Blame Game in NBA Lockout Is Beneficial To No One
October 4, 2011While We’re Waiting… Colt on Losing, Haden the Bright Spot and Too Much Moneyball
October 5, 2011
Andrew: Since this is going to be our first Rocktober post, I figured I would start at the beginning. What is your musical genesis story? What are your first memories of listening to music and when did you realize that perhaps music was going to be something important to you?
Craig: Mine is crazy. I remember seeing a promo contest on Nickelodeon with New Edition. They were the first group I ever obsessed about. My mom took me out to get their tapes. Had to have been 1985-ish when I was only five or six years old. I remember seeing that they had two tapes in the store and I remember thinking it wasn’t an option to not walk out with both of them. I mortgaged a couple future “allowances” in order to have that in my hands right then.
A: I always remember listening to records. As a very young child I loved Christmas records. We had a Sesame Street Christmas album and I just loved it. Then I started with my parents’ record collection and the first album I really remember loving and listening to over and over again was the Beach Boys’ “Endless Summer”. It was two LPs, and I would just listen to all four sides from start to finish over and over again. The melodies and harmonies just hooked me. So infectious. I also remember listening to a couple Paul McCartney albums, Blue Oyster Cult, Styx, Iron Butterfly, Santana. My dad also had Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” on 8-Track, which was just killer. My favorite of my dad’s records, though, was definitely 
Queen’s “A Night at the Opera”. Freddie Mercury’s voice was so unique and so powerful, and the way the songs all fit together just awakened the sense of what an “album” really is. I remember using my parent’s stereo to record it from vinyl to cassette. I then cut out a cover for the case out of construction paper and I recreated the album’s artwork by hand. I eventually figured out all the lyrics one at a time and made a lyric sheet to stuff inside the artwork. I suppose that was sort of the moment that, in retrospect, I really began to discover the obsession that music would be in my life. But I didn’t realize it at that time. I just thought the music was so cool and I was bored enough to do the artwork.
Those were among my earliest musical memories. But there were definitely a couple albums that really were my awakening, so to speak. The contemporary albums that really molded me into a rock fan. Before I get to mine, do you want to share some of the albums that really formed and molded you as a music fan? And maybe why they connected with you?
C: Other than the aforementioned New Edition, it was mostly influenced by my dad. He was a huge Motown fan growing up seeing those groups like the Temptations in small clubs in Cleveland. That translated into really soulful music later including Lionel Richie’s solo albums and things like Hall & Oates “Rock and Soul Part 1.” That album cover is one that sticks with me to this day almost as much as the songs.
I don’t know how it happened exactly, but the things that always stuck with me were intense, emotional, sad and cathartic songs. Party music has never been my style for whatever reason. For every party pop song, I’ll gladly take three “What’s Going On” or “Bernadette.”
From my earliest moments listening to music though, I could listen to a single song on repeat for hours. The earliest song I can remember listening to on repeat was “Rock With You” from The Jacksons Live album when Michael and the Jackson 5 toured in 1981. Something about the syncopation of the chorus made me keep hitting rewind.
It kind of makes me laugh to realize how much R&B and soul there was at the start and yet now I don’t listen to much of the pop music it spawned. But much like the Browns, you don’t have much choice in your first music whether it is passed from a parent or an older sibling or whoever. That’s what makes the journey to people’s eventual musical tastes so interesting.
A: Yeah, there’s no question my dad had a huge influence on my rooting interests in sports and his records sparked a different fire inside me. But that was like the proverbial primordial soup of my musical consciousness, before the beginning. There were a couple defining moments for me a couple years later, around middle school time. I remember a kid at school had gotten his hands on the 2 Live Crew album “As Nasty As They Wanna Be”, and I remember it just being the coolest thing. I mean, I thought the music was just awful, actually. But knowing this was something forbidden that my parents would hate me listening to (sorry mom and dad) just made it something I wanted to listen to that much more. This was probably first realization that music is art (yikes, did I really just imply that 2 Live Crew’s music was art?), and that it’s capable of pushing boundaries, asking questions, and just in general making people uncomfortable.
One of my best friends had an older brother who was much older than us. He had all the Guns N Roses albums….Appetite, Lies, and the two Use Your Illusions. We listened to “Use Your Illusion II” all the time. My friends and I all passed it around to make copies on cassette. It became the unofficial theme song for us. This was really when I was just beginning to understand modern rock music. I began to appreciate the direction music had gone since my dad’s old records.
