Why Us Old Cougars Know More

about music than you kids of today.

I bloged about this theme on my Swedish blog http://caisa.livejournal.com and was asked to write something similar in English. Hi Christina!

Oh, BTW, the jacket I wear on this pic, taken today, is the one mentioned in my previous blog. The one my mother made way back when.

So gather around children and harken as I tell you about how it was in the olden days, back in the sixties. I live in a country way up North called Sweden and at that time in a town called Gothenburg. We had no mp3 players and no computers. The net was something the US military had just started playing with. What we had was record players, radio and TV to satisfy our craving for music. The TV had only one channel and if we were lucky they showed a program called Oppopoppa once a month. The records were quite expensive and we could only afford singles. The latest singles were only available in two stores in the city. Which leaves us with the radio. The state had a monopoly on broadcasting (which later on led me to be a part of the leftwing/anarchist pirate radio "Radio 88" but that's another story that I might come back to some day. And they were kind enough to play pop/rock for a whole hour every week day, and there were the top list "Tio i topp" for an hour on Saturdays.

And then there was Radio Luxemburg. We gathered in the evenings in spots that usually were good for reciving. Providing someone ha managed to sneak a transistor radio out of the house. The quality of the sound was rather poor, but they were playing the very latest from England.

So to hear the music we wanted we had to listen to all sorts of music that was played on the radio. It could be anything, but mostly it was Swedish and English popular music from the twenties to the fifties. Some light jazz, operettas, and classical music was also heard now and then. And, yes, we hated this with a vengeance.

But as I talk music with young people today I realize that it had given me a grounding in musical history and different genres of music. A grounding that came without me even trying or even wanting to learn.

Today, with thousands of stations to chose from, on the air and on the net, You can opt for just listen to the kind of music you already like. Thus missing out on something you might like.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't want the bad old days back. The fantastic availability of music is a good thing (TM). But, and this might be illegal where you live, download a few torrents with music you don't usually listen to. Or, better yet, get an account with a usenet server and look around the alt.binary.music and download anything that might interest you. You might be surprised! I found some rare queer blues recordings from the twenties and thirties.

With love and kisses till next time.
Caisa