Song sung true

Sometimes I revert to type. Which means that I multitask with a vengeance, doing everything from listening to music to chatting with a close buddy about our assorted angsts while I am working and, with all honesty and sincerity, doing it all happily and efficiently! In fact, as I write this, I am plugged into Queen, Radio Ga-Ga for the moment, enjoying every beat of the mix, even as I wonder about the Parsi boy who changed his name to Freddie Mercury and made good, beyond the wildest dreams of anyone else I can think of! In between changing windows when I take a break from the convolutions of my favourite sentences, I may hammer out a review of an art show, pontificate on necklines and hem-lengths or even read through the New York Times’s editorial POV on the crisis focussing on the North Korean nuclear explosion! In between all this work and not work, the song changes with mood and task to be done. I could be tuned into the Pet Shop Boys or L Subramanium or even a staunch companion through many assignments, Manhattan Transfer’s Ray’s Rockhouse.

Perhaps the first real piece of rock I listened to was Pink Floyd’s Pigs on the wing. It was part of a collection belonging to a much older brother of a close friend, who also had me meet The Who, Cream and classic Clapton, and assorted other musicalities like the Beatles, Abba and, in strange counterpoint, Vivaldi. Added to that was classical Indian music, both Carnatic and Hindustani, jazz and be-bop courtesy my parents, and so many other genres that friends all over the world introduced me to.

Perhaps my favourite songsters are people I met through my friend Karen, the girl who was primary in showing me what sci-fi-fantasy is all about. She played all sorts of interesting music in her car, where we spent a lot of time running between Boulder, Denver and various airports. She started me off gently, with the Transfer’s more happy pieces, from Twilight Zone to Java Jive, and then slid me gradually towards KD Lang, Alan Parsons Project, Supertramp (Logical song became a sort of anthem for me, who is quite devoid of logic of the comprehensible kind), Dave Brubeck and stuff I can’t even remember hearing once, leave lone adding to my collection, but I did, because I still have it. These play on my various devices every now and then, some at volume high enough to shatter my computer screen even through my headphones and others so muted that I can hear my neighbours breathe.

In all this wandering through various scales, one set of songs has always been special to me, a symbol, almost of growing up in my house, with my rather eccentric family. Tom Lehrer, mathematician-musician who spent many years at Harvard not getting a PhD, did fabulous satires like Fight fiercely Harvard, Poisoning pigeons in the park, Lobachevsky and the rather madder Be prepared, all of which was fodder for my very young mind, which grabbed it and ran, giggling wildly the whole time. I have very old LPs that my parents bought in the US another lifetime ago, which I wish could be found easily on CD, listened to again and again and chortled happily over, as I did for so long when we still had a record player that worked!

Some day I will find more of that ilk. Until then, aapro Freddie will do it for me, thank you!