Musical Extravaganzas

Today's sunrise over Victorville











Back in Victorville, or should I say still in Victorville? Well, whatever, I’m here. The drive to and from takes from five and three quarter hours up to seven hours depending on how fast I drive, traffic, accidents, and route I take. No matter what, it is a hell of a drive... without cruise control and an auxiliary jack. I do have a radio tuner for the ole ipod, but constantly trying to find a station without too much static is annoying and quite frankly dangerous. Almost as bad as texting! So I have been plugging my ihome into my power converter which plugs into my 12 volt car thingy (used to be called a cigarette lighter, but cars don’t have those anymore). It works pretty good, unless the road is bumpy and the ipod goes flying off the port, and the sound would be better piped through the car speakers, but at least there isn’t static.

All that to say, I have been having musical extravaganzas on the way to and from Victorville. Well, except this last time. My ipod has been going wonky on me. It has decided to not play anything I have purchased from itunes for the last 6 months or so. Why? No idea! I’ve tried several things. I’ve reset, rebooted, restored, and so on, and restoring the ole ipod seems to work for awhile, and then it starts not playing songs again. I don’t get it. Frustrating, and I’ve looked on help comment boards and all that. So if this next round of reseting, rebooting, and restoring doesn’t work then I don’t know what to do.

Anyway, back to my musical extravaganzas. My first trip back home was the first and best of the experiences. (the ipod was working then) I had it play a few playlists I had and it played the new Linkin Park album probably 5 times, and then I switched it up to Natalie Merchant. It was great. I was singing and bopping along. All the while brainstorming an idea I have for part of the pitch to potential investors for the shop. I realized that by the time I was about 1.5 hours away from home, that the drive just flew by. It was great.

The next trip back down was pretty good too. Only the ipod was starting to act up and not play songs. I decided that the trip back home that I would just put it on shuffle. That’s always an adventure. Since my musical tastes are so varied, it can go from Chopin to Metallica to Jack Johnson to the soundtrack to Jurassic Park to a Shel Silverstein poem!

Which segues nicely to how much I love movie soundtracks. I have a ton of them. Majority of which are the orchestrations, not so much the pop culture soundtracks. Examples are: the already mentioned Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings, Independence Day, Hook, Gladiator, Last of the Mohicans, Emma, Star Trek: First Contact, Schindler’s List, Dances with Wolves, I can go on... but I won’t. I have very few that are pop/bands like Forrest Gump, Mr. Holland’s Opus, 10 Things I Hate about You, etc.

Why movie soundtracks? I sort of equate them to modern symphonies. Nothing against composers of today. Movie soundtracks have to tell a story or “help” tell the story. So there are lots of rises and falls, and themes. Just like a Beethoven Symphony. I can listen to a good soundtrack and play the movie in my head, no need to actually watch it. Or play out my own life in movie form... in my head. (don’t worry, I’m not actually acting out my own life story in my room, that’s just creepy) I have soundtracks to movies I don’t even own on DVD. Shocking, I know. The good ones can evoke emotional and/or physical responses out of me. Some are motivational, others can help quiet the nervousness and anxiety. Others are good for just some quiet meditation time. I was going to say some are good to write blogs too, but I’m actually not listening to anything while I write about music. Interesting.