Maybe this should be in the music forum, but what the hey. I thought it might be a good idea to post some music-related info about ourselves, to get to know each other a little better. You'll get an idea of what I'm after when you see what I write, hopefully.
As is the case for a lot of people my age, the first time I was ever knocked up-side the head with music was with KISS. It was 1975, so I would've been 9 years old. A teenage kid down the street ( Mike Journot...SHOUT-OUT ) had "KISS Alive!" on 8-track. I liked the music a lot, but when I got a look at their image, & the whole package...BOOM. I was in.
At that point, it was a steady diet of hard rock/metal stuff. I stayed enlisted in the KISS Army, but branched out to other acts like AC/DC, Ted Nugent, etc. Pretty down-the-middle stuff. I also listened to a lot of Top 40 radio ( 92.5 KSYN out of Joplin, MO ) . Hell, every Sunday afternoon I'd listen to "American Top 40" with Casey Kasem. And I'd sit there like a dork & right the ENTIRE chart down on a piece of paper.
But then about 3 years later, I saw a report on NBC's "Weekend" program ( NO idea what I was doing watching this as a 12-ish year old...I think it might've been on in place of "SNL", which I would've tuned into ) about this new-fangled music & style out of England called "punk rock". Well, that was Music Life Changing Event #2 for me. The next thing you know, I'm getting "London Calling" & The Boomtown Rats "The Fine Art Of Surfacing" as 8th grade graduation presents.
It's important to note something here. Even though I'd taken a wide swing to the left in my tastes with the punk stuff, I never felt to need to leave the other stuff I liked behind. I just never understood the impulse to make wholesale changes to my taste. I didn't get why you couldn't like KISS AND The Clash.
My high school years followed along the same lines. There was an occasional addition of a new genre, like when I bought my first reggae album ( Toots & The Maytals "Knock Out!" ) on a whim from the Wal-Mart $1.99 bin ( the $1.99 bin...THERE'S another topic idea ). Other genres like classical & jazz didn't come into play until my college years.
Speaking of my college years...growing up, it's pretty obvious that in school I was always The Music Nerd. Knowing that ( combined with my ability to be somewhat amusing off-the-cuff ), people always thought I should be in radio. So I went into college ( Pittsburg State University in southeast Kansas...30 miles from where I grew up ) seeking a broadcasting major.
On a goof, I applied at the only radio station in town ( KQWK "Quick Rock 97" ). At the time, the people that worked there had just bought the station ( coming to Pittsburg from Pennsylvania ), & they needed part-timers. I made a quick tape to prove I could speak without imploding & got the job. My first night ( 1-6 AM ) was a complete blur..."highlighted" mainly by my playing a record ( something by Duran Duran, if I recall correctly ) at the wrong speed. Yes...we're talking 1984, pre-CD vinyl era here.
I worked part-time there for a few months, eventually taking that 1-6AM shift over full-time. From there I was bumped up to 8PM-1AM at one point. And believe me, I could write for a solid day right now about those 3 years there. Lots of stories. But in '87 the station was sold, & I was back to being a non-professional music fan.
Until 1999. I was living in Kansas City at this point, & again on a whim applied for work with a company called Broadcast Data Systems. For the next 6 years, my "job" was identifying songs that our computer system missed. Seriously...I was paid American money to do THAT. Identify songs. This research went toward compiling the Billboard charts - the same charts I'd scribble down as a kid listening to Casey Kasem. A lot of people talk about their "dream job". Well, this was mine. All that "useless" music info bouncing around in my head FINALLY paid off. Maybe not handsomely, but...comfortably.
Then by the mid-2000's, changes in technology & the music business had robbed BDS of a lot of their income. So I was out ( followed a couple years later by most of the other people I worked with ). So since then, I'm back to being a non-professional music geek.
While I touch on it in my bio, I am a late thirtysomething who grew up with a brother 12 years older than I. Consequently I was exposed to the records and 8 tracks (you read that right) that he listened to.
My first love was the Beatles. I was exposed to most of my all time favorites thanks to my brother. Jethro Tull, David Bowie, Rush, ELP, King Crimson, Yes, The Rolling Stones. As I got a little older and he moved out to go to college, I discovered 80s music, most of it confused me (the videos that were coming out with them didn't help much) but there was a seed planted in me that eventually caused me to have a soft spot nowadays for all that bad hair metal from that era. I admit it is cheesy, but hey who doesn't love cheese (besides the lactose intolerant anyway).
Nowadays I kind of collect songs here and there and pretty much every genre has some representation on my every growing random songs I like playlist.
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Get the idea cross around the track Underneath the flank of thoroughbred racing chasers. Getting the feel as a river flows. Would you like to go 'n shoot the mountain masses?
I have a weird relationship with The Beatles, in that I'm 47 but did NOT grow up with their music.
I knew the big hits, of course. But during the first few years of my music geekdom ( the late 70's ) there seemed like there was this lull in Beatles interest. And it seemed like it started to kick back in around the early 80's, when they all started having solo hit songs. Maybe it's just the part of the country where I lived, I dunno. But there's Beatles records that I never heard until hell, the last decade or so.
Not really, that post breakup lull in the early 70s would put you squarely in the camp of those who didn't grow up with it in any way
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Get the idea cross around the track Underneath the flank of thoroughbred racing chasers. Getting the feel as a river flows. Would you like to go 'n shoot the mountain masses?
