Laughing with Di

I recently watched an interview with Paul Newman on an Inside the Actors’ Studio rerun. During the Q and A period, when asked what his favorite sound was, he paused for a bit, smiled, and said, “A V8.”
I thought of all the ways we listen to music. My “play list” is choosing a few favorite CDs, sitting back in my recliner and hearing explosive sound coming from great speakers. This is rare nowadays when a lot of music sound is coming from cell phones, computers or through TV speakers instead of a good sound bar.
Did you know that back in the Eighties the length of a CD was determined by “Mr. Sony” and “Mr. Philips” to be 74 minutes of sound in order to accommodate Beethoven’s Ninth. Farther back than that, during the Dark Ages when I was a youth (grin), if you were listening to the Symphony on a 33 1/3 record on a record player you would have to stop the process and turn it over to complete the experience. Not that I was listening to Beethoven when I was a teenager. First we had 78’s. Then we had 33 1/3’s. (Why?) How does math always creep into my life? And, finally, the smallest record version, the 45. We progressed with music stored on 8-Track tapes, cassette Boom Boxes, DVDs and Blue Ray (movie music), tiny MP3 players. Youngsters today get their music from the Cloud, iTunes, apps, streaming sources, car music systems, etc.
Music also meant dancing with a purpose. We named our dances, the Twist, the Bugaloo, the Monkey, the Stroll. Nowadays, dance moves are named after geometric figures, like the Triangle; food, like Chicken Noodle Soup; or maybe nerdy guys, like The Dougie.
Well, even if there were no music in his racecar, I would’ve taken a ride with Paul Newman any day!