught it.  There is a lot of music that I like the beat of, even if I don’t care for the lyrics.  Muscle Machine was one of them.  A lot of rap is like that for me too.

That’s one thing I used to do as a teenager that I don’t do now, just sitting and listening to music.

I need to do more of that.