AUM My favorite music

 AUM     my favorite songs

 A few years ago ,when the thing was to have an IPOD, I named my IPIOD AUM. That had also been the name of a series of CD’s I burned that included all of my favorite songs. The CDs were before the IPOD came along and changed things. 

 I burned CDs for other people often since I have a pretty large music selection. My music collecting days went way back to the purchase of my 1st Beatles album (“Something New.” An American release of early Beatles tunes) After that, over the years, I built a collection of a few thousand LPs.   

  After LPs, I did Cassettes and 8 Track since they could be plated in a car.

My wife and Mom pitched in to buy  my first CD player. Ash wasn’t sure I’d like the switch from LPs to CDs, but once again, they were more easily transported and car ready. Even before they bought the player, I had won my very first music CD off of a radio program. It was Pete Townshend’s “Iron Giant,” based on a book  that would be turned into an animated movie (Townshend producing.)

Anyway, back to the series of “best of “ CDs. I started building playlists of the songs I loved or meant something to me. I stopped after I had filled 16 CDs with tunes. 

I love a lot of songs.

But, why “AUM?”

AUM is the Sanskrit version of the western OM. AUMM is the sound of creation in the Hindu story of creation. It is the sound that rolled across the universe and  brought order to chaos. It is the powerful sound that permeates all things in the universe. It is what George Lucas made into the Force in Star Wars.

I first came in touch with AUM through a song by Pete Townshend. On  his first solo album, “WHO Came First,’ there was a song called ”Pure and Easy.' In the song, he sings “There once was a note, Pure and Easy, playing so free like a breath rippling by. The Not if eternal, I hear it, It sees me. Forever we blend and forever, we die.”

At one point in the last half of the song, the music stops and Townshend plucks a single note on the guitar (AUIM)  and then the song continues. 

I loved the song. It spoke to me and my love of music. Later, I learned that song was supposed to be part of the Who’s second rock opera following “Tommy.” The opera was to be named :”Life house.” Townshend had this huge vision of everything united by this common note and wrote  some of his best songs related to it.

It apparently became too big for the WHO to finish and they decided to take selected songs from the effort and release them as a normal album. That gave birth to one of their greatest, in my opinion, "WHO's Next.:”  Songs like “Behind Blue Eyes,:” Won’t Get Fooled Again,” Join Together,” “Baba O’Reilly” and “The Song is Over.” 

“Pure and Easy,” The WHO’S version, did not make the original album. It would make its first appearance on Pete’s solo. 

The Beach Boys had gone through a similar effort a couple years earlier. Brian Wilson had a vision of a work called “Smile,” that the rest of the band found too big and clunky. The songs they released off of it would become their “Pet Sounds “ album. 

So, why AUM and Townshend?

Pete had become a disciple of Meher Babar, a Hindu holy man. Many of his songs reflected the teachings of Meher Babar. On the solo album, songs like “Pavardigar,” “Nothing is Everything,” and “Time is Passing” show the effect of Townshend's search for meaning.

The rock opera “Tommy” may seem like a fun story about a Pinball Wizard, but it had a deeper meaning of a person unaware of reality, unable to see, hear and speak, who suddenly reaches a state of enlightenment. (“I’m Free!”)

Townshend would later release a 6 CD set of his work on "Life house" through Eel Pie Music. Ashley got it for me as a gift. He was finally able to perform it as a solo artist and it even played as a radio play in England.

Today, In the car with my wife, I had “AUM” playing on the car stereo now streaming on a playlist I made on Spotify. It doesn’t have all 16 CDs worth of songs on it yet, but it's a work in progress. Plus, there are more songs I have fallen in love with since the original was burned.

The song that played as we drove home was "The Song is Over” from “WO’S NEXT.” When we pulled into the drive way, I sat in the car till the song finished. 

That song was the theme for the Who’s final concert tour this past year. I was lucky enough to get to see them live a few times, but sad that I never will again.

But, as my wife said, the song isn’t really over because I can always listen to the music. There is always AUM.