Voices
Posted in Old blogger by Twenty Major on June 29th, 2006
Aren’t people’s voices funny? They can give you such a false impression of a person. Of their age, their appearance, their background, their inside leg measurement.
I heard a song today by a recently departed blogger and although the music is not to my taste it was his voice that surprised me. I’d always imagined him with a deep, gravelly, gut rumbly voice and it wasn’t that at all. It was kind of reedy.
When I, in my long distant past, used to work on the radio people always thought I was much older than I actually was. I have the voice of a 134 year old apart from when I drink. When I drink it’s much older sounding.
It’s not so much when I drink but the next day it’s like listening to Barry White put through some kind of computer programme to make his voice even deeper. And it’s not even the deeposity, it’s the grumbly, gravelly, gargling with sand and broken glass sound to it that makes it different.
I used to use that to my advantage when recording commercials. I would go out the night before and drink myself blind. The next day in the recording studio was always hell. Every take felt like I was going to crap my pants and the sound-proof booth was sadly not fart-proof as the rippers I let would often find their way into the engineers studio and he’d call me a stinky cunt.
“How the fuck do you think I feel in here?”, I’d reply even though the stinkier the fart the more proud we men are of it.
You shouldn’t judge people by their voice though. A DJ friend of mine used to get phone calls from this girl who sounded seriously gorgeous and eventually he arranged to meet her outside the Stephen’s Green centre in Dublin. She said she would wear a red t-shirt and she had blonde hair. My DJ chum was excited and perhaps quite aroused when he strolled towards the meeting place.
That was until he saw one of the ugliest people he had ever seen wearing a red t-shirt with blonde hair looking around for someone. He was a gentleman though.
He just kept walking.