The World is Round: Beautiful Music

Round about eight years ago, I found myself back in my hometown of Farmingdale, New York, on Long Island, at a radio station that had opened up there. Imagine: A radio station in my 'hood!

It was one of those odd hybrid anti-blasters: a carefully pruned compote of beautiful music, gardening tips, and birthday and anniversary announcements. It was, as was custom for stations like this, decidedly low key; the announcers took their time delivering their carefully-cadenced patter, all the while smiling, genuinely happy to be there.

The announcer I interviewed for a story I was writing for a radio trade newspaper was a proud veteran of Long Island beautiful music stations such as WRFM and WHLI-FM. He said something to me that day that has stuck with me all these years, something that says a lot about heart: as he sunk into his chair and leaned back, he closed his eyes, leaned to the left, and said, "I love my music."

That's a pretty powerful sentence, but if he'd uttered it when I was a kid, I would have snickered at him. You love that music? Ugh. That music, the music of old people like my parents, the music with no form, and no soul.

I grew up listening to just that kind of music, along with the crooners who populated the airwaves of WNEW-AM, "1130 in New York," the home of William B. Williams, of Jonathan Schwartz, of Ted Brown, of the Make-Believe Ballroom and the Milkman's Matinee, of Klavan and Finch, and of jingles that were almost records in their own right, sung by the singers of the day who were fixtures on the Tonight Show. I hated every supposed note of it, as I was into the teen music of the day, and I didn't want to be the future teenager who was still listening to Percy Faith and Barbra Streisand when I was, gasp, 20.

Of course, I was listening, but that's the path we all take-first we are our parents' children and then we become our parents. That's not always a good thing, necessarily, but in this case it was. I've written before about my father, who played trumpet, who was a music lover, which is where I figure I got my love of the form; today I feel fortunate that I was exposed to so much music that back in the day was considered so much kreplach, but that wasn't the case in my formative years.

I remember being stuck in doctors' offices having to endure the swinging sounds of Ronnie Aldrich, Mantovani, Burt Kaempfert and the like, trying to pick out the beat, but there wasn't one. It all sounded like so much Turkish Taffy being pulled excruciatingly slow across a room, with no form whatsoever and, most importantly, no soul. The sole exception to this rule was the Hollyridge Strings, whose versions of Beatles songs were really groovy in a kind of, I don't know, non-groovy way.

These days, I don't mind a bit of beautiful music every now and again. Have you noticed that you feel the same? As we get older, we slow down and maybe embrace the quieter notes. I know I do; I've grown into enjoying the serenity of beautiful music, even if I don't quite love it. These days, I favor more considered, melodic harmony music, although I'm not averse to rocking out. In fact, I recommend it!

You may think in your heart of hearts that so-called beautiful music should be relegated to the same garbage dumps that 8-track tapes go to die, but I think there's a place for it, especially if you're around my age and you grew up in a house in which it was a part of the furniture. Actually, I think that any music you like is beautiful, so if the mere idea of an orchestrated, formless version of "I Feel Fine" makes you cringe, fear not-there's always room for a stately take on your favorite Black Sabbath barnburner.

The idea of such a thing might not have appealed to my beautiful music announcer friend, but with just the right treatment, I bet he would have embraced the results. Beautiful is good, but moreover, beautiful is in the eyes, and the ears, of the beholder.

Which is beautiful music to my ears.

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