LOUD MUSIC DAY

Today I had a rather rare ‘Loud Music Day’. You know what I mean, some days you just have to turn it right up.
However, in this case it could have been pretty embarrassing, as it wasn’t the type of music you’d usually crank up – it was Strauss Waltzes. I know, I know! What was I doing with Strauss Waltzes – well, for a start the cd was extra extra cheap, and I have a nostalgic attachment to them, as our local picture theatre in a little country town where I grew up played them at interval, and listening to them always takes to back to that dusty hall, and those canvas seats, and the westerns, and the submarine movies (‘pictures’, we called them then, before we became sophisticated) and the cartoons and the newsreels. And there were two movies, which is why there was an interval. Ah, Saturday night at the pictures – what a treat!
Also, this was the first time I’d played that cd, so I wanted to hear the whole thing, and I also wanted to do things all over the house, so up went the volume and out boomed Mr Strauss. What if someone had come to the door? Now, don’t misunderstand – I just love classical music, and own a lot of it, and play it a lot, but somehow the lilting strains of a waltz did not strike me as being very cool, which is a demeanour I’d like to present to anyone knocking on my door.
Its odd that I can stand loud music, as I’m allergic to loud noise I think. Its partly been bought on by the fact that every time I walk out of the room where the tv is playing, I walk back in to find the volume has been turned up several notches. This is to compensate for my husband’s fast developing deafness – which he of course denies. I, on the other hand, have perfectly good hearing.
It’s a wonder that I have, because when my children were teenagers, they played music constantly, loudly, and in opposition to each other. Talk about duelling banjos – we had duelling cassette players in our house. One belting out this, and other belting out that, and the aforesaid husband listening to the races (and is there any noise more annoying than a race caller calling a race, I ask you – in the whole world, I mean?) on both the radio and the television. I tell you, my good hearing is an absolute miracle! Also, I love Queen, and Pink Floyd, but not for the seventy-sixth time in the same day!
I found a piece of paper recently that had written on it a bet between myself, the obviously long suffering mother, and my then maybe sixteen year old daughter – the details were that me, the mother, bet that she, the daughter, would not be playing music CONSTANTLY and LOUDLY all day ten years after she was married. Its roughly twenty years since we made that bet, and I sent her a copy of it, and she actually admitted that yes, I had won. Ah, maturity!
I listed to the Choir of Hard Knocks singing Flame Tree the other day, which in my humble opinion is one of the all time great Australian songs –I just love that song, and what great memories of the time my kids were living at home it brings back to me. I mentioned this to someone the other day, and they remarked that they liked it too, and should really buy that cd, but wondered why there weren’t more Christmas songs on it.
What?
What Christmas song is on it, I asked. Hallelujah, the person replied. I kept an admirably straight face, and I asked why they thought it was a Christmas song, and hadn’t they listened to the actual words? Well, they replied, they keep saying Hallelujah, and that’s Christmassy, isn’t it?
Which reminded me again of my husband’s fast encroaching deafness – we love going to the movies – he picks what we see this time, and I pick the next time. A while ago it was my pick, and he suddenly asked me if we were going to see ‘Mary Ann Turner’? I thought hard – I am pretty sure I have no acquaintances called Mary Ann Turner. Who did he mean?
Finally – finally – we worked it out – were we going to see that movie ‘Marie Antoinette!’ I know my French is not good, in fact, non-existent, but I thought I should have been able to adequately pronounce that, so its obviously the deafness thing again.
Anyway, funnily enough, whenever I have a Loud Music Day, who complains – why, he does!
Next time my kids are home for a weekend, I’m going to test them out – I’m going to turn on some loud music, and the tv, and see if they’ll complain. They probably will because our son was here a little while ago, and I actually heard him say to his father, ‘Turn that damn tv down’. Two mature kids, how lucky is that!
What? I can’t hear you?

© Nelma Ward