From there, a kid on my bus overheard me talking about GNR and he told me I needed to listen to Metallica. I had never heard them at that point, so he gave me his Walkman and let me listen to “Enter Sandman”. This was the first moment I ever remember my mind being blown. It sounds funny now, but to a young middle school kid, hearing the powerful riffs with these almost catchy, hook-y vocal melodies was just nothing I had ever heard before. The kid on my bus gave me copies of the Black Album and the original Garage Days, and from there I absolutely knew that I loved music that was fast, aggressive, emotive, and just powerful. I remember friends listening to stuff like Anthrax, Megadeth, etc. I was probably on my to becoming a little metal-head until….
One day I was over at a friend’s house. It was the summer before 7th grade (summer of 1992). My friend popped in a tape and said “Just wait until you hear this band.” He hit play, and the song “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam played. I was floored by it. I bet we listened to that album four or five times in a row that day. He let me take the tape home and make myself a copy, and from that day on, Pearl Jam has been my favorite band in the world. I began to read as much as I could about the band and their influences. Their music opened my eyes to a more broad appreciation of music and I have spent my entire life, from that moment on, trying to discover as much new music as I could. Pearl Jam’s “Ten” remains to this day one of the most important albums of my life just because of the insane inspiration it gave me to focus so much of my life on music.
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So now we turn it over to you, our readers. I love hearing other people’s stories about their earliest musical memories and the first albums they listened to and/or the albums that helped shape their life in some way. So please, share your stories with us below. This month is about celebrating music, so we want to hear about the music that is important to you.
32 Comments
Ironically, my earliest memories of listening and really getting into music was when my dad would play GENESIS albums on his stereo every Saturday morning. I remember waking up to that and Elton John and some Toto, just for good measure. Billy Joel was an early favorite as well. Throughout the 80s, it eveolved from Michael Jackson to the hair bands and finally culminated in the 1991 release of Nirvana’s Nevermind. It was then, when I purchased my first CD, that my musical tastes were galvanized into Alternative Rock. Though I enjoy the occasional hip hop and hard rock tune, my musical preference has maintained along the Alternative path, spilling over into the ‘Epitaph’ punk of the 1990s and the Indie rock influences of today.
I used to listen the hell out of Shaq Diesel’s cassette while playing Bulls vs. Blazers as a kid.
My musical genesis? No, but I was only about 5 or 6 & Shaq was the man.
coincidentally, my babysitter’s son was huge into Colins & Genesis, so that was my first musical obsession. That & Weird Al.
I’m a few years older than you guys but my first real music memory was when i was a kid I got a record player for Xmas. My sister gave me some old albums she had like AC/DC Back in Black and Led Zepplin’s Physical Graffiti. I loved the Back in Black album and played it constantly at top volume. This annoyed my mom so much that she ended up replacing my AC/DC album with John Cougar Mellencamp and my Led Zepplin with Culture Club. Despite her efforts I remained a metal head, discarded those LP’s and bought cassettes with my allowance.
One of my most prominent memories involving music was around age 10-11, going through a crate of my Mom’s old vinyl records that I found in the attic. Most of it was cheesy soft rock and pop, but there was some good stuff in there. I remember hearing the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, Elton John, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Billy Joel, amongst others…
My parents had just purchased a new stereo system complete with turntable, so I used to pull a bunch of the records out and pretend like I was a DJ on a radio station while I was playing those old records.
Went through a country phase in the early-mid 90’s, which caused me to (unfortunately) ignore the grunge and alternative rock explosion of the time. I’ve made up for it, though, and that era has become one of my favorites. I’m pretty much straight classic rock and early 90’s grunge/rock now.
Interestingly enough, my very first concert was Billy Joel at the Coliseum in Richfield. The concert just happened to fall on the same day as The Drive, January 11th 1987.
But being born in 1972, my first music experiences involved listening to my parent’s vinyl’s. The two that shaped me and my two brothers considerably were:
The Eagles – Self-Titled
The Highwaymen – Encore
The laid-back folky sounds of both these albums sticks with me to this day as this type of music always feels like home.
Andrew – I’m with you. Pearl Jam and Ten did it for me. I listened to music up until that point, but was never really into a band before that. They reached a level reserved for Cleveland/Ohio State teams with Ten.
Pearl Jam hooked me with Ten and haven’t let go since.
Did you happen to catch the PJ 20 movie?
First concert was Beach Boys/Chicago at Blossom. First true appreciation and “moving” period of time also came in the mid-90s with Ten, Nevermind and Metallica’s black album. From there it bounced around a lot until college where it was four years of what I missed from being born in 1981 – Dead, Dylan, Floyd, Zeppelin, etc.
The one thing that’s always stuck around though is my appreciation of good hip-hop; not to be confused with the pop-ish stuff that permeates the top-40s. Public Enemy, Biggie, the members of NWA on an individual front, and Bone (due to the locality) can be thanked for this.
