Music Soothes the Savage Beast

While working for Eagle News at both the Cazenovia and Canastota offices, I have received innumerable complaints about people who insist upon driving around with their car stereos emitting skull-crushing decibels for the listening public to enjoy with them.

The sarcastic individual that I am, I always thank them for sharing.

As luck would have it, I may be one of them.

I love music, and, regrettably, must admit that I love it loud. Really loud. Sometimes earsplittingly so. The nuances of many pieces are simply lost if played at a normal speaking volume. In fact, whole instruments can be undetectable when some songs are played too quietly.

I am a huge fan of heavy metal and hard rock. (A situation which evolved from a reverse-child-psychology experiment gone awry.) I also find much of the alternative rock being churned out today to be incredibly creative. As a former violist, I very much appreciate classical.

Bands such as the Moody Blues and, more recently, Metallica, have incorporated full orchestras into their performances and recordings, and Queen and ELO have utilized operatic pieces into their works. It’s the best of both worlds. (Hey - that would be a good title for a Van Halen tune.)

No one can deny the feeling conveyed through Patsy Cline’s “She Got You” or Karen Carpenter’s vocals on “Superstar.” Likewise, the final movements of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” or Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” are absolutely breathtaking.

While I don’t approve of other headbangers’ methods, part of me can almost sympathize with them. Almost.

Volume is the ingredient of music that transforms music from white noise into a visceral, tangible force which people make a part of themselves. But there’s a time and a place for everything.

I play my music as loudly as I like when I am alone in the car. I turn down the volume when I’m about a mile from residential areas. I keep my volume lower and my windows up so other motorists’ teeth don’t vibrating when we’re stopped at a light. Highway, miles, though, are no holds barred. I limit louder music at home to no more than 20 or 30 minutes and no later than dinner time. In fact, I limit really loud music to a few minutes here and there, because I’d like to hear it years down the road, too.

Some of my children’s friends are intrigued by my musical tastes.

“Did you go to that Limp Bizkit concert?” they’ll ask.

“No,” I reply. "Have you seen the people who go to those things? They’re freaks.”

They shake their heads in pity for the experience they know I’m missing. I shake my head knowing some live music - and some groups of people - just weren’t meant to be.

So if your car vibrates as we pass one another on the highway, I apologize. But I promise not to disrupt your sleep. There’s just as good a chance, though, that it is Mahler or Beethoven as Metallica or Aerosmith.

As for the other ones with “the cars that go boom,” I would tell them to turn it down, but they probably wouldn’t hear me. On the bright side, it’ll be easier to sneak up behind them and scare them to death in a couple of years. They’ll never hear you coming.

Reprinted courtesy Eagle Newspapers, Syracuse, New York.