I WAS sitting at home last Friday night, minding my own business – a fitting pastime for a man of my advancing years – when I became aware of a half-sound, half-vibration which I recognised as what I call the new ‘boom boom’ music, heard everywhere from cafés to toilets.
At first I thought maybe a radio had been left on but having verified this wasn’t the case, realised the sound was coming from outside. As I live in a very quiet residential area, populated by elderly farts such as myself, I was pretty sure no-one around was throwing a rave party.
Now, more baffled than annoyed, I consulted the Oracle, aka the wife, who also had no idea where the noise was coming from. I was finally forced to beg information from social media, asking online if anyone knew the origin of the loud music booming across north Belfast.
When asking a question on social media, my rule of thumb is to ignore the first 10 or so responses, as they’re invariably from lunatics, sitting in their underwear, desperate for attention. I was proved right once again when the second person to answer my query suggested the noise was coming from a Nathan Carter concert. I replied if this was true then Nathan had updated his famous hit Wagon Wheel with some serious drum and bass.
Eventually the real answer came: the sound I was hearing was from a Belsonic concert at Ormeau Park by the world famous DJ Tiesto. I quipped his din was seriously tiestoing me. I subsequently did a bit of research on and discovered Mr Tiesto is a global superstar DJ with a net worth of over $150 million. Not bad for a guy who plays records.
I know I sound like the grumpy old man telling the kids to turn down that noise they call music. And I am of course being deliberately dismissive – Tiesto is a talented DJ and producer, whose music, while originating in his native Sweden, has topped the charts worldwide.
Further research informed me his particular genre of music is a mix of future house, electro house, big room house and trance deep house. All he needed was a greenhouse and he’d have the whole package.
While Tiesto doesn’t float my boat, there are a couple of DJs who do. When Norman Cook, known by his stage name Fatboy Slim, released his breakthrough CD, You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, even aficionados of ‘easy listening’ such as myself, went out and bought it. Along with his music, Cook’s irreverent music videos are some of the best ever created. If you haven’t watched actor Christopher Walken dance in Cook’s video for Weapon of Choice, look it up right now.
Another DJ who conquered all in front of him is local boy David Holmes. Holmes’s talent evolved from his starting out as a club DJ in Abercorn Mod Club at the age of 15 to now being one of the world's top remixers, working with the likes of U2 and Noel Gallagher. Today he’s probably best known for his work on movie soundtracks, with the Ocean’s 11 franchise launching him on to the world stage.
I’ve always been baffled why one person loves jazz while another loves heavy metal, and even within the same genre such as dance music, why do I like two DJs and dislike Mr Tiesto? The answer to this conundrum may have been partly answered by a study at Cambridge University which collected data on musical tastes from a quarter of a million people over a decade. Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, it indicated our taste in music changes with age.
To summarise, we move from ‘intense’ music in youth to ‘unpretentious’ genres such as country, folk and blues as we grow older. Not a comforting finding for me as it indicates I’ve had an elderly taste in music since the crib – that’s the baby bed, not the house.
One occasion when personal taste in music is of no relevance is when, as parents, we set out to embarrass our children. If I live long enough to attend my children’s weddings, and can still stand, I will be the first idiot up dancing to whatever the ‘in’ music is at the time.
To end on a positive, whatever minor irritation I felt at the noise from Tiesto, his music was a vast improvement on the ambient soundtrack of my childhood, namely the incessant drone of low-flying army helicopters.
