For 20-30 years now I have been listening to Triple_J (a pop/rock alternative radio station, government owned, trying to provide antidotes to the run-of-the-mill top-40 stuff, although they also have a lot to do with the ABC-TV station's Rage programme which runs from midnight to early morning on Fridays & Saturdays and the Saturday morning show runs on until about 11am with top-40 stuff).


I have been wondering myself, over the last few months, whether I am finally getting old in my taste in music. Let me tell you first that my absolute favourite album is called Leftism by a techno-percussion group called Leftfield. They are brilliant, and the more I listen to it the more complexities I hear in it. The whole thing is based on African polyrhythms. My other absolute favourite album set is the Complete Sacred Choral Music of Vivaldi. Apart from those two I have every type of music in my collection.


But, in the last few months the melodies have almost totally disappeared. There is this talking/rapping rambling - which I cannot understand- I don't know if it is related to my dyslexia, or just that I am more visual than aural. I have said this before in Mudcat that I have a theory that some people like their music mostly based on the music/melody/harmony/arrangements etc (like me) and some people like it mostly based on the lyrics (like my hubby) which for me explains why he really likes Bob Dylan & Leonard Cohen & why I can't stand either of them - well the majority of their stuff - unless someone else sings it/plays it because, for instance, I can't stand LC's 3-note melodies or his singing voice. I'll admit he has improved to some degree in that department over the years.

So, enough of the preamble, I have found lately that where I used to listen to Triple-J rather a lot, now I have to turn it off. Hubby plays it more or less non-stop in the house, and has it as the station of choice on his clock radio alarm, so lying there trying to catch my last half hour of dozing/meditating prior to the mad rush of the day, I find it totally impossible even to think while it is on.

The worst, the absolute worst, is when someone decides that they can "improve" on a fantastically good song with sampling of the original, like the O Brother Where Art Thou song (is it Man of Constant Sorrow?) or Joe Cocker's Marjorine by totally riding roughshod over the melody and arrangement using thumping, non-musical beats. It starts out sounding okay and goes downhill from there.

That is why I now listen to the Classic-FM station because at least there is real music and some complexity to it.

Helen