Music for the Night

I don’t know about you, but these days most of the music on the radio sucks. Either that, or I’m getting old. Scratch that, I am old. Ho hum.

Like so many working people years ago, I’d wake up to a clock radio tuned in to a local station and listen to inane drivel by so called presenters interspersed with adverts for cars, furniture, theatre tickets and the like every ten minutes. Occasionally, you’d get to hear a record. Naturally, I got fed up with it all, but as the buzzer on said clock radio was more like a foghorn and I preferred to wake up gradually rather than receive a sudden shock, I didn’t have much choice apart from changing one radio station for another of equal drivelness or one with some screaming gabby DJ who rarely paused for breath and played monotonous one noted garbage.

The stereo system in the lounge had a CD player, but no way of setting it up to wake me at the desired time, so I was over the moon when my work mates bought me a CD clock radio for my birthday. Absolutely brilliant. I could now wake up to a CD of my choice, a much better way to start my day. It also had a timer on it, so I could even fall asleep to a relaxing CD which came in very handy after a particularly hard day and when we first got our present dog.

This little guy on the His Master’s Voice logo must be one of the most famous dogs in the world. Actually he is pretty similar to a family pet of yesteryear who lived to be 17, but I can’t recall if he was a music lover or not. I like a variety of music and a lot of my 78s had the above logo on the label (for all you young readers, a 78 was usually a 10″ disc played at 78 rpm on a record player using a needle or stylus, which in my day also had speeds of 33 1/3 rpm for 12″ LPs and 45 rpm for 7″ singles. Vinyl is making a comeback by the way). I enjoy some classical pieces too and at present anything by Il Divo. Although I don’t understand a word of most of it, I recognise some of the tunes and can merrily hum along or do my own rendition if I know the words in English.

We have this particular CD called Pure Moods, which has a good variety of songs past and present, and some lovely instrumentals on it. This was nearly always in a separate CD player at night (pre birthday present) which had to be manually turned off, though it stopped at the end of the CD. To be honest, nine times out of ten we were both asleep by about four tracks in, but always remembered to turn it off first thing in the morning. The same thing happened with the dog. When she was a puppy, this was the music she heard at bed time, and even now, some 8 years later, if we put this CD on, she will settle down and be asleep in about ten minutes.

Not quite His Master’s Voice is she, but you get my drift (bless).  Anyway, after a really pants of a day at work, I came home with a thumping headache and decided to have a luxurious hot bath and early night. Once in bed, I settled down with the Pure Moods CD in the clock radio and both me and the dog fell asleep pretty quickly. There was just one little snag……….the alarm was set to come on to the CD as usual. However, this was my ‘going to sleep’ CD, and so when the alarm went off, the music registered as being night time in my brain and I went back to sleep. Ooops.

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