My music roots really mirror Andrew’s a lot. It makes sense we are about the same age.
My parents listened to Magic 105. So that was my first experience, listening The Coasters, Neil Diamond and all the other groups of the 50s and 60s. As I got into middle school and junior high I found Led Zeppelin, Queen, Rush,Pink Floyd, and GnR. I remember running up stairs with Appitite in my habd and tripping and breaking the tape. My favorite Zeppelin album in Houses, especially the B-side, my favorite 4 tunes they made. As I got into junior high, I found Metallica and Pearl Jam and that immediatly changed the way I wanted to listen to music. It inspired me to pick up the guitar and take lessons. Taking lessons lead me into the blues and learning really how music has evolved into what we listen to and what classic rock guys were influenced by.
My musical tastes have always been very broad, I loved listening to Ice Cube the Predator and Dr. Dre the Chronic. When I heard Korn, Deftones, Rage Against the Machine and Sublime, I loved how hip hop had influenced rock music and married together for a really unique sound for that time.
Since I have gotten older, I have found new forms of music I revisited my guitar teachings and really have gotten into Jazz. Mostly because of the improvisational nature of the music. It also helps me appreciate our music roots.
By far and away hard rock is still my favorite, I like to mix in Jazz and Hip Hop for some variety. Nothing beats the Black Album the first two Iron Maiden albums and Ten.
As an aside… Am I crazy or is Nirvana regarded so much higher now than they were when they were making music? I remember Pearl Jam being huge and Nirvana not anywhere as big.
I read the title and thought “They’re seriously starting with an article about Genesis?”
Then I realized Invisible Touch was one of the first albums I would play myself. Used to rock out to it with my friends while playing Super Mario Bros on the NES.
@Lloyd,
I caught PJ20 and thought it was pretty awesome. I had always been a fan of Pearl Jam’s stuff, but just recently started listening again after getting into Vedder’s solo stuff for a while.
My mom and dad first introduced me to music, and I’d always steal their cassettes of Billy Joel, the Eagles, Clapton, and James Taylor. Dad was more of a rock and blues guy, mom was more folk and country.
Seems like anymore I’m mostly a country and classic/alternative rock guy, although I’ll occasionally flip over to the hip hop channel on XM if that’s what I’m feeling.
Swig… I thought the same thing when I saw the title. Got the Invisible Touch cassette for Christmas 1986 along with the complete set of Constructicons (Transformers) and about 10 packs of Garbage Pail Kids. I was awesome!
my earliest musical memory is probably seeing KISS on tv,
my 1st real obsession was appetite for destruction, which led me to delve into other dangerous, real rock and roll records by artists like the stooges and MC5 who remain 2 of my favs today
I went to the PJ20 screening in Columbus. I thought it was very good for the most part, but I did have a few issues with it. I hated that they didn’t even really mention Dave A or Jack Irons, other than maybe once in passing. I felt they skimmed over Roskilde too lightly as well. But really, it was a very enjoyable 2 hours.
Andrew….did you go to the first night, or the second night? I was in the back sipping down some Octoberfest on the 2nd night. That place is a pretty cool concept, and only about 3 minutes from my house in Clintonville.
@Scott – I like how you said “First true appreciation and ‘moving’ period of time”.
That happened to me too with Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Had been into a lot of rap and r&b through HS. But I remember so clearly, sitting on my girlfriend’s couch in early 90’s and being introduced to Nirvana as they played on Saturday Night Live. So started my grunge stage as we headed to school at the Univ. of Toledo. Next thing I know my hair was down to my shoulders and I was shopping at the nearest thrift shop for my clothes. Good times.
The first album I ever owned, I won off a radio station in Canton, Oh. WINW 1520am when I was in 6th grade back in 1978. It was the “Grease” soundtrack. My sister and I played that thing all the time. I couldn’t tell you how many needles we wore out on my dad’s turntable.
For all you PJ fans, how awesome is Eddy Veddor in the movie singles?
Apropos (or ironic) that you named this initial music post– #1 Genesis. That’s where I place this band in my personal music history. Not the crappy, post Peter Gabriel version that jumped the shark with Abacab and Invisible Touch. (Without PG, Wind and the Wuthering, Trick of the Tail, and Duke were all still pretty terrific albums. And I challenge anyone to name a better sounding live album than Seconds Out.
