An apple, hot cocoa and Beirut - my idea of a pleasant evening

It's definitely going to be a small essay on music and how it influenced my life. Participating in today's bliki-class I came to the conclusion that we write far too little about music that accompanies us in our lives. And I bet you all let inspire yourselves by sounds now and then...

When I was at high school, music used to be the most important part of my life, my escape from reality. Listening to my favourite bands on the way to school, at school, on my way back home and in the evenings was a strong habit. The best part was imagining how the artists would perform live. It was obvious you wouldn't be able to fly to Berlin during the week to watch Björk on scene, but the sheer vision was satisfying enough. Anyway, I unfortunately grew up, left my parents' protective wings, which didn't allow me earlier to follow my romantic music fantasies (summer festivals and gypsy travels through Europe), and started to live my own life. That suddenly meant that I became responsible for my actions and could even go to Vienna on foot to a concert if I wanted. As a matter of fact, I did make use of this unlimited freedom, in acceptable limits of course;) That's when I went to Radiohead concert in Dublin, one of my biggest and most painful disappointments. Having made a kind of spiritual mentors of those five Oxford guys I suffered severely from their far too forced and alienated performance in overcrowded Marley Park. Being almost trampled on and squashed by the violent crowd (don't mess up with the enthusiastic Irish!) I couldn't enjoy "the most anticipated event in my life". It maybe wasn’t a bad concert after all, but the venue just wasn’t suitable. Anyway, that's when music suddenly started loosing its place in my everyday life. Studying, working part-time, pursuing my hobbies and devoting enough time to my boyfriend and best friends was pretty time consuming and didn't leave much space for me to take my time and seriously deal with music. I reduced myself to sporadic concerts of bands who somebody somewhere recommended and started listening to the radio passively like a good night story.

Yet, an awakening came one day unexpectedly. That's what I originally wanted to write about, namely a band called Beirut. Just imagine a typical "alternative star life story": a high school dropout going to Europe, doing crummy jobs, but letting himself be inspired by exotic (meaning European) art (in this case music). That's exactly what Zac Condon from New Mexico did. This resulted in an outstanding creation of Balkan-like, played with over ten different instruments, music. These sounds are something refreshing, something completely untypical for the American new wave. It's like watching Kosturica's films and anticipating surprising turning points, with one small difference - the soothing voice of the vocalist in the background. The funniest detail of this whole music project is that Z. Condon apparently recorded almost the whole album in his... bedroom. Not a bad outcome for such modest conditions.

So here I am experiencing music again at its full extent, biting into a delicious apple, drinking my good night cocoa and melting listening to gypsy music made in America. If you like experimenting, I definitely recommend Beirut. One more suggestion or even a request – write something about music…