I woke up today thinking about a short conversation I had a few years ago where I was asked how I got to where I was, musically. I responded trying to be relevant to the moment, the topic already at hand, and consequently didn't really say much. Right after leaving I realized I could have said a lot more than I did.
Today, I thought about making a concise-as-possible list of my musical history. I've done something like this before, in the past, but I didn't have many readers then (not that I do now, either) so it might be worthwhile to bring up again.
So, I'll just jump right into it.
***
Birth - 8 years old:
My parents listened to oldies (50s/60s pop) and popular hits (Michael Jackson) on the radio in the car sometimes. We had a turntable for a while that was never used. My dad collected memorabilia sometimes to resell at his business but the musical part of it wasn't a specialty until I was a teenager. My siblings were out of the house by the time I was old enough to consciously intellectually realize that they were my siblings, and my closest-living sibling can't hear so there was never any music when I visited their house. I got sick the week we started learning music (how to play a flutophone/recorder and read notation) in school and fell way behind, and never quite picked up music again. We didn't have cable a lot of my childhood, so I only saw music videos once in a while, and I was usually too young to "get it". I had a Raffi tape that I listened to a lot for a while, and a Jem tape that I hated, and a kids' travel tape full of kid songs that I lost, but most of my tapes were books and my only cassette player after a point was a broken Teddy Ruxpin. I thought Michael Jackson and Madonna were interesting, and I really liked Paula Abdul circa "Cold Hearted" and "Opposites Attract", more because they were interesting videos than interesting songs. I remember my mom saying she liked Janet Jackson and Stevie Nicks.
8 - 12 years old:
I was suddenly around a family that could hear, and consequently was introduced to lots of music for the first time. I didn't really trust their judgment, so I distanced myself from their music a bit. I remember waking up one morning to a serenade of "Under The Bridge" by Red Hot Chili Peppers. I also spent a lot more time alone or with just other kids, and ended up spending more and more time watching (or background 'watching') MTV/VH1 and, when I was 11, a short-lived rap/R&B channel. For a while I really liked Prince. I HATED Mariah Carey. The new, early 90s Madonna sucked. I loved En Vogue. I had TLC's "Waterfalls" stuck in my head when it got popular. I thought Ace of Base were interesting. I joked around a lot about "Sweat" by Inner Circle. My favorite song was "Crocodile Rock" by Elton John until I started personally identifying with my music and semi-listening to the lyrics when I was 11-12, and naturally gravitated to lyrics that were more alienated. When I was 9-10 I had an oldies phase, but at 11-12 I spent more brain time on commercial rap and R&B. Nirvana and Soundgarden irritated the fuck out of me. My first crush liked Green Day. I started listening to the radio on purpose.
13 - 14:
"I Wish" by Skee-lo. Nine Inch Nails blew up and though I didn't know who they were yet and couldn't identify their songs offhand, I liked them, especially "Head Like A Hole". I was introduced to Garbage ("Stupid Girl") and No Doubt ("Spiderwebs"). I spent a lot of time listening to a radio station that played 80s and early 90s dance/electronic and smoother-toned pop like Depeche Mode. I made friends with a girl who liked Metallica and it blew my mind. I liked what little I had heard of them ("Enter Sandman"), too! Together we made fun of the Spice Girls when they got popular. I started checking out the alternative rock radio station. They had a hard-on for Pearl Jam, who I still hated.
15:
The summer I turned 15, my favorite song was "Semi-charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind. The following school year, I met or made friends with the alternative lifestyle groups at school (goths, slackers, smokers, lesbians), and though music wasn't a major part of my time with them, I gradually picked up bands from them. I still didn't have a CD player and my house was a tin box that never had food in it, so I couldn't participate, but I picked up that Marilyn Manson and Tool fans were pretentious, self-important assholes. After a while of the alternative station, I started trying the "metal" station. AC/DC's "Big Balls" and Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" and Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" didn't really sink in. I really, really, really liked Stabbing Westward and Gravity Kills, and I figured out who Nine Inch Nails was.
16:
I discovered Korn either right before or in the summer of turning 16 and I was their Target Audience. I pictured myself singing in place of Jon, something I'd never honestly done or considered before. Monster Magnet's "Space Lord" was popular for a few months and I instantly fell in love with Dave's voice and dodgy lyrics. I met a couple of boys that helped me appreciate the finer details of the band Tool by sharing "Swamp Song" lyrics with me and listening to me go on and on about how AMAZING!!! the song "H" is when I discovered that and taping me a copy of Aenima and being the reason behind the first time I ever cried to a song. One of the boys also discovered Korn right when I did, so we had more to talk about, and seemed to go through their older albums at the same rate of discovery. I got a stereo for Christmas, and I bought Astro-creep:2000 (White Zombie) and a bunch of Stone Temple Pilots CDs (the one "grunge" band I could stand as a teen) and a few others I've already touched on. My first mp3 was Tool's "Stinkfist", which was actually a badly converted wav file.
