From the late 1960s on, I have been gifted with having a series of publications publish my music reviews. My love for music started much earlier than that, though — in all likelihood, probably from the womb, because my mother loved music, our home filled always with the popular music of the day, which seemed to give my mother life, and succeeded almost always in bringing joy into our home.
The gift of the love of music was passed on to my children, by both their mother and me, both of us from an early age finding succour and sustenance in music that embedded itself into the lifeblood of our lives.
My son, Jude Nathan Tomlin, extended our family’s love of music beyond mere singing in the home, or playing music on the home or car stereo: Jude makes music, and has traveled the world as a progressive house D.J., playing his own special brand of house music. Most, if not all of his music collection is on vinyl, because he (and many others) experience the sound of music that emanates from vinyl as fuller, warmer and more intimate.
Over the years, every now and then, Jude would run across a piece of music that was not intended to be digitized, and had not been digitized, but as he knew that almost all of my music is either on CD, DVD or mp3, Jude would take pity on his poor dad and convert the vinyl “song” he had discovered into a high quality mp3 to add to my music collection (although he’d find the juxtaposing of the words “high quality” and “mp3” a curious construction indeed, and mutually exclusive concepts … still and all …).
Even today, I could not find Transglobal Underground’s remix of Dub Tribal’s Elastic Reality anywhere as an mp3, or on YouTube, so I uploaded the “song”, which you’ll find at the top of today’s Music Sunday column.
I recall one day not all that many years ago, when Jude arrived home from his travels, his sitting down at my computer, whereupon he added Transglobal Underground’s remix of Dub Tribal’s Elastic Reality to my iTunes music collection, and subsequently to my iPhone’s 5000+ song collection of music. I find the song calming, as does Jude, and as he knew I would.
Jude continues often, if less often than previously, to provide me with the gift of music, as he did some years ago with the second song on today’s Music Sunday roster, an historical piece of music by The Art of Noise, featuring the late British actor John Hurt performing the narrative vocal, the song about Claude Debussy, titled, The Holy Egoism Of Genius.
