I love YouTube.

I love how easily I can discover musical gems and talent and learn about performers and their careers. Every time I read a thoughtful comment about an artist's talent, something that expresses more than "that was awesome, man, thx 4 uploading it!11!", it reminds me of how I wish I had had a proper music education. I envy those who can read music, sing on key, play an instrument, write lyrics or songs.

All I know is what I like, what moves me, what stays with me, what I want to hear in replay mode all day. I do my best to express the reasons but I lack the technical knowledge of what makes great talent great and as such, my vocabulary is limited. I can tell a verse from a chorus in a song, identify a hook and recognize a great lick but is that an A, C or E note? No effing clue. Mind you, once, when I was young (yeah, that'd be in the previous century), I was crossing a busy downtown street with my friend, a singer and jazz music fan, and realizing a car was fast approaching (okay, we were jaywalking), let out and held for a few seconds some type of cry that my friend proclaimed a "perfect C!" My proudest music moment. That friend is now a vocal coach and professional singer, so I hold her opinion dear.

That very friend used to come over to my house and discuss big band music with my father. She was fourteen. We were in our second year of high school. Big band and jazz. This is what the girl listened to at fourteen. You know what I listened to at fourteen? What all my other friends were listening to. My father called it "noise" but now it's called "classic rock".

My mom sold my father's stacks of LPs (long playing vinyl records for any youngin's reading this) at a garage sale when she sold the house. I can still picture the lucky buyer's face, all bug-eyed and drooling, as he was looking through the jazz and easy listening titles: multiples of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Herb Alpert, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Connie Francis, Doris Day, Engelbert Humperdinck, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby...sold the whole lot for about five bucks. I cry thinking about it now. That's also when I parted with my "The World of the Partridge Family" double album and DC's "Rock Me Baby". A different buyer for my little collection though.

So, it's thanks to David Cassidy that I find myself on YouTube these days clicking from one related video to another searching for velvet voices and sweet melodies. My father used to say that a song wasn't a song if it didn't have a melody. One day, I had enough courage to ask him what a melody was. Something you can whistle, he said.

Thanks for the melodies, Dad.