But,for sheer lyrical and musical brilliance, Gabriel-era Genesis was unmatched. For your consideration–“Supper’s Ready”. 26 minutes of insane vision, artistry, intelligence, performance art, and music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M58wE8GTGp4&feature=related
As a child of the 90s, I grew up listening to the grunge explosion and that really shaped my tastes. I remember when I first heard Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Under the Bridge”, I was hooked. My tastes have changed as I would consider my self a metalhead, but I appreciate all the classic stuff that lead to modern rock/metal. I can always listen to a good Led Zeppelin song or even the Beatles (although I confess to not really enjoying most of their stuff)
@Spencer – you worry me friend…how could anyone not enjoy most of The Beatles’ stuff?!
lots of awesome stuff here!! most of use are in or near the same age of music.
i grew up in cleveland heights but my family owned some land in Chardon. I distinctly remember driving with my dad on a hot, sunny summer day listening to Don Mclean’s American Pie and being blown away. I knew I could never be a banker after listening to music.
My first concert: 1983 – the Michael Jackson Victory Tour. that’s right, MJ. 26th row on the floor of old Municipal Stadium. I still have the ticket.
oh, by the way, Abe – i do believe that you’re wrong when you say “for sheer lyrical and musical brilliance, Gabriel-era Genesis was unmatched.” I’ve listened to Dylan’s “Blood On The Tracks” and The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper.” I’d say they matched what Genesis did, and then some.
i grew up as a 90s child, so there was alot of grunge influence in my music back then, but i also had a brother 10 years older who listened to almost anything, so my main music attachment was around 2000 with blink-182 and Chili Peppers. since then, ive grown into more of a metalhead with groups like Avenged Sevenfold and Stone Sour as the main music, but i always enjoy and older Zeppelin or Beatles song, maybe even something by the Rolling Stones. i guess i would say im more into the harder rock, but i have every genre except for country in my itunes. picking just one group to say where my music attachment truly started is almost impossible when i heard the same stuff my brothers listened to from about the time i was born
I have grown up around music. I can remember my mom having different albums going and my dad coming home from work and putting albums on and listening to them for most of the evening. His tastes were so varied, too. ABBA one night, Tchaikovsky the next night, bagpipe music following that, Brownsville Station, Grand Funk Railroad – I could just keep going, but he was all over the place musically. He just has very diverse tastes. When I was twelve my mom and dad bought me a boom box. I was so excited. Of course, what good are boom boxes unless you have cassettes to play on them? My dad bought me two big tapes by two big artists of the day: Michael Jackson “Thriller”, and Bryan Adams “Cuts Like A Knife”. The rest is history. I carry my iPod with me everywhere I go, and I am constantly on the lookout for new music. A friend of mine just gave me a copy of “Austrian Death Machine”. Anyone else ever heard of it?
“I remember thinking it wasn’t an option to not walk out with both of them.”
Craig, don’t you know, you can’t hurry love. You’ll just have to wait.
Mama said that. Pfffssshhh…
Foreigner, DMX, and Fleetwood Mac!
For the first few years after my father left, my mother and I lived with my grandmother (this would have been 84-85) for a few years. My grandmother would play records in the living room of her favorites–Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Elvis, Kris Kristofferson, Hank Sr.–while cleaning the house on the weekends. When mom remarried, my dad’s family owned a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar out on 18 near Litchfield, and they had a jukebox that was tough to beat: lots of classic rock and Motown. Dad was (and still is) a Magic 105 guy and huge fan of the Beach Boys, which came in handy for our 6th grade concert when we performed a collection of their songs. My aunt was (and is) the family Beatles fanatic. My stepbrother, several years older than I, would be responsible for my introduction to and continuing love for the Beasties and later Sublime. A friend in grade school friend taped me a copy of ‘Straight Outta Compton’, and later ‘The Chronic’, hooking me on the gangsta rap movement. I was always a Pearl Jam (‘Ten’ was an absolute revelation) over Nirvana guy, though their MTV Unplugged performance still gives me chills. Saw 311, Rage Against the Machine, and No Doubt all in concert. Made it to BuzzardFest over at Blossom more than once. To this day I own every Boyz II Men, Jodeci, and Shai album ever made. I can still remember the time and place when I first heard ‘2pacalypse Now’ (I must have listened to “Trapped” at least a dozen times in a row when I first heard it) and Biggie’s ‘Ready to Die’. DMX, Jay-Z, Bone Thugs…too many others to name from those high school days. College and college friends introduced me to Alkaline Trio, The Streets, Del the Funky Homosapien, The Roots, Handsome Boy Modeling School, the Avett Brothers, and about a million others. I’ve even taken to liking country just a bit in my old age. But my go-to road trip music to this day? Johnny Cash. Thanks, grandma.
