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Post by samplestiltskin on Nov 10, 2004 11:10:03 GMT -5
Music has been the only thing that kept me going. When I was shut into the house doing school at home with no friends and my world was the tiny area of my parents' house, music was my window to the outside world. Napster kick-started my life. When I moved away for college at 17, music was what I leaned on for support. I could have felt lost and alone in a foreign environment I'd had no experience in, but music was what I used to comfort and ground me. It was also something I had in common with people who would become my friends. Music has honestly been the ONLY healthy part of my life. I might even venture to say it was/is more essential to my life than anyone here. It was all I had, and it forms the basis of my support structure. Now I find that my music tastes fluctuate according to who I'm hanging around the most. Of course I choose my friends carefully so that I won't be subjected to crappy music. Lately since my roommate is goth I'm currently in a gothy environment and find my tastes expanding in that direction. It's fun. I'm so young and way excited at the prospect of where my tastes will twist next. Gonna be a lifelong love affair, probably the only one that won't burn me too.  |
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Post by strat-0 on Nov 10, 2004 21:45:36 GMT -5
Well said, and honestly, Ryo. I don't think we ever crossed paths at RS, but Hi! I've enjoyed your posts here a lot. Your job must be very interesting!
Music won't let ya down, samps! But wait - weren't you already on a heavily Goth diet?
"You know the old 'everyone remembers what they were doing when such & such a historical event occurred' well for me it’s with music."
Yeah, Rock. And Pissin's follow-up post was on it, too.
Do you remember the moronic Macarena? I'll never forget the summer we went to Destin -- My wife and I went down to the beach with my band's sax player and his wife to play the music at a friend of the sax player's wife's wedding. They must have played that tape a dozen times at the reception. Anyhow, it was a great vacation - we tried to drink all the beer in Florida and I think we came damn close. The wedding and reception was a huge party on the beach. The photographer was also a friend of the sax player's wife, and he came down with us - we had never met, and I wondered if this was going to be a big disaster. We all stayed in a beach house on the water. We fished in the gulf, cooked out fresh snapper on the grill, made music, played dice games... The photographer and sax player are two of my best friends still - and the photographer always has to wax about that trip!
But every time I hear the Macarena, I think of that summer - that trip to Destin...
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Post by stratman19 on Nov 10, 2004 22:01:51 GMT -5
Musings, eh? Well I don't know what the hell is wrong with me lately....I haven't picked up a guitar in months. I have a 200 disc CD changer that hasn't been fired up in weeks. I'm replacing it with a 400 disc model simply because I can't stand to have CDs in their jewel boxes sitting in my rack. I'd rather have everything in the machine. But I find myself asking "why"? Why do I need to buy a bigger one when I haven't fired the one up I have in weeks? I have a 60 mile commute to work, and I drive it in silence. These days, I'd rather be alone with my thoughts I guess. What the hell is going on? What the hell is happening to me?  HELP!! |
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Post by samplestiltskin on Nov 11, 2004 3:25:55 GMT -5
Daaamn. Sounds like the blehs to me. I go there occasionally, and then suddenly I wake up and remember life is fine and music is essential and I crank an old album I haven't listened to in a year. You'll snap out of it. Go through your collection and find something that meant a lot to you long ago and play it. Might find yourself exploring other stuff you have again too.. Hope so. The blehs is a bad place to be. Find joy. Reminisce. It's good for you. |
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Post by Ayinger on Nov 11, 2004 16:31:10 GMT -5
"Music Musings"[/i] huh? It took me a while to find this thread but the posts I've read here so far spark my interest. Music is what brought me to the RS boards five years or so ago and it was rewarding to find that I wasn't alone in my obsession in it. Seriously, I believe some of us could be in therapy for how much it infiltrates our lives....and it is SO much more than just flicking on a radio station or loading up the latest "Now THAT's What I Call Music" CD. It isn't disposable to most of us -- it's far more essential to us as we get up in the morning or wind down at night (or towards the breaking of dawn....).
