Dear LPG, 

I think that the older generation of any time are the luckiest when it comes to the provision of a constant audible feast for the ears.  We, the over eighty-year-olds, are arguably the only people left who were around when background music was not virtually everywhere…   It is true that music has been around for as long as I can remember but we oldies are the generation that have the largest choice when it comes to the widest variety of styles of music to remember.

Can you imagine living two or three centuries ago when the only music you heard was provided by your own fingers if you were rich enough to have been schooled in the art of keyboard playing and have your own instrument at home?

These days we hear it without even thinking about it because it is all around us.  Nearly everywhere we go there is some sort of music providing the backdrop for what we are doing.  For a long time, it was hard to remember walking into a supermarket or airport lounge where there was no background music playing at least some of the time.   

It can soothe the troubled mind, lift the despondent spirit, and calm the aggravations of life when you are listening to it as you wait to get to the front of a telephone queue where ‘Your call is important to them’.  I would go as far as to say that something would be missing if there was not a bit of music playing in the empty hallways of a theatre or the toilets and fitting rooms of some of your high street shops and restaurants.

Since the turn of the century, it has become fashionable to plug yourself into your favourite music as you are walking down the street or doing anything else for that matter.  The Sony Walkman has a lot to answer for.  I remember some 40 years ago when the vast majority of us would think that a young person, who completely ignored you as you walked past, was being really rude until you realised that their favourite music was being piped into their ears rendering them unable to hear anything else.  

In just a few short decades we have moved from the tape recorders and through MP3 players to our modern mobile phone and the wireless earbuds.  Now that they have been invented, we cannot even see the wires, but we have come to accept that nearly everyone is wired for sound and walking around in their own private world.

This means that no one has to listen to music they don’t want to hear, but I think we have become a much less social world as a result.  

But today is National Hug a Musician Day so it is only right that we think of our all-time favourite musical creation and give its creator a mental hug, although as a youngster who toyed with writing the odd song myself back in the day, I think that I can add a bit of self-hugging to the festivities, and I don’t think that I will be alone there…

RY, Peckham 

LPG offers some information on today’s celebration… 

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