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May 24, 2008
Experiment: Day Twenty
I've always had amazingly fine taste in music (if I do say so myself). I would "play DJ" when I was a toddler, then I would create mix tapes for friends in high school that would become "requested" by other friends and friends of friends until I had a little side gig of creating mixes for dozens at a time. A total musical theatre rat, I never met a Sondheim song I didn't like to belt out. Cole Porter makes me swoon. And as a child, I had the ambition of growing up to be Barbra Streisand. (Dear God, I was born a gay boy.)
My first "job job" was as assistant to the president of an entertainment management firm in Hollywood. I got to work with Duran Duran, Meat Loaf, Richard Marx, Tony Toni Toné, Luther Vandross, John Mellencamp, Stephanie Mills, Bee Gees, and Joey Lawrence (WHOA!). I got to work with each of them to a different degree, and I learned so much so quickly about the business of the music industry and the genius mind of the artist who creates and performs music. Between youth and that first "job job," I worked in college radio.
Yup. WUOG, 90.5fm. Athens, Georgia's college radio in the late '80s (REM, Pylon, Love Tractor, B-52s) and then again in the mid-90s. I started out as a jock (working the midnight to 3am shift on Monday mornings), eventually scored a "lunchbox" shift, then became the host of "Blank Generation" on Friday nights. As an undergrad, I became the station's Promotions Director, and when I came back to UGA for grad school, I was named the Graduate Advisor to the station. That was awesome. Getting paid to do something I would do for free? Badass.
My first ever concert was ELO, back in 1980. My most recent concert was the Pixies with Grant Lee Phillips at the Greek a couple of years ago. Outside of about two or three music styles I simply cannot endure (Country, Reggae), I am a huge music lover and I find that just a few bars of anything can transport me to some other place, some other time, some other mindset... and that is some pretty powerful stuff right there.
How can just a few notes arranged in a specific order evoke such an emotional response? Music is amazingly powerful. And I'm so happy to have had it so completely woven into my life from so many different directions.
Day Twenty:
I am grateful for music.
(What is the Experiment? It is this.)
Posted by bonnie at May 24, 2008 3:16 PM