There's enjoyment to it, first and foremost. But there is also study and dissection of the music at times too. Myself, I also love the history of it; learning of what shaped the sounds over the years - who and what influenced it. Be it the times, the technology, the collisions of cultures. Oh and then there's that "release" that it gives....that aural drug that it can be to your senses and emotions of the moment, where it can filter up under your skin or slam ya in the gut. I wish I had my copy of Jean Paul Sartre's "Nausea" with me as there's a point where the narrator speaks of listening to music and how a single note passes through one's self and how it cannot be contained, that it only brushes past you to be followed by the next. And such is the rush that I feel with it.
I'm 43 years old. That puts my teen years, and hence my budding interest in music, in the 70's. The protest songs were just ever on the wan; heavy metal was on the rise, though we more referred to it as 'hard rock'. The scourge called disco had yet to take over the airwaves and punk was still laying under the floorboards set down by the MC5, The Stooges, and any 60's garage band. Even more important, things were still young enough that 'Classic Rock' didn't yet exist. I remember listening to Aerosmith's "Dream On" on my old system in the family basement before going to school --- it was winter and a big white snow storm was blanketing the neighborhood. Monster white flakes that I can still see; all fresh & pure and muffling all the outside sounds. Except for this yowling maelstrom thumping from the speakers -- it too, big, fresh, and pure. See a lot of you weren't around yet to know the songs firsthand like that....hell, the word 'power-ballad' couldn't even be placed onto it -- that ideology didn't exist yet either. A "Dream On", a "Stairway To Heaven", a Dark Side of the Moon had no history, no worn radio airplay, and you felt that it belonged to you and your small circle.....it was something special.
My older sister (by 2 years) got a record player set-up for her birthday on August 29, 1973. That same day I trooped down to the local record/headshop and bought my first lp: Uriah Heep's "The Magician's Birthday". I own it still to this day as I do every other lp, 45, 8-track (!), cassette, or CD that I've ever purchased. Except for one live Ted Nugent disc....it was so bad in sound that I traded it in the very next day.
I was pointed to that Uriah Heep album by my running buddy Joe who I had known all my life. Joe was to become my guru towards music -- at least that's how I have always looked at it. The great thing that I got out of it was that first spark of desire, and from there the need to listen, listen, listen, to more, more, and more. Felt like I was always discovering a new band. And I would also pick apart the musicians in that band; track them back to earlier groups they'd been in or maybe some side projects or solo stuff they'd done. Doing that would train my ear too -- in fact one thing that Joe & I would do is to throw a song on the stereo and see if the other could guess who it was. I remember years later riding along in the car with my then-girlfriend when an unknown tune came on the radio. She asked who it was and I said I didn't know but the guitar playing sounded like Clapton. "oh bullshit, like you can tell one guitarist from another...."
She lost that one.
If a band made it onto AM, it lost respect (yeah, they used to play music on AM radio -- that's where your Top 40 laid upon....stations like WLS-Chicago). If a band became that popular, we'd tend to shun it. And god, I remember when Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad cut his hair.....used to have the long straight locks and then he went and got it buzzed around the time of "Some Kind Of Wonderful"....we decided he'd gone red (as in 'redneck') on us....pussied out he had....
Led Zeppelin were the gods. Not with a reverent adoration but with respect. To us at that point with Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti, and Presence being laid out for the first time, it was like they set a standard. A talented band should be able to rock out but also not be afraid to mix it up a bit with different style's and senses from song to song. They also freed up my attitude to listen to different bands and types of music; acoustic was cool, blues was cool, orchestrations were cool....
At that age, hard rock was the shit. Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult, Wishbone Ash, early Queen, early Kansas, Pink Floyd....most of the usual suspects. But through Joe I also got into other rock acts that slipped through the radar for the most part. Was big on Hawkwind, early Angel, Captain Beyond, a NY band called Dust, , , this was all great too as it freed up another attitude: don't back away from bands that aren't necessarily popular. If it was in the grooves.....
At the point of just entereing my freshman year in high school, the most devistating thing in my life occured. My family and I moved 100 miles away from my hometown to live in Podukville, Indiana. Fuckin' just killed me. I shut down. Life stopped.
