One of the more bizarre musical influences of my childhood was "music concrète". My father had a very expensive sound system set up in the "front room" or "drawing room" of our terraced house. He loved to put on a french radio station, for which we had excellent reception, and play "music concrète" to me. Because I knew no different, I thought this was quite normal.
Hopefully when I have had a chance to go through some old photograph albums I'll be able to find some photos to add to this short post.
Undoubtedly, this early musical training opened up my ears to the possibility of all types of music so I have never been put off any type of music. If you asked me what was my favourite music I'd have to reply "The best examples of everything". I wouldn't dismiss a piece because it was from the genre of thrash metal, for example, but I might dismiss it if I thought it wasn't great musically.
My father also had a record which he loved to play to me. It came with the record player and was designed to show off the systems' capabilities. There was the sound of a train which felt like it was running through the room. There were various frequencies to test the system and your hearing. My favourite was the recording of thunder.
The "front room" was for "special". It was used by the guests from my mum's B and B and we used it at Christmas but as we didn't have central heating, the two-bar electric heater took ages to heat it up so mostly the room remain unused.
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