‘I Was Glad’ at the Traffic Light
April 11, 2008
So often when I stop at a red light, I find myself beside a vehicle pimped out with bone-shaking audio—always cranked up to the max. I can’t tell what music is being played because only the bass thumps its way to my car.
My response is typically a brief prayer: “Thank you, God, that I am sitting in this car and not that one.” This is only to say that I’m aware of a cultural and generational chasm between people like me and those who like their music played above 100 dB.
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| ~ C. Hubert Parry ~ |
When you’re sitting next to the thumping car, it’s pretty easy to assume that the driver is young and the music is rock, or one of the 180 sub-genres of rock that Wikipedia enumerates. Both assumptions seem fairly safe, and I imagine they’re usually right.
And yet, the other day I was the driver of the thumping car. Was I listening to Blackened Death Metal? Psychobilly? Pornogrind? Screamo? J-ska?
Nah. It was C. Hubert Parry’s classic I Was Glad, as recorded in 2002 by our church choir. It has a huge pipe organ thing going. Those 32-foot pipes will shred speakers with the best that rock has to offer. I had ol’ C. Hubert cranked.
The driver of the car next to me at the red light of course had no idea what I was listening to and was probably imagining one of the 180. He stared at me until I turned and met his gaze. As we made eye contact, his expression changed to something almost quizzical.
He seemed to be asking, “Aren’t you a little old for this?”
April 11, 2008 at 7:58 pm