I grew up on the Grateful Dead. mostly the old folk – blue grass stuff
First exposure to music was dad playing Beatles “Revolver.” I grew up loving music but mostly taking what Ohio radio was giving me which in the 70s to the 80s wasn’t a whole lot.
First time I was blown away was the entire year of 1985. I was 15 at the time. I’m still amazed by the level of music that came out that year. Here’s the short list of 1985 albums that shaped my musical tastes:
The Cult – Love “She Sells Sanctuary” blew me away
The Cure – Head on the Door “Close to me”
The Replacements – Tim Entire album was sick.
The Smiths – Meat is Murder
Husker Du – New Day Rising pure punk rock
Jesus & Marychain – Psychocandy
New Order – Low life
What is interesting in retrospect is how this shaped social circles within groups of friends. All these bands led me away from the types of music I had previously been listening too (Van Halen, Dokken, Ratt, etc). As people decided what music they were drawn to, it started to define who they were and subsequently labels were attached: Metalhead, Punk, Prep, Goth, all being good or bad depending on your point of view.
I am older than most of you (born in 1964) with 4 older siblings. I never had control of the record player (thankfully) until they all moved away.
Fortunately they had good taste for the most part. Beatles, Stones, Who, James Gang, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Marvin Gaye. (Mom threatened to sit on any new Rolling Stones records that came in the house, so new records were kept under wraps.)
First Concert: 1979 Peter Gabriel solo concert after second album. (Thanks Mike and Tom for taking me.)
In college at the University of Dayton, the best party music was decidedly Motown. I remember the floor moving up and down due to 40 drunken fools (me included) dancing to “Can’t help myself” while screeching the lyrics. This is not to say that there wasn’t a lot of Zeppelin, Police, Van Halen and Warren Zevon.
After college, my favorite band that is no longer together is The Replacements. The lovable losers from Minneapolis just hit me the right way. Hearing the live version of “Another Girl, Another Planet” still gives me chills. They were on fire. Saw their last show in Grant Park where they left the roadies playing the instruments and drove away on the bus to break up.
Lived in downtown Chicago after college with some friends. Saw many a blues show as well as a ton of live music due to the numerous street festivals that featured live bands. (The local band The Slugs were a fun band to see live…) I remember where I was the first time I heard “Smells like Teen Spirit” as well as Howard Stern playing the opening chords to each of the Pearl Jam 10 songs and declaring it “perfect” – he was in fact correct.
My favorite band that is still together is Wilco. Don’t care where they want to follow their musical muse, I will listen.
Don’t see as many live shows since I am 47, but looking forward to seeing the original lineup of The Jayhawks in a few weeks here in Atlanta. Love me some Karen Grotberg piano fill work as demonstrated in the fantastic album “Hollywood Town Hall”.
There is still great music being released today. It is just difficult to find them with the death of any variety on radio. Here are a few bands I think are releasing some excellent music: My Morning Jacket; Fleet Foxes; Girls; The Raveonettes; John Doe; Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks; Camera Obscura; TV Girl.
Thanks for the interesting topic. It made me remember some interesting times.
I was all excited for this venture into music, and then of course I couldn’t get in front of a computer yesterday to respond. But looking at some of the other responses, maybe it’s a good thing ’cause now I can post this and not too many people will come back to read it!
First concert I remember: Boyz II Men, with opening act Babyface. Thinking about that now, funny and awesome all at once.
First time affected by music: My first year at overnight camp, my bunk used to listen to some music every night, and for some reason, these 2 songs got played more than any other: Satellite by Dave Matthews Band, and Hurricane by Bob Dylan. When I got home from camp, went out and bought the DMB cd (the ‘rents had Dylan’s albums). Turned into a huge DMB fan after that – not your annoying, obsessed, hippie freak, but I was scrapping together all the allowance I could find, going to Record Revolution in Coventry and buying up all the DMB bootleg albums I could get my hands on. Thinking back on that now, I was way too young to appreciate the subtle differences between shows, and then my entire cd collection got stolen during college so I never had the chance to truly appreciate it when I grew up.
I really like the fact that I enjoy lots of different types of music. I think the music that influenced and really caught my attention the most was the early 90’s NW grunge stuff; Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden and so on and so on. As mentioned in the main story “Ten” from Pearl Jam is to this day one of my favorite albums of all-time. I dreamed of living in that area growing up because I could only imagine what it would be like to be in that area during that time and being a part of some of the best music ever in my opinion.
One of the coolest things I got to do this past summer was while I was vacationing in Seattle, WA I went to the EMP Museum (Experience Music Project) and they had this huge exhibit on Nirvana and the early 90’s music scene in Washington and Oregon. Truly awesome.