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My musical library has been expanding and contracting significantly in the last few months. Lacking any major musical talent (I can play the piano and I don’t hurt people’s ears when I sing) I am primarily a patron of music.
My exposure to and history with music is a relationship timeline, life event processing tool, and bridge to friendship.
As I meet new people I find that it is often our taste in music that creates bonds and helps me relate. When I hear a friend put on a song that I was not expecting them to know it always floors me – not because I have superior musical taste or anything, but that some relationship or event brought that song into their life as it did mine. A single song can make me a friend for life.
The other day Niya, Hush and I were in the car tooling around. The Doors’ “Break on Through” came on and we all passed into revelries of how we became familiar with them and why The Doors were important in our lives. For me the Doors remind me of three hour drives to Tahoe at dawn when I was about ten years old with my brother Nate in the front seat, Dad driving, and all my siblings sleeping around me. I certainly don’t think anyone in the car believed they were creating a personality defining memory, but watching my older brother air drum along with the Doors infused in me a desire to be on the pathway to “cool,” because let’s face it, Jim Morrison is pretty much the embodiment of cool. It took some development, but I think at least musically I was fortunate enough to be gifted coolness through music – the Doors, they may be flattered to know, were my musical entry drug. I don’t remember the first time I heard them because they were the subliminal soundtrack of my childhood and I loved them by default.
At The Commune, June 2013
I hit middle school and gained access to my first CD’s right at the time when the early 90’s new wave was tanking out and grunge exploded with Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers and also Green Day. Underground cool jumped to “selling out” and these pretty badass bands were the fare that complimented the Doors, the Police and the Rolling Stones (that I became interested in at the same time because my dad took my older siblings to see them and I learned I should be jealous), and of course the Beatles my mother blared while she did the dishes. I remember on significantly validating moment of my youth was when my older brother noticed a Chili Pepper’s symbol I’d drawn on one of my notebooks in sixth grade and said, “How do YOU know them? Right on.”
Learning music takes research and time, though. If I was going to get a little bit of credibility musically I had to know those bands inside and out. I think initially the cart came before the horse and I was seeking out bands because they were cool, but because my musical taste had been established by the Doors it’s easy for me to understand the progression of my preferences. The Doors were my tuning fork.
And then Kurt Cobain died in 1994. I remember reading about it that morning in the paper because that’s the only reading material available at the table. It was a huge deal, though before his death he was a minor celebrity. Post death he gained Hendrix level fame. But the event promoted this parent-hated music into a respectable art form. I could even play In Utero in my mom’s car on the way to school.
At school the Top 100 was really varied. It ranged from Guns and Roses’ November Rain to Boyz II Men. Exposure influences taste, so I guess I have Boyz II Men to thank for leading me eventually to Jay Z and Kanye. And, of course, Madonna was covering all the pop basics with the Immaculate Collection.
What do we have so far? Classic Rock, second-wave punk, pop, grunge, R&B, 90’s alternative.
Then came high school. I became friends with some hippies and hippies in the 90’s listened to the Grateful Dead, Phish, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, and a bit of Bowie. Thank the Lord for the hippies or I’d have squandered my Doors tuning on the Macarena and Mariah Carey.
With the basics of my musical DNA in place, I started filling in the gaps. I loved Lou Reed’s ‘Satellite of Love’ so off I’d go to learn about the Velvet Underground. I dug ‘Ripple’ by the Dead so I went off to find Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. Where the hell did David Bowie come from? Better go learn about Iggy Pop and Queen. Green Day is second wave punk? Off to find first wave punk Sex Pistols and the Clash (and fall deeply in love with this genre of music. Punk is in my soul).
And so it goes.
Of course there are the random throw ins that, for me, are unassociated with other bands. I learned to dance in the family room listening to Thriller on vinyl. I know every word to ABBA’s greatest hits. Johnny Cash’s outlaw country reminds me of my mother rocking out in yellow gloves in the kitchen. I know Rubber Soul because it was the only tape my grandmother owned. The Smiths remind me of a terrifying ride through the sugar cane fields of Hawaii with my scary brother in a jeep.
Is that six members of my family doing the Thriller Dance? Yes it is.
I think my most memorable musical event was going to a concert at the famous Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. The Monkees were playing, it was the early 2000’s some time and my dad and I went to see them, just the two of us. While Davy Jones and the other dude rocked out on stage my dad took me to the upstairs room where all the old school concert posters hang in order of performance. He went through and pointed to all the concerts he had seen there: Hendrix, Creedence, Joplin. I went to the other side of the room and pointed out a few of the bands I’d seen there since I’d been allowed to go to concerts. The soundtrack of his life had become the starting point of mine.
Jim.
Mimi and Jude dancing in the psychedelic 60’s room to the Grateful Dead.
When we rock we rock hard.
This week the songs that struck the right chords were:
Paper Planes -MIA
Moonlight Mile – Rolling Stones
Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth – Primitive Radio Gods
I’m Your Man –Leonard Cohen
The Organ Grinder – Watkin Tudor Jones
Rebirth of Slick – Digable Planets
Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus
The Beautiful People – Marilyn Manson
Debaser – Pixies
212 – Azealia Banks
The Black Jack White – Spirit Animal
Carry that Weight – Beatles
Crimewave – Crystal Castles
Manhattan – Cat Power
Feelin’ Alright – Sweatshop Union
The Late Greats – Wilco
With The Paul Duane at the Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper Concert. (feed my frankenstein!)
Just cause I love the colors in this picture.
And the people in this one.
