Not Every Mood is Blue

Last Saturday I expounded on the Moody Blues and the impact their music has had on the things I write about. Much of their music has a haunting quality which inspires me to dream of green hills with low valleys touched in fog and rivers flowing sure and swift. Birds are in the air. Perhaps a deer wanders by. It is peaceful. Even meloncholy.

But that's not the only music I listen to, as evidenced by today's song: Under My Wheels, by Alice Cooper.

I was never much of an Alice Cooper follower, but he he was dominant during my teenage years and had lots of songs play over my favorite radio stations. Stephen loved Alice Cooper - and Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and - the Moody Blues. Stephen bought all of their albums, hoping I would join him in his rapturous love affair with music. I did love music - as much or more as Stephen - but the Moody Blues were the only group I wholeheartedly gave myself to. Still, when he drove me around in his mother's car he had the radio tuned where his music was going to be played, and so I heard them.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd or any of the others. It's just that they had a lot more songs I didn't like than I did. But when I did like them, I really liked them. That's the case with today's song.

One reason for my not getting into certain groups and artists like Stephen did was that I not only seldom knew the name of songs I liked, I virtually never knew the artists. I've got a song playing on YouTube now I listened to for years before I knew the artist or the title. Jessica, by the Allman Brothers.

I like at least two songs by Jethro Tull: Bungle in the Jungle and Living in the Past. I like at least one by Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird, and one by Aerosmith: Free Bird. These are what I call Songs of Power. They fill me with energy, and I use them to write battle scenes, personal confrontations and things like that.

Music means so much to me. When I was young I would put my transister radio under my pillow and sleep with the music going all night. Gayanne hated it that I did that. She would often drain, or even remove, the batteries from my radio. When I left home I thought those problems were all behind me, and they were - until I got married. Spouse likes music, but not during the night. We argued, off and on, about going to bed with music - until I eventually lost. Spouse offered to compromise by letting me put the music on 'sleep' mode, in which it would turn itself off after a period of time. But Spouse's idea of a sufficient amount of time was like ten minutes. Mine was like ten hours. I toss and turn all through the night, waking at least a dozen times. Been that way since I was young. It's comforting to wake to music. Maybe that's why I so often find myself getting up in the middle of the night and spending two to six hours reading, writing or just playing at the computer.

Meanwhile, it's back to music. U2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.

I have, but I haven't. Do you know what I mean?