17:
I got sick of Korn almost immediately upon turning 17. Staind filled their spot for a month or two and then I learned of Slipknot. I went fucking stupid over Slipknot because their first album demands that kind of reaction. Meanwhile, I re-discovered Nine Inch Nails, concentrating on The Downward Spiral and The Fragile. I was sad and angry a lot. Then A Perfect Circle debuted, and Mer de Noms was the first complete album I ever "stole" off the internet (I bought the album as soon as it was released). My mom tried to wake me up in the morning for school by blaring MTV, so I got to hear a few artists I probably wouldn't have otherwise pursued at that time, like Jennifer Lopez and the newer version of No Doubt and Madonna's awful gothy crap.
18 - 19:
I saw my first concert: A Perfect Circle opening for Nine Inch Nails. I obtained a boyfriend who was just getting into playing music and for some reason gravitated towards nu metal at that time. He made me listen to Insane Clown Posse, so I made him listen to Tool, and I consequently probably changed his life (read: turned him into a bigger music snob). I had to tell him what the lyrics for Marilyn Manson songs were, which was really odd because in my high school social group I was the "innocent" girl who couldn't possibly like anything metal/heavy/extreme, yet it seemed that I was probably the only one who was actually listening to the music. I went through a long phase of listening to nearly just NIN, Manson, Tool, Deftones, Stabbing Westward, Alice In Chains, System of a Down, and newly discovered Nonpoint and Mudvayne. I started being able to properly discuss music with others, leading to my first ever real music argument which was about Black Sabbath. I didn't like Black Sabbath then and really only knew the song "Paranoid" but the stupidity emitting forth from my boyfriend's assertion that they sucked because Ozzy did or the song "Paranoid" did was so ridiculous I had to say something.
19 - 21:
I started feeling physically ill whenever I listened to music along the lines of anything I've mentioned so far, especially Tool, so I toned it WAY down and experimented a lot for a while. At first it was bands like AIC and Nirvana, then I headed towards The Strokes, The White Stripes, Placebo, Bjork, and Le Tigre. That got boring so I tried new radio stations, centering on classic rock (mostly late 60s and 70s). I never really swallowed up any classic rock bands like I had of bands before, but I felt like I was learning something and spending my time wisely. When I was 20 a friend of a friend gave away his CD collection, and I discovered L7 and started listening to Led Zeppelin on purpose. An old boyfriend recommended Morphine. A new boyfriend reminded me a lot of Pink Floyd, so I chased them down. He tried to share a lot of bands with me, including some house music, Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Incubus... I didn't like him trying to influence my decisions, plus he couldn't see that I wanted a raw, less produced Bikini Kill, or maybe 80s David Bowie, if I was feeling generous, sound. Monster Magnet's Monolithic Baby album reminded me to check out other bands like them, but for the short term I needed to listen to just 80s music to get away from my ceremoniously ex-boyfriend's crap as well as classic rock.
22:
KYUSS!!!! I had a few Kyuss songs in my collection, some from the past year or so, and one from when I was 18 and Napster still worked, but it was time to discover them for real. I downloaded their entire discography. I refused to download Monster Magnet but I similarly went through their discography of what I had obtained thus far. After learning this, a livejournal friend recommended that I listen to the band Sheavy. I learned about Unida, Dozer, and Nebula in the meantime. Sheavy caused me to really listen to Black Sabbath (Ozzy-era, anyway). I found and then was constantly referred back to StonerRock.com. I began to learn about the people behind my music, something I'd never once given a flying fuck about (unless it was Maynard, but even then). I joined last.fm and it recommended me in the direction of a ton of bands. I "met" my first real musician, the drummer from Sheavy.
23 - 24:
First off, I got high speed internet and downloaded a collection of the top 100 Billboard songs per year in the 80s and 90s, and that livened up my collection for a bit. I started taking a lot of recommendations from last.fm and others. I was reminded of a lot of bands I had skipped over as a teenager. Nine Inch Nails' "ah with ah-teeth-ah" resulted in me downloading Lysol (and Stoner Witch) by the Melvins, and I ended up finding A Senile Animal right when it came out. I tried Ministry for the first time, though I had known of them for years just the same as the Melvins. Last.fm led me towards Orange Goblin, The Sword, Witchcraft, Sleep, and Slo Burn. I found a livejournal community for sharing songs, and in my random downloading of them I learned of bands like !!! and Hot Chip and The Faint. Youtube got really popular, and they still allowed commercial songs in their videos, so I incidentally found Lily Allen and Scissor Sisters. I liked Ladytron, Peaches, She Wants Revenge, The Gossip, and Goldfrapp a lot for a bit.
