Music Lessons

I believe I've mentioned my music collection in here a couple of times. I had almost a month's worth of non-stop music on my laptop.

That's right, I had almost a month's worth.

No, no, I didn't lose all my music.

Something even better happened.

I was over at Mom & Dad's a couple of weeks ago, and saw a row of shoe-boxes full of music CDs on a bookshelf in Dad's bedroom. Turns out Dad has the same problem with CDs that I have with books & tarot cards. I think he orders them from the Hamilton Books catalog. When I saw all those CDs I just knew I had to add them to my collection.

See, I don't want to turn into one of those crotchety old people that still listen to the same songs they listened to in high school. My laptop already had enough greatest hits collections from the 60s & 70s from my personal collection, plus all the more current rock & rap & techno & whatever my nephew loaded on our computer. I didn't know what kind of music was in those shoe-boxes, but I was willing to bet most of it was old, classic country, which I do actually enjoy. Modern country music is okay, too, but the only difference between most country music and rock music is the singers wear cowboy boots & cowboys hat and pretend they're from Atlanta, not Seattle.

I was wrong.

About the contents of the shoe-boxes, not the country posers.

True, there was a ton of country golden oldies. Hank Williams (Senior, not Junior), Patsy Cline, Gene Autry, etc., plus a bunch of collections full of people I've never heard of before, like Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys and Paul Warmack & His Gully Jumpers.

What had me scratching my head was all the opera and classical music. Composers like Bach, Hayden, Tchaikovsky, and singers like Pavarotti & Caruso. There was a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber & other newer Broadway hits, too. I never knew Dad liked all that fancy rich-people music, but I can picture him as a kid sitting around in front of one of those huge jukebox-sized radios, listening to whatever concerts the big city radio stations broadcast.

So, I ended up adding about 50 or 60 more CDs to my collection.

And that was before I asked Mom if she had any music CDs.

Turns out she did.

And apparently she likes bluegrass and gospel music. The gospel music wasn't a surprise, but I never would have pictured her as a big fan of bluegrass.

Just goes to show no matter how long you know somebody they can still surprise you.

Even if you've known them your whole life.