Places That DON'T Play Christmas Music

"Put a cork in it, Zane!"

-- "Derek Zoolander", Zoolander

Santa teapot with a cork in it 12-19-14

The bigger-than-life-sized freaky Santa towering over the Buddha should have been my first clue.

Sam and I went to have lunch and do some shopping yesterday at an "upscale" shopping center.

We stopped for sushi at our favorite Asian restaurant. 

My unagi roll was delicious. But the constant drone of Christmas music being piped through the restaurant's sound system kind of sucked the zen right out of the dining experience.

The two of us had a seriously intense bitch session about why we detest the onslaught of Christmas music that saturates pretty much every environment this time of year.

It's exhausting, and frustrating, and annoying, and maddening, and everywhere. There's no escape.

Except, apparently, Abercrombie & Fitch.

Usually I can't wait to get out of A&F. I hate that store. The high volume, high intensity dance party music and overpowering cologne stench give me intense anxiety, and a contact buzz. But yesterday, instead of making me claustrophobic and anxious, the Christmas music-free zone felt felt like an oasis. An escape.

Albeit brief. Because when we stepped back out onto the street, there it was again, Christmas music permeating the atmosphere like tear gas.

If I hear Gloria Peevey singing "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" one more time, Imma cut a bitch.

Here's the thing.

I know it's Christmas. I get it. Enough already.

I do not need a Christmas music drubbing everywhere I go to remind me.

You know what would be refreshing, and a real gift? Don't play Christmas music in your store, or restaurant, or business. How about giving your customers a little break for the holidays?

My massage therapist, for example, does NOT play ANY Christmas music in her establishment.

She understands that her clients come there to relax, to escape, and to step out of the world for an hour. Allowing Christmas music to intrude rudely on the sanctuary-like environment would be counterproductive, even damaging.

If you go someplace that isn't playing Christmas music, and you like it like that, be sure to acknowledge it and thank the management for having the balls to break ranks and follow their own path.

Music Education

"Some people think music education is a privilege,

but I think it is essential to being human."

-- Jewel

Violin 12-16-14

"Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, 

and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement."

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

"Music is a way for young people to connect with themselves

as well as a bridge for connecting with others.

Through music, we can introduce children to the

richness and diversity of the human family

and to the myriad rhythms of life."

-- Daniel A. Carp, CEO, Eastman Kodak

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Last night we attended a high school choir and orchestra concert.

It did my heart a great good to see and hear so many young men and women making beautiful music together with their voices and their instruments.

I could totally get on a soapbox about how I feel about the importance of music (and all the arts) in the education of our youth. But I won't. If you want to read about the myriad benefits of music education (and I encourage you to do so), click here.

I simply want to applaud the students and their teachers for making music a priority in their school, and in their education and in their lives.

And I want to encourage anyone who'll listen to support the arts in our schools whenever the opportunity comes up.

Vote yes for the arts and for legislators who support arts education.

Show up at concerts, even if you don't have a kid in the program.

Buy something from the fundraiser or make a donation.

Sign your kid up for lessons.

Buy your nephew a guitar or a harmonica or a ukulele for Christmas.

However you can, please encourage budding musicians to keep it up, keep practicing, keep trying, keep playing, keep singing.

Because music has the capacity and power to make us all better people.

And better people make a better world.

And I, for one, think a better world would be a good thing.

Escaping Into Music

"One good thing about music, 

when it hits you, you feel no pain."

-- Bob Marley

"Music is supposed to be an escape.

It's supposed to be somewhere you go,

where you can be yourself, 

or be whatever you want to be."

-- Joel Madden

"Music should be your escape."

-- Missy Elliot

When I'm struggling through something -- whether it's an emotional something, or a physical something, or just a general "life" something -- often the only way I can get away from that something, get it off my mind and take a break from it, is to drown it out with music.

I shove my ear buds into my auditory canals as far as they'll go, turn the iPod volume up way past the recommended "safe" limit (hearing damage be damned), climb on my bike and go.

I did it yesterday.

For 3 hours I pedaled and listened to everybody from Eminem to Amy Winehouse, from Peggy Lee to Quiet Riot, from Florence + The Machine to Deee-Lite as they helped me temporarily escape from my issues. 

It's like a timeout for the little bastards.

If you happen to pass me out there on my bike, you might see me singing along. 