Hated[/u] that fuckin' town. Hated being there so much that I withdrew into my bedroom for years. I'd hole up there with my books and my music. Here's where I gotta replay that refrain that music is what got me through too. What I had gotten in habit from hanging out with Joe now became lifestyle -- I had nothing else to do but absorb and go deep into that love. Hell, I didn't have any friends, let alone date, during those high school years. I found out at some point that Joe had dropped out of school and joined the Navy -- I haven't seen him since about 1980 -- I just kept collecting and collecting.
{more later}
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Post by ModernDeathTrend on Nov 11, 2004 18:35:22 GMT -5
Right now I am musing over the latest from Samael. My god this band is incapable of a bad album. Everything they touch turns into metallic gold.
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Post by Philemon on Nov 11, 2004 21:39:46 GMT -5
Podukville ... ?!?
Even the name sounds dreadful ...
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Post by Ayinger on Nov 12, 2004 8:30:32 GMT -5
Podukville ... ?!? Even the name sounds dreadful ... Actually the name of the town was Rensselaer, IND (or as I also called it, "Hell"). My attempt at humor was trying to spell 'podunk' or whatever it should be, to get the sense across that it was a small, backwards little burg. |
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Post by samplestiltskin on Nov 12, 2004 9:55:17 GMT -5
Bah, you don't even know how far podunk can go until you get into small towns in Kansas.
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Post by Ayinger on Nov 12, 2004 10:34:08 GMT -5
well, I remember well my first 4th of July parade that I saw go down Main Street and it involved combines rumbling the road.....golly gee, and whar was my straw hat 'n reed of wheat to chaw on??
(and it really wasn't "Main" Street but Washington Street but of course on one called it that since it was the one road that cut through the center of town and therefore everyone just called it "Main" -- it took me a while to figure that out)
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Post by RocDoc on Nov 12, 2004 12:40:59 GMT -5
Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult, Wishbone Ash, early Queen, early Kansas, Pink Floyd....most of the usual suspects.
Sounds like an All-Star lineup at the Aragon Ball(brawl)Room circa 1977...well, except for Floyd...I think they played the Kinetic Playground in the early days...
The Kansas shows(speaking of Podunk flat states) I saw there absolutely smoked! One of which was them being 2nd-billed to Queen when they were touring Sheer Heart Attack which(I just checked)was 1974...
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Post by Philemon on Nov 12, 2004 13:07:20 GMT -5
well, I remember well my first 4th of July parade that I saw go down Main Street and it involved combines rumbling the road.....golly gee, and whar was my straw hat 'n reed of wheat to chaw on??
I guess you went to a lot of tractor-pull competitions
while you lived there !!
BTW, PHIL'S DINER is now opened under the Beatnik Coffee Shop marquee
if you wanna share your appreciation of fine food and drinks ...
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Post by Ryosuke on Nov 13, 2004 5:05:32 GMT -5
Well said, and honestly, Ryo. I don't think we ever crossed paths at RS, but Hi! I've enjoyed your posts here a lot. Your job must be very interesting! Hey, thanks. Yeah, I've always wanted to converse with you, but I never really had the chance to, for some reason or other. It's funny what I said about music's decreased importance in my life, because the thing is, I probably buy more music now than I ever did in my life. It's a healthy obsession nowadays though (although it certainly isn't healthy on my bank acount!), whereas the degree I was into music when I was younger bordered on the pathological. Well okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but I think you know what I mean. I'm much more comfortable now with regards to my relation to music, and I don't really fell the need to define myself by what I listen to like I used to. Oh, and my job is the pits  |
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Post by stratman19 on Nov 14, 2004 15:08:17 GMT -5
Daaamn. Sounds like the blehs to me. I go there occasionally, and then suddenly I wake up and remember life is fine and music is essential and I crank an old album I haven't listened to in a year. You'll snap out of it. Go through your collection and find something that meant a lot to you long ago and play it. Might find yourself exploring other stuff you have again too.. Hope so. The blehs is a bad place to be. Find joy. Reminisce. It's good for you. You might be right Samps. I really do have to snap outta my funk. Some good advice there. |
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Post by stratman19 on Nov 14, 2004 15:13:04 GMT -5
Man, Don and Doc, reading some of the bands you guys mentioned sure brought back some memories! I'll be 45 in March, so we all are about the same age, and what you guys said is true!
(FM radio sure was a different animal too in the early to mid '70's than it is now, wasn't it?)
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