Music is the glue that holds us together, but like anywhere, tastes range from passable to outright horrid. The military takes that to the extreme. You put people from every corner of the country into the same barracks, the same tent, the same armoured vehicle, and whoever controls the speaker controls morale. Soldiers come from every part of the nation and serve in every part of it and beyond, and they bring their music with them. East Coast kitchen-party fiddle runs up against Prairie country, Quebec rock, Toronto hip-hop, and that one guy who only listens to death metal and insists it’s relaxing. Like Napster, nobody cared where the music came from. If it played, it got shared.
Then there was bootlegging in the Middle East. I bought a lot of music overseas, and I remember following the Napster lawsuit, listening to the lawyers paint a picture of every high school kid in the world running around with pockets full of stolen music. I laughed, because that’s exactly what any bazaar or kiosk selling music looked like. Dual cassette decks were working overtime, later giving way to CD burners stacked like cordwood. The covers were photocopied and slightly off-colour, and the track listings were sometimes optimistic about what was actually on the disc. The selection in a lot of places rivalled Sam the Record Man, and the prices made Sam look like a loan shark. Was it legal? Let’s just say no record executive was going to fly over to argue about it, and nobody in the stall was losing sleep. Good times indeed.
Those tapes and discs travelled. They got copied, traded, lent out, never returned, and played until they warped in the heat. A mix tape could pass through a dozen hands in a tour and come home sounding like it had been recorded underwater. Nobody cared. It was music, it was ours, and it was the only thing in the place that reminded you of home.
Back to the music. Everyone has favourites, hates, and private playlists that only mean something to them. These are the songs you’d never admit to in public, the ones tied to a person, a place, or a night you only half remember. Since music is the glue of every event, there’s always that one song that comes on, and all you hear across the room is “I LOVE THIS SONG!”
It could be you, thrashing your fist in the air to Billy Idol, back in your glory days. For three and a half minutes your knees don’t hurt, your hairline is where it used to be, and you are, once again, absolutely unstoppable.
Or, unfortunately, it could be someone else. Say it’s that second cousin from out of town you got stuck bringing along because somebody had to. You’ve been nursing a drink in the corner, avoiding eye contact with the dance floor, doing just fine. Then Ace of Base comes on. She lights up, and she wants YOU to dance with her. You know there’s no escape. You saw the sign, and you ignored it.
Every wedding, mess dinner, legion night and backyard party has that moment. The DJ, or the guy who grabbed the aux cord, drops one track, and the room splits right down the middle. Half the crowd floods the floor like a fire alarm went off in reverse. The other half suddenly needs the washroom, a smoke, or a very long conversation about the weather. Nobody is neutral. That’s the beauty of it.
Music giveth, and music taketh away. We all have the songs we bang our heads to, the ones we throw our fists in the air for, and the ones we reluctantly dance to, hopefully not with relatives. Enjoy this playlist, dedicated to banging your head. Turn it up, and if your neighbours complain, tell them it’s for morale.