Or not. 

It depends.

Either way, when I got back home, I felt better.

My issues were still there, but they didn't seem as overwhelming.

The timeout gave me some space, some breathing room.

There's a reason psychologists use music as therapy. According to the American Music Therapy Association, music can help promote wellness by giving people a way to manage stress, alleviate pain, express feelings, remember things, communicate, and heal physically. And that's just the short list.

All I know is, music is a good place to hide when I need to escape from the barrage of thoughts and feelings rattling around inside my head, my heart and my body.

And you don't have to be struggling with something to go there. 

Music doesn't discriminate. Music will take you in no matter what, whether you're troubled, or whether everything is perfectly fine and rosy.

Music.

It's an equal opportunity good thing.

Listening To My Parents' Records

"... we have an emotional connection to music from when our parents were young --

songs that were popular before we were even born ..."

-- Shaunacy Ferro, 

"Why You Love Your Parents' Music," Popular Science

Record needle, 4-4-14

"Young adults have strong positive memories of the music

 their parents loved when they were the same age, a study finds.

That flies in the face of the cultural stereotype that  

children reject their parents' taste in music."

-- Nancy Shute,

 "Turns Out Your Kids Really Did 

Love That Music You Played," NPR.org

In a box on a shelf in my basement is my parents' old record collection. It's an eclectic mix of R&B and Motown, Broadway, folk, pop, jazz and crooners.

The Rat Pack is well-represented by Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin. There are two Sound of Music soundtracks -- one from the movie starring Julie Andrews, one from the 1959 Broadway show with Mary Martin as Maria. They had lots of Ray Charles, five or six albums. They liked Peter, Paul & Mary. The Lettermen. The Beach Boys. Duke Ellington. Louis Armstrong. Nat King Cole. Benny Goodman. They bought the Beatles' first two albums. There is Harry Belafonte, Carly and Lucy Simon, The Supremes' 1964 "Where Did Our Love Go" LP, when Diana Ross was still practically a baby. They owned three different West Side Story soundtrack albums -- two from the  movie, along with the original Broadway cast album from 1957 when the show was billed as a "new musical," and my parents were both 17, in high school, young and in love.

Since CDs, iTunes and Pandora have changed the way we listen to music, records and record players have become forgotten relics. We replaced our turntable with a CD player 25 years ago.

Of course, I could easily find all of these songs online and download them to my iPod. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to hear the music the way my parents heard the music -- on the hi fi, reading the backs of the album jackets that they held in their hands, while the platters spun on their turntable.

So my handy husband unearthed our dusty old turntable from another basement shelf and hooked it up to the stereo for me. Yay, handy husband!

There is something deeply satisfying about the sound a record needle makes when it first touches down and settles into a groove. I love the scratchy static, the pops and snaps that you just can't get from an mp3 file.

I've been listening to  my parents' records for a couple of days. Nobody seems to mind. I think they might actually like it. I caught Leo singing The Supremes' "Long Gone Lover" in the car on the way to the gym yesterday.

Music is an intensely intimate thing. What we choose to put into our ears is as personal as what we choose to put into our mouths. I believe that you can learn a lot about someone by listening to the music that they listen to. Borrow someone else's iPod for a day and see what you find out about them. 

Listening to the same songs as my parents is one thing. Listening to those songs from the very same pieces of flat, black, circular melted wax that they held in their hands and listened to with their ears almost 60 years ago -- well, that's altogether different. I keep imagining my mom at 17, belly down on her bed with her feet kicked up, thinking dreamy thoughts about my dad as she listened to Tony and Maria sing "A Boy Like That." 

These records are the soundtrack from a time in my parents' lives that I can never know, that I was never a part of, and that belonged to them and them alone. But somehow, listening to their music gives me a tiny fraction of a peek at who they were then. It makes me feel strangely close to them in a uniquely powerful way.  And I'm grateful for it.

I have no idea how I ended up with their records in my basement, but it's a good thing I did.

It's also a good thing my mother didn't give her box of albums to my brother in law to convert to CDs like I did with a box of my old records, which he "forgot about" and then "accidentally" threw away during a basement clean out. 

Sorry kids. If you ever want an intimate musical peek into my younger self, thanks to your Uncle Tom it is probably decaying in a steaming landfill somewhere near Detroit.