Being alone with your music


I’ve always enjoyed being alone. Being alone with my favorite tunes playing adds a new layer of ‘Being here NOW’.

I remember well the first time I heard ‘In my room’ by the Beach Boys. That wonderful angst of being young and not knowing my future overwhelmed me. Those emotions we’re trained to suppress burst forward, changing me forever.

From that moment forward music became a personal thing. A private wonderful world that I had control over. It was 1966, I was 13 years old.

When we’re young, very little is under our control. Now music could set us free. It was up there with the first time, 3 years later, when I drove my car alone the first time.  In preparation for the big moment, I installed my first car cassette player (by Norelco). Now I was truly free to be me.

Your stories would be much appreciated.

 

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Born in '55 to an American farm boy and a young sophisticated German girl. Mom loved music, classical, swing, and big band. She had a thing for Herb Alpert... I can't remember when it showed up, probably a Christmas gift, but one of the "kiddie" record players with a steel needle lived in the boy's room, There was a market then for "kiddie" records, seems like most of ours were Hanna-Barbera. Eventually I was instructed on the operation of Mom's Telefunken console.... My best days were staying home "sick" with my collection, The Troggs, Paul Revere and the Raiders, The Beach Boys, Hermann's Hermits. Still my kind of best day, and I don't have to come up with symptoms.

XERB (I think?) on the transistor radio growing up in East LA. My older brother told me Wolfman Jack was in a cage in Mexico and all he had were records and a radio transmitter. 
 I loved the music and the mystery. 
It was around 1963. I was 10. 
Then, American Graffiti came out and I finally saw The Wolfman!

I am sure that most of us are introverts to some extent.  Once realized, it's easy to like being alone without being lonely.  

One of my earliest memories is being (probably) 3 years old and going down for my afternoon nap, crying, because what kid didn't over that, and hearing "Theme From A Summer Place" coming from the stereo. Still can't hear that song without being taken back to that moment.