Monday, June 28, 2010

Cracklin'

For some reason, music has stopped being very important to me—at least in the way it has been for most of my life. I almost never listen to my CDs and records these days, and when I do they're background music; I used to dance around, and not so very long ago. Now I look at the covers and think, eh, I've heard that so many times. I rarely buy music on iTunes. I have a nice iPod Nano D. gave me for my birthday last year (supplanting the minuscule Shuffle I bought myself a few years ago), and my project to transfer my favorite records to it never got very far; it always seems so time-consuming, daunting, and, frankly, boring to complete it.

The last new CD I bought was this, sometime last year, I think. It's a nice-enough record.

I still listen to the radio in the car, but I find I don't sing along much anymore. The only decent music station in Washington is WAMU's Bluegrass Country, which is way down the dial from the main 88.5 station and comes in spottily but at least is original and energetic and varied (it's more than just bluegrass).

I can still get excited by a live performance—such as Judy Collins at the Birchmere in January, or, memorably, Joan Baez in Philadelphia the year before last, or just about any YouTube clip of Peter, Paul, and Mary in their heyday.


I feel lucky to have seen Mary Travers perform solo in the late '70s, a reunited PP&M a few years later, and Peter and Paul without Mary—sadly showing the lack—a month before she died; her death was a great, underestimated loss.

I adore this other, more unexpected trio featuring Mary, doing one of the great songs of our time. I have it bookmarked and sometimes watch it over and over:



It's nice not only that D. loves '60s folk music but that he's reawakened my love of it.

So clearly, I can get excited about music and musicians. But it's not what excited me two or three years ago. What seems to get to me now, whether I remember it from the time or not, is music dating from my childhood. What's that about?

Well, this I would have found very sexy (in an inchoate way), were I to have seen this episode of Johnny Cash's show, which I well might have at age eight or so:


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