Bright as a button?

Bright as a button? Not me! I've only just realized that it's just over a year since I started this blog. In that time I've posted 68 times, which at over one a week, is okay I'm thinking.

I started it with the intention of giving my English family and friends, or any anyone else for that matter, an idea of what it was like for this English "traditionalist" to adapt to living in a new country. It was also intended to give my American family and the many wonderful friends we have made here, an idea of the differences between English (East Anglian) and American (Southern) culture, food and language. I've strayed many times from that original idea but, hey! what the heck?

Many of these differences are very pronounced, some not so. As an East Anglian (Norfolk) boy, I'm used to the rest of my homeland calling us "Carrot Crunchers", "Tractor Boys", "Country Bumpkins" and the like (even though I was raised as a townee). A similarity here is that "Southerners" have traditionally been treated the same by those from more "sophisticated" states.

The differences in language are again sometimes not so great. When growing up in Norfolk, it was common to call a respected person "a good ol' boy". Here in the South, the same was and still is true.

In England the true Norfolk and Suffolk culture is being diluted by "invaders" from London and the Home Counties as well as from Europe. The same is happening here, especially in the Triangle of North Carolina, but this time the "invaders" mainly hail from the North-East. In fact a nearby very fast-growing city, Cary, is said to be an acronym for "Collection Area for Retired Yankees" (only joking). So many similarities exist.

One of my favorite blogging themes has been "my catholic musical taste". If anything this has widened and I spend many hours each day listening to various genres (I'm currently listening to Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto No. 5). I have had the immense pleasure of introducing our wonderful Vicar to jazz. She happened to mention that she wanted to learn and listen more, so I have "trickle-fed" her with the likes of The Modern Jazz Quartet, Art Tatum, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and many more. Overhearing her recently telling someone that "Mick is teaching and helping me appreciate jazz", did wonders for my ego. Fancy me becoming a "rabbi" to my priest!

Another thing I realized is that, whilst updating my database of music collected, is that, yes, I am a Romantic! This hit home when I was trying to compile a list of my top ten composers and noted that 70% were of the "Romantic" school - Brahms, Berlioz, Bruch, Chopin, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky and Verdi.

I wonder if Gail thinks of me as a "Romantic"?

A catholic music taste - Conclusion

I think I've gone as far as I can go on this subject (for the time being at least and to, no doubt a sigh of relief by all), so thought I would take this opportunity to summarize.

I'm not keen on putting music (or anything else for that matter) into "pigeon-holes" and only use music genres to help me catalog my music collection. I do not consider myself a music snob, although I probably was when younger. I am of the opinion that "good or indifferent (to others), if I enjoy it, I do, if I don't enjoy it, I don't". That applies to many other things in life - food, beer, wine, theater, movies, etc. I remember well that in the 1960s peer pressure drove me mad. "Mod or rocker?", "trad or modern (jazz)?", "The Beatles or The Stones?", "Dylan or Donovan?" (in the latter case, neither). Today's youngsters almost certainly have even more peer pressure than I ever did.

From the simplest country song to the intricacies of a Mahler symphony, I have a love and indeed a need of it all. A few opening notes of say, Herman's Hermits "I'm into something good" and my mind immediately brings images of a Saturday evening at our local dance hall, the opening bars of "Tales from Vienna Woods" and I'm transformed to the New Years day concert in the wonderful natural auditorium of St. Michael's Caves, Gibraltar in 2003, and I cannot hear the Harvest Festival hymn "Come, ye thankful people come" without remembering my very first processional hymn as a choirboy many years ago.

I watched one of my favorite movies a couple of weeks ago on TCM, Carol Reed's The Third Man. I hadn't seen it for many a year and the minute I heard the amazing zither playing of Anton Karas, who also wrote the score, I recalled literally the smell of the burnt methanol exhaust of motor cycle speedway meetings in Great Yarmouth. That movie theme was extremely popular and played at every (weekly) meeting for a considerable time after the movie's release in 1949. Remarkable in that I was only five years old then!

I've used these examples just to emphasize what music means to me.

New Year Day concert, 2003, in St. Michael's Caves, Gibraltar - a wonderful natural auditorium.