Music in the dark

  During my time in college, the stereo played constantly.

I had a big record collection and my buddies also had some LPs that we played often. 

Mo always wanted to hear Robin Trower's "Bridge of Sighs " or Todd Rundgren's "Something Anything." Both great Albums. Don loved Pete Townshend's "Pure and Easy" because of the hand claps. He was always a kinetic person. Don had me record an 8 track tape with that song repeated over and over. Larry had an album with a song "Music" by John Miles that he loved to play. 

 Music was always a part of our day. Sometimes it was Stick's :Year of the Cat" by AL Stewart or Jean Michael Jarre's weird music. I never figured out the draw to his music. A strong memory was of Mack sitting with headphones on and kind of  intermittently singing the Cars "My Best Friend's Girl." There was the day Scott bought his first LPs from someone in the dorm. It was a unique selection of Rush's "2112" and two albums by the Runaways. 

Sometimes we would put on Ted Nugent's "Free for All " or "cat Scratch Fever" and bounce and ju8mp around the room playing air guitar to burn off all the energy we young guys always had. 

 Rundgren, Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," The Beatles, Trower, Blue Oyster Cult, ZZ Top,  etc. always blasting out of our doorways. 

But, there were two special songs that required a dark room and absolute silence to listen to. The first was "The Prophet's Song" by Queen from the "Night at the Opera" album. The other, "Funeral for a Friend/ Love Lies Bleeding" by Elton John from "Goodbye Yellow Brick Riad."

Both songs are epic in both length, dramatic and haunting. 

Someone would say "Let's listen to so and so with the lights out!' So, we sprawled around the room in chairs and across the bunk beds as one of us cued the LP and switched off the lights. We waited in hushed silence for the first notes to come forth. 

In the dark, those two songs, building and growing  would wash over us as we listened in awed silence. Queen's elaborate vocals and soaring guitars, Elton's rising instrumental topped off by his vocals and piano in "love Lies bleeding."  No one spoke. No one joked. There was only the dark and the song. 

When the songs ended, we lay around the room in silence, relishing the concentration of the music outside of any other distraction. 

 We had a lot of special moments, but those were some of the best.