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A couple of years ago each of my five adult children collectively mortgaged their homes to buy me a very flash and expensive set of noise cancelling headphones for father’s day. The gift was motivated by the observation that their mother was rather partial to a little peace and quite occasionally so the gift was a blessing which served both parties positively. I have a passion for music, all music that predates the 1980s. I was fortunate to have my youth coincide with the 60s, an era which, in my opinion, produced some of the greatest music and musicians of all time. I’m also rather partial to historical classics. But the real reason for my family’s generosity was to silence “talkback”.
But now that talkback is in full election mode even I am losing interest in the regurgitated opinions from commentators and callers as they promote their respective political bias. When one’s mind is made up the rest is just white noise. Which brings me back to my music. One of my daughters called in recently and was raving on about a new group she had discovered on YouTube. Modern music does not appeal to me one iota so I was rather sceptical towards her insistence I should listen to them. I find, at the best of times, that it is impossible to determine which gender the vocalist is on most modern songs as they all sound like twelve-year-olds. But I succumbed to her insistence. And I’m so glad that I did.
The group consists of five vocalists called Pentatonix. They are an American a cappella group. “a cappella” was something I had never heard of but I understand they perform without instrumental accompaniment. My daughter demanded I listen to their cover of “Hallelujah” before I scoffed. She pointed out their version had received over five hundred and sixty million views on YouTube. Impressive I thought! So I put my headphones on and listened. Wow! Is all I can say. What an astonishing performance. I will now write something that should never be penned by a bloke in his seventies. “The beatbox guy was awesome”.
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