Destroy All Onions!

I’ve had some thoughts on music over the last few weeks.

• I was at the cinema early for Iron Man, and they had left a teenager in charge of the music before the trailers started. Bad move. Dance music is not my thing, but I think my friend said it best when he (loudly) commented
  “If you were listening to this music, how the f*** would you know if your CD player was broken”.
  It was a fair comment. We concluded that what we were listening to was unworthy of the label “music”, and decided that it needed a different description. I humbly present for your consideration the term “structured noise”. Try it out a few times, and see how it works for you. Especially if you find yourself listening to Radio 1.
• At the other end of the scale, I spent part of a Sunday afternoon listening to the most elite Salvation Army band in the UK, at a bandstand in the village of Scarva, on a really nice sunny afternoon. There was a massive crowd, and I enjoyed the band. I know I’m old fashioned, but I think there’s something special about music that comes from people breathing, or banging, or whatever, without all the technology and amplification.
• My good headphones are banjaxed. Major trauma! I spent most of my time in the gym tonight either caressing or tickling the headphone cable to get it back into the precise spot where I could get sound in both ears. It was of course a complete waste of time, since the whole point of going to the gym is to move around, so the sound cut out again constantly.
• This was just typical. I somehow never get to fully immerse myself in Pink Floyd’s Us And Them as much as it deserves. It’s a truly great song, with a wonderful haunting tune, fabulous saxophone, and words that are pretty powerful, especially for someone like myself, who grew up in a very “them and us” culture in Northern Ireland. But it’s a very long song, so it nearly always get interrupted in some way. Frustration!!