Sinister: Memories Filled with Music

[Sunset .]

My sister gained a bit of a reputation as an alcohol expert whilst in 
university:
“At the age of 5 or 6 I learnt about red wine from my grandparents, may 
grandad poured single malt whisky into my ice cream whilst nobody was 
looking, and I drank champagne cocktails with an elderly aunt”
For some reason people found this strange. I on the other hand found it 
strange that this is not normal. I had a similar revelation when visiting 
friends house’s and realised that their parents didn’t listen to music or at 
least not in the same way that mine did.
At the age of 23 I am coming to the conclusion that my relationship with 
music has something to do with my upbringing.

Culprit Number One-My Dad:

One memory immediately springs to mind:
Having just moved house thing were not as they should be. Boxes stood 
unemptied and things had yet to find a rightful place from which to be 
disturbed.
I sat on thick orange carpet in the new front room barely daring to move. My 
dad was near by kneeling at the record player.
The carpet was hardly visible as piles of unalphabetised records covered it. 
My dad played me music, made me guess if a track was a blues song or not and 
told me that songs could be stories as well as just music.
I watched as he cleaned the vinyl with  a red sponge and plucked stray hairs 
of the stylus in between tracks. I had already learnt that records should 
not be touched in the black groovy bits and the correct way to stop the 
music was not to clumsily drag the needle across the turntable.
To a 5 year old child, being allowed in a room with such treasured 
possessions is important and not easily forgotten

Culprit Number 2- My Mum:

My mum’s attitude to music was always slightly different. Whilst my dad 
reinforced the fabric of the house, piling shelves high with vinyl, CDs and 
cassettes my mum collected very few.
And of those she did have there would always be the one chosen tape that 
would be played repeatedly for weeks on end and she, in steam filled 
kitchen, sang to it.
Strangely enough she never did seem to learn the words, but the obsession 
was catching and soon my sister and I would find ourselves randomly humming 
lines.

These two people are responsible for my obsessive attitude; they laugh at me 
now and blame each other for the misguided child they brought up.
And though they might not realise it, I am proud to have been taught by 
them. How else would I have ended up as part of a "peculiarly deranged 
fanbase"?


_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+