Music: the soundtrack of my life

I love sports, especially football, but I have many other interests, one of which is music.

My days would be bland without music, the soundtrack of my life.

One of my prized possessions is my vast CD collection, which currently totals over 300, with almost every genre of music well-represented: classic rock, alternative rock, heavy metal, pop, techno, ska, punk, hip-hop, R&B, oldies, Christian rock and classical.

My love of music recently increased exponentially with the acquisition of an iPod and XM Radio.

Besides books, I hadn’t bought myself anything significant in awhile, so I decided to ante up an exorbitant amount of money to purchase an 80 GB iPod on Christmas Eve.

I instantly feel ill when I think about the price I paid for the iPod, but I don’t regret snatching the portable jukebox, which has provided me with hours of excitement.

My iPod is loaded with all my favorites, everybody from U2 and the Beatles to Frank Sinatra and Jars of Clay. If you’re a passionate music fan, I couldn’t imagine not having an iPod.

A day after buying an iPod, my beautiful girlfriend Dawn surprised me with one of the best Christmas presents I have ever received, XM Radio.

I was apprehensive about installing XM, a satellite radio service, in my car because I didn’t want to have to pay the required monthly fee to access XM, especially after having paid a king’s ransom for my iPod.

After a month of deliberation — I’m a terrible procrastinator — I decided to install XM, one of the best decisions I have made in a long time.

XM offers over 170 channels of (mostly) commercial-free music, not to mention news, sports and talk and entertainment.

Having access to every genre of music while I’m on the go has been a godsend, particularly when I make the long trip to visit Dawn on the northside of Atlanta.

There has been one downside to my love of XM’s wide variety of music — potential car accidents.

Whenever a songs plays on XM that I love and haven’t heard before, I reach for my notebook and pen and jot down the name of the artist and song, both of which appear on the XM Radio receiver, which is great for someone like me who wants to know who sings each song and what is the name of each song.

The problem is, in an effort to grab my notebook and pen, I’ve come dangerously close to getting into a car accident or three. I cannot afford to let my love of music lead me to become a member of the Demolition Derby Drivers Association.

If you ever see me around town, either hanging out or in between covering sporting events for The Citizen, feel free to approach me and initiate a conversation about music. Some of my favorite topics pertaining to music are what are viewed as classic albums — U2’s “Joshua Tree” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” certainly qualify — what are the five best albums of all time, the downfall of hip-hop (it isn’t what it used to be) and debating who are better bands (for example, the Metallica vs. Guns N’ Roses debate never gets old).

I’ll leave you, dear readers, with some of my favorite quotes regarding how music is more than simply sounds and entertainment.

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.” - Ludwig van Beethoven

“Music is an outburst of the soul.” - Frederick Deluis

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

“Music is the art of thinking with sounds.” - Jules Combarieu

“Music is the vernacular of the human soul.” - Geoffrey Latham