The mosh pit of our car.

I hate driving long distances with my husband.
This is because we have completely opposite tastes in music and whenever we get in the car together, immediately there is friction over exactly WHAT we will listen to.
Because he drives and I don’t, it’s “his” car and therefore he is God, the almighty ruler of all things sonic.

I don’t mind the radio so much because he prefers to listen to old fart talk back radio stations. (He hates all the modern “doof doof” stuff.)
Ok, so I have to put up with really daggy old timer tunes, sporadically interspersed between gardening shows and listeners phoning up to complain to Dr Fix it about their irritable bowels and moldy toenails, but it’s better than the dreaded “other” stuff, which I will get to….

See, the older I get the more mellow my taste in music is becoming.
So mellow in fact that if my tastes get any more chilled I’ll soon be falling off my chair in an audio induced coma.

I figure there’s enough chaos in my mind already, which is why my ears cry out for the soothing massage of beautifully hypnotic soundscapes, instead of the stimulation of LOUD….HEAVY….JARRING….I WANT TO GO AND KILL SOMEONE….”music”.

If my husband and I were drug users (which we’re not) I would be the valium user and he’d be the coke head.
I’m already wired! He’s so laid back he may as well be asleep.

It’s only natural I suppose that we look for different things in music.

So, this “other stuff” that I am subjected (tortured and tormented with) at the moment anyway, happens to be a band called Nightwish.

I have TRIED to like it, and to be honest I do like about the first thirty seconds of most of their songs because it’s more in line with those lovely melodic soundscapes I was talking about….but then all hell breaks loose.
The volumes my husband plays it at, when this hell explodes from the speakers, makes my ears bleed….my organs shake. My bowels become weak and watery at the sudden sonic ASSAULT!
It’s frightening, and what’s MORE frightening is seeing what it does to my husband!

He begins beating on the steering wheel, and the dash, with his fingers, hands, elbows…whatever part of him he can manage…His head shakes about violently and he gets this crazed smile on his face as he wails and hoots and screams (He thinks he’s singing.)

I am always concerned, watching this metamorphosis occurring beside me and I do wonder about what other passing motorists must think when they spot the maniac in the vehicle beside them.

*I* would be worried, sharing the road with….that.

Seriously, never mind about the dangers of drink driving….music can be JUST as mind altering, apparently.

Like I said…I’ve tried to like it.
I can appreciate the speed of which the guitarist plays his instrument. I can “see” his fingers smoking on the strings. I understand the technical mastery this must take.
I can see the drummers double kick pedal going hell for leather there and feel the energy of the singer as she hits those impossibly high notes again and again and I HEAR the crescendo of music getting faster and faster and more and more full on and everything is just clanging and crashing and screeching and wailing and MY GOD…. I just want to rip somebody’s head off!!!

Honestly. It makes me hyperventilate.
I don’t know whether to fight or take flight or just simply pass out.
And that’s just after ONE song!

“Please…..can we NOT listen to this?”  I beg.

“Just one more…..” he says grinning wildly.

“Play Abba….play anything….John Williamson….Tubular bells?”

And he’s off again drumming on the steering wheel,  doing his ear piercing falsetto imitation of the Bee Gee’s, (He can’t ‘sing” any other way.) gyrating his buttocks, trying to throw his head clean off his shoulders… and all the while I’m breathing furiously into a paper bag in the seat next to him.

Then it’s time for one of his favourite songs from another band – Rammstein.
Doing his demonic rendition of “Du Hast” I admit defeat…and actually don’t mind this one.
It’s a little less panic inducing.
Heck… maybe I need a little time in the mosh pit?

Maybe I should start playing it at home? If anything, it might motivate me to get stuck into the ironing with some “gusto”.