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MUSIC SLAVE
See what I've been
licking up lately: A
complete list of my iTunes database! I
showed this picture to a friend of mine (Toaph) and
he mentioned it was weird in a cool way, no one would know what it meant.
Well, this page is not to explain this picture, only to illustrate how I feel
about music...and no, it is not strictly a sexual thing. My
tastes in music vary widely, it is mostly by luck or by recommendation that I
find all the good stuff that I listen to. However, my choices in my personal
collection could be recognized into four categories: 1.
Alternative rock (the weird
stuff you don't hear about) 2.
Classic rock (60's and 70's
music) 3.
Pop/disco/hip-hop/anything good that
got popular 4.
Various oddities that I can't
get rid of You will find my favorite
bands explained under the links in the above list, but there's more to the
story...music has a bit of history in my life. When I was about 4 years old, the first song I can remember
really moving me was Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman", just because it
had a great drumbeat and it was a funny song, completely tongue-in-cheek.
From there it was select tracks from the fifties and my parents' favorites in
country music (which I was much pickier about hearing). This common selection
would include anything by the Eagles and Creedence Clearwater Revival,
"Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain", "I Fought the
Law", "Somebody Robbed the Glendale Train", "The Devil
Went Down to Georgia" (which I really liked), anything by Patsy Cline,
"Harper Valley P.T.A.", "Take This Job and Shove It",
anything by Alabama, "Panama Red", and "D-I-V-O-R-C-E". My first loves in music were major pop stars....Janet
Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Madonna. I still like a little Janet Jackson and
very scant Madonna, but Paula Abdul has been crossed off my list, save one
song called "Vibeology", which is still really dumb but it has
trumpets and a killer beat in some parts. Oh yes, I also used to like Mariah
Carey and Amy Grant. I think they were the first to go when I looked at my CD
collection and realized that some of the stuff I had I now considered
garbage, mainly because most of the songs were about things that would never
happen in any sort of reality I'm used to.
Then when I turned 17,
I was on my way with a group of kids from and not from my high school to a
field studies week up at the Adirondacks and a friend from my high school was
sitting in front of me. I asked her if she had anything to listen to since I
had worn out my Peter Gabriel tape (my first dive into truly good music). She
offered up a tape where she had recorded most of the album "Out of
Time" by R.E.M. on one side and "Automatic for the People" by
the same band on the other side. I halfheartedly agreed to listen to it,
thinking that there were a few songs I liked by them. I was not prepared to
be blown away by what entered into my ears for the next hour. I don't know if
you read the Alternative Music page yet or
not, but I talk about R.E.M. on that page already and don't feel like
repeating myself. R.E.M. then paved the way to open-mindedness and Nirvana
(yes, the band). During
my year and a half of college, I would listen to the alternative rock station
to hear R.E.M., and all of a sudden other bands started to sound really good.
The first non-R.E.M. song to grab my attention was by the Butthole Surfers of
all people, a song called "Pepper". I remember having to hide that
CD from my mother. I also became very attracted to the Smashing Pumpkins, Liz
Phair, Weezer, Stone Temple Pilots, Porno for Pyros, Tori Amos and Beck
growing on me little by little. Alanis Morissette, Pearl Jam, Suzanne Vega,
and Simon and Garfunkel also grabbed my attention around this time. Groups like
the Eels, Cracker, Elastica, Cake, the Dandy Warhols, Jamiroquai, and
Everclear were also coming on strong but they did not attract me until much
later.
Then I got my first job
and was introduced to two music groups that at the time were ignored but now
weigh heavily in my collection...The Beatles and They Might Be Giants. I had
heard a lot of the Beatles and a little of They Might Be Giants in the past
but did not pay too much attention until my coworker, a
straight-as-a-board-army guy, was singing along to these two groups. He was
shocked when I recognized "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", but did not know it
was the Beatles. My first Beatles album was very modern ("The 2nd
Anthology") but it had "Lucy in the Sky With
Diamonds" and I was enamored with that song. I found out there was a
lot more to the Beatles than I had originally thought, and for an album of
discarded outtakes to revolutionize my outlook on music like the Beatles did
says something about them, I think. I also started listening to Led Zeppelin
in a lesser degree. My fanaticism about them grew slowly over a period of
three years. It
was about this time I realized I was a music junkie. No matter what happened
in my life, there were just so many CD's to purchase. It was a very
experimental phase for me with a lot of failures and wasted money. R.E.M.,
the Beatles, Beck, Tori Amos, the Smashing Pumpkins, Peter Gabriel, and Liz
Phair survived this phase. Some I picked back up on later (Led Zeppelin, for
example) and some I dropped completely (like Frente!). I
picked back up slowly (after a cleansing trip to
California and a move to Ithaca) and kept my
ears ever so slightly more open. I started to work at a coffee shop after a
dry spell of very few CD's and discovered classic rock while trying to get
Beatles and Led Zeppelin songs. The first obsession to come out of this
period was "No Time" by Guess Who, which of course was the subject
of a joke: "Who's this band?" "Guess Who." "No,
really, I don't know, who is it?" "Guess Who." "I have no
idea!" Other bands like the Doors, Queen, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin,
CSN and CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and many downloaded songs and
compilations surfaced with a vengeance. I loved it.
I met Daniel Bryant,
and the one thing we had in common was our obsession with music, that and he
could play mandolin and fulfill my fetish very
well, and my classic rock tastes grew. Then we had a horrible breakup and I
kept my ear open for alternative again. Out of this I got reacquainted with
Cracker, the Crash Test Dummies, and the Talking Heads. The last one rocked
my world. David Byrne is marvelously nuts. Then
I met Nessa and my music tastes widened
exponentially. She introduced me to great bands like Ween, Blur, the Dandy
Warhols, Folk Implosion, Elastica, Ruby, Love and Rockets, Duran Duran, Nine
Inch Nails, and ohGr. It was weird and wonderful stuff once you got used to
it. Through this open-minded experience I began to give the 90's songs I had
originally wrote off a second chance and I found I really loved them. The
only song I ever did a solo Karaoke to was "Santa Monica" by
Everclear. Then
my mother died and I didn't pay attention to much for a little while. Almost
seven months later I met Toaph and up went another
spike, including Grateful Dead, a grander appreciation of Pink Floyd (how
many CD's of theirs did I have before I met him? 4. How many do I have now?
All of 'em.), Marcy Playground, Blotto, and still continues to turn me on to
select songs, plus a band I didn't pay much attention to and I'm finding what
I missed, dada. My
friend Martin turned me on to three bands: Supertramp, Electric Light
Orchestra, and the Moody Blues, the last one playing right to my hippy
nature. Since
then it's been discoveries out of nowhere. For instance, bands like the Eels
and Gomez I had known one song and sampled the rest, being pleasantly
surprised on occasion. There's been some good things on the radio lately,
like OutKast's "Hey Ya!", Maroon 5, and Jet's "Are You Gonna
Be My Girl". David Bowie had a recent great song called "New Killer
Star". R.E.M. has done a good song recently called "Animal"
but you can tell they're getting old. The Rolling Stones ought to stop. Bands
like the Dandy Warhols, Beck, and Marcy Playground, keep 'em coming. You guys
haven't failed me yet.
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