Meanwhile, I went to my first concert in years - Nine Inch Nails with Queens of the Stone Age opening - and consequently discovered the band Eagles of Death Metal. I found Superjudge by Monster Magnet in my local record store and purchased the shit out of that; it soon became the most amazing album I had ever heard. I saw Eagles of Death Metal live a few months later and thought it was so fucking fun. My remaining elitist Tool friend suggested I try bands such as Mastodon and Meshuggah. I already kind of knew Mastodon, so as soon as my friend's elitism wore off from mind, I found Blood Mountain. I saw Mastodon live exactly when I was getting into them, and it was perfect and led me to learn that I NEEDED to see more metal concerts. I tried other Tool-related bands: Isis, Russian Circles, Tomahawk, and Big Business. I started to learn my personal quirks when it comes to live shows.
As I got further away from radio-friendly and mainstream music, and gradually became more 'into' music and was talking about it more and wanting to pursue it more, I learned that I was either really late to the party or people just didn't give a fuck about the kind of music I was sampling. I tried to make songs available to download for my friends, including helpful commentary to try to convince them to listen, and consistently came up with no response, no hits on the files, no nothing. My one online music friend refused to discuss music reasonably, his opinion was always "fact" and inarguable. My real-life friends took a superficial stance, only liking singles or bands because they were attractive or songs if they 100% meant something to them personally before even listening to the fucking thing, and they didn't understand why listening for a song's time signature(s) is important to know how to move/dance/react to the song, and therefore they didn't get my jokes about nobody knowing how to dance to Tool. I had done most of my music travels alone, but I didn't want to anymore, and it was pissing me off that nobody would even try Kyuss, of all bands. Kyuss is so user-friendly and universally well-liked, so what the fuck?
25 - 26:
I was angry and anxious and 'determined' this year, and I needed some loud and hateful music to make me feel better. Gojira. High on Fire. Boris. Electric Wizard. Even the frenzied but comparatively gentle band Battles. I started my music blog. That led me to download a TON of music I never really listened to or only sampled to get the idea. Sludge Swamp was the number one source of my increasingly unmanageable collection and superficial knowledge. I had only just started listening to doom and stoner metal when I started my blog, but of course my blog turned into stoner/doom-central. The Swamp really influenced me directly after I heard Black Cobra, and I promptly turned towards the sludge side of heavy. Weedeater. Akimbo. Kowloon Walled City. Meshuggah made a re-appearance, and I tried Opeth. Somewhere in the process I quit listening to bands for vocalists or "meaning" and started listening solely for the emotion behind the songs and physical affect on my body. It occurred to me I was most attracted to bands with strong drummers, especially after seeing Battles and Black Cobra live.
At the same time I went to my first local, small venue show, the March Into Darkness fest featuring (as far as my experience) SubArachnoid Space, Red Fang, Russian Circles, Red Sparowes, Middian, and Indian. I also saw Nate for the first time, squirreling around the crowd looking out of place like he just fell out of a time machine that had recently visited 1976, and though I had no idea he was responsible for the fest then, I immediately knew I'd see him again. The one local show led to discovering Diesto, Black Elk, then Salvador and Danava (who I knew of before I gave them a chance), then realizing I had actually missed out by not joining StonerRock's forum sooner because of the strong Portland-area presence there, which would have been really helpful a year or two earlier when I was so pissed about my friends not liking my/any music.
26 - 27:
A lot of re-discovering bands I had only sampled yet, refining my tastes, getting into a more psychedelic sound (damn you, Hawkwind), learning more about "local" bands, and going to concerts. New discoveries weren't as new or as unexpected as before. I met my first local musicians and realized I did not have the "starstruck" nature I expected to have about it, and I really do treat everyone equally shitty until proven otherwise. (Actually, I do have little attacks of happy now and again, but who wouldn't after seeing an amazing show by and then meeting Gojira? Screw being "cool", I won the lottery.) Overall, a continuation of lots of metal, sludge/doom, and vaguely trippy kinds of rock songs, padded with periods of old stuff I used to like.
27 - 28:
I started working in music because it was the natural next step for me. More refining and revisiting the past, and really testing my history and powers of observation without having any real technical musical knowledge. Touching on black metal at times before defaulting back to my comfort zone. Trying to be more open-minded for the sake of work and to be better at "selling" bands in writing, so my personal taste or real and/or fake internet attitude doesn't get in my way of helping others. Learning that many "fans" hate so-called open-minded or musically friendly dispositions because it destroys their social scenes and personal comfort zones. (Poor baby, I'm so sorry that someone's politics, personal history, manner of dress, age, or country/city of origin doesn't suit your shitty ideas of how music is supposed to look.) Plateauing in terms of my own taste.
Since:
Downsizing my collection and trying to learn new habits versus the exhausting shovel-it-all-in approach I've been taking for years. This post.
It's hard to be objective about the last couple of years.
Next:
Who knows?