As the old saying goes, ‘You’ve gotta love the sound of metal in the morning.’ Never heard that one? Well, it’s probably because I made it up just this instant.
I’ve had a difficult time getting out of bed and getting my day going the last few weeks. It’s probably a combination of factors contributing to this – staying up too late, the kids getting up too early, the Earth’s relative position to Mars at this time of year, general laziness – take your pick. For the average five-day school week, I’d say that I’m able to get up and get the kids’ lunches going on time maybe one, sometimes two of those days. Not a great performance record, but that’s where I’m at in terms of statistics.
One of the things I’ve found that gets me going the most is listening to something heavy in the morning, and we’re usually talking metal. If I fire up some Metallica, Slipknot or Iron Maiden before the clock hits 7:30 a.m., I’m generally in for a more productive morning, and a day as a whole.
Mind you, the day of the week and the season in which it falls contributes greatly to my morning musical selection. Mondays and Tuesdays are my busiest days in terms of work, and I find more often than not, I’m not able to listen to any kind of music on them before 5 p.m. Post-5 p.m. is a different matter altogether on Mondays, when I’m alone at the office and doing layout for that week’s edition. I’m typically singing along pretty loud those nights to maintain my sanity if anything, and I imagine our neighbours downtown have come to dread Mondays based on my accompanying vocals alone.
On the mornings when metal doesn’t agree with me for one reason or another, my listening tastes are generally the complete opposite. Then it’s either talk radio or ‘easy listening,’ generally something from the 1980s. Nothing beats some sad Phil Collins or Don Henley on those rainy spring or snowy winter mornings. Not exactly uplifting, but it gets me through.
Mid-week when my work schedule is lighter and I have a bit more time in the morning – and especially through the summer months – ye olde musical selection really goes all over the map. I could start out with some Black Sabbath, meander over to the early ‘90s with some Nirvana or Soundgarden, and then all of a sudden I’ve travelled back in time to the year of my birth, rocking out to some Madonna. As far as I’m concerned, if you haven’t danced through your kitchen singing along to “Lucky Star” with a spatula as a makeshift microphone, you haven’t truly lived. Enjoy that visual.
I owe a lot of my random musical taste to my parents. Mom always had something rocking on the cassette player – she was partial to a lot of Genesis, Mike and the Mechanics, The Moody Blues, and a whole host of other ‘80s gold. When Dad got his turn, he typically leaned towards Tom Petty or AC/DC, but they could both venture off into the disco realm, Elton John, Michael Jackson – you name it. Variety is the spice of life, as it were.
While all of those bands and artists found their way into my own personal repertoire over the years, for some reason when I was a teenager in the late 1990s and early 2000s most of my time was spent consuming hardcore rap. Anyone having the misfortune of riding the bus with me from Fordwich to LDSS I’m sure also became quite familiar with the genre, as I would loudly sing along to my Sony Walkman pretty much every single morning. CDs were standard by that point, but I still preferred to take the best songs off said CDs and create my own mixed tapes. Spotify was still a solid 10-15 years away from becoming mainstream, and options were limited. It’s amazing I survived my high school tenure. Being forcefully regaled with some fairly offensive lyrics at 7:10 a.m. wouldn’t be appealing to me either if the shoe was on the other foot.
I don’t specifically ask for feedback very often, but what music and artists helped shape you? What tunes/bands get you going in the morning? I’d be very interested to know. If anything, maybe your musical taste will be more random than mine, and I can take some solace in the fact that dancing in the kitchen to Madonna avec spatula before 8 a.m. isn’t that weird after all.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here in a fortnight.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion piece; for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewpapers.com.
