Pickles, ketchup, the works! (I love music part 1)

Pickles, ketchup, the works! (I love music part 1)
By Jon Slone





I love music.
I like music.
I dig music.
I’m down with music.


If music was a pet, I would hug it and squeeze it and stroke its bill and rub its pretty feathers and call it George.


Music courses through my body like blood and unanswered prayer requests.


I thank My Dad for the gift of music all the time. I love all genres of music…psychedelic, reggae, rustic, acoustic, folk, pop, acid jazz, smooth jazz, accapella, country, bluegrass, blues, delta blues, R&B, soul, swamp, gospel, punk, alternative, instrumental, grunge and lastly, that style where the artist has no aptitude or creative bent whatsoever and could no more trill his way out of a paper bag than he or she could fly to the moon. These melodic fakers force studio execs to decamp to their billion dollar recording bunkers and manufacture a counterfeit sound and a bogus skill-set just so the aforementioned mock-artisans can appear both, dope and fly. I think they call that genre, Bieber. But I’m not entirely sure…It may be, Milli something.

I love how music gives my soul goose-bumps, how it heals me at times, inspires me at others, ushers forth an occasional tear parade, teaches and guides me and much, much more.


Heck, forget Skippy and Lassie, I’m thinking that man’s real best friends are an iTunes account and an iPod with everything on it…..pickles, ketchup, the works!


Hear me plainly on this; the closest we’ll ever come to a time machine, this side of heaven, is music. Music has that uncanny capacity to transport us back, heart, head and soul, to the time where we first heard a particular song. Spectacular memories, both blissful and cheerless, cling to songs like dew surmounting an aureate pasture at daybreak. Thus, when we, many years removed, hear a certain tune, it literally and inexplicably unlocks that vivid recollection and we get violently driven back to chapter three of the story of our lives. One moment, you’re forty and your left knee hurts, the next, its 1982 and you’re twelve and your listening to your Mom’s records and drinking Tab.

And who was to blame for it all?

Well, I thought you would never ask……the guilty party was, Men at Work and a catchy number called, ‘Down Under.’


Music is crazy-incredible that way!


I hear, ‘Love will keep us together’ and all of the sudden, I’m five years old, standing in a kiddy pool at Kentucky Damn Village. I hear, ‘Love Shack’ and I’m eighteen and three quarters, working at Lexington Country Club on Old Paris Pike, cutting lemons into wedges and wagon wheels. Peradventure I was to happen upon a radio playing, ‘Lessons in Love,’ the next thing you know I’m carried off to the year 1987 and Don Lane’s Basketball camp. And every time Color me Badd’s, ‘I Adore Mi Amore’ clanks against the ear drums all at once I’m back in my 1984 Dodge Omni and headed to Natural Bridge in Slade Kentucky near the Red River Gorge. That was where I celebrated my twenty-first birthday. And Color Me Badd forces me, whether I like it or not, to relive that four day weekend every time I hear a specific four minute and forty-five second song of theirs.



Music is prevailing like I don’t know what, even to the point where it can save lives.


Almost all of us have been in church at least once where God inhabited the music portion of the service and something so remarkable happened that the impending sermon was totally redundant and unnecessary.


I could go on and on and continue to paint with broad strokes but I’d rather pack it in and talk about music on a much slighter scale. In other words, what it means to one person, me.


I love to dance to it, jog to it, chill to it, unwind to it, be stirred by it, be taught by it, purchase it, play it, collect it, quote it, converse about it, jump into it, be swept away by it, study it, jam it, rock it, memorize it and be in awe of it.


Something about music is a mystery…it shows us only part of its hand.


Just a thought: There is no marriage or copulating in heaven but there is choir rehearsal, all night jam sessions and drum sets sitting around……I’m just sayin.’


For now, I must proffer you a fond farewell, too much, ROYAL SCAM and not enough time.


P.S. In the next little bit (Upcoming posts) I’ll be talking about the five qualities that I look for in a song, my top twenty-five bands or solo artists of all time and new music that I’ve discovered in the last year or so. Also, I’ll be doing album reviews.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta locate our dog, Scooter and try to explain to him why I’m more partial to, Men at Work. (It’s because they don’t pee on our Berber carpet yo!)

Jon