Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts

Monday, July 6, 2009

Which "album" changed your life?

On NPR today, they were interviewing an author who had compiled a number of writers' responses to the question, "Which rock or pop album 'changed your life?'" It was interesting to hear the authors' responses, but also interesting to think which one I'd choose. I decided that for me it would be Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow. One of the songs on that 1967 album was White Rabbit, a song that among other things was supposed to replicate some of the feeling of doing drugs. The sort of over-the-top emotional swings in the music, not to mention the lyrics, gave a sense of the loss of the control that drugs were supposed to cause. It seemed to me, as a pre-teen, that everyone around me was involved in the drug culture in some way, and I was petrified. I didn't know why, so much, until I heard that Jefferson Airplane music. That sort of building to a crescendo, lack of reality, loss of control, was exactly what I didn't want. I wanted life to make sense. And so, the sense of it all that I got from the music was enough, and perhaps Jefferson Airplane could be credited for keeping me away from drugs during that very drug-happy time. Thanks, Grace Slick! What music changed your life? Oh, and by the way, I stayed away from downhill skiing for precisely the same reason -- I knew I couldn't control it, and I was afraid.