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kath
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Postby kath » 28 Mar 2007, 20:27

are there sposed to be quoted words under the bolded names in the two posts above? cuz if there are, i can't see them.

y'all really shouldn't mess with me when i'm on flu medication. it's not fair.

kath
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Billybob Dylan
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Postby Billybob Dylan » 28 Mar 2007, 20:41

Cosmic American Girl wrote:widowhood

Sorry to hear that, CAG.
"I've been reduced to thruppence!"

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Postby Cosmic American Girl » 28 Mar 2007, 20:48

souphound wrote:
Cosmic American Girl wrote:


Very cool! How would you describe your musical taste?

Excellent, in my own mind, anyway I'm kinda weird and all over the board.
For example, so far today I've listened to: The Cramps, Thee Headcoats, XTC, Julian Cope, PJ Harvey, Concrete Blonde and right now The Smiths.
Yesterday it was a lot of Bright Eyes and Dylan Then I tried to listen to The Weirdness again and couldn't get through it, so put on The Stooges instead. Went to sleep listening to The Band.
Absolutely #1: Nick Cave and everyone in the Cave, Birthday Party, and Seed family tree.
(And I don't currently own any Grand Funk, Bay City Rollers or Dan Fogelberg)
:lol:

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souphound
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Postby souphound » 28 Mar 2007, 22:02

kath wrote:are there sposed to be quoted words under the bolded names in the two posts above? cuz if there are, i can't see them.

y'all really shouldn't mess with me when i'm on flu medication. it's not fair.

kath
focusing on the middle "submit" button


Nah, I was just trying to a) reply to the young lady without necessarily repeating the text while b) making sure there was no confusion as to whom I was addressing. :wink:
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Jeff K
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Postby Jeff K » 28 Mar 2007, 22:05

Cosmic American Girl wrote:I was born the year Barbie got a boyfriend and Breakfast At Tiffany's came out, 1961. Ouch.....
My first musical memories were of playing my parent's 45's, in particular, I Got You Babe, Love Potion #9 and Little Red Riding Hood. On TV there was Ed Sullivan, The Monkees, and Sonny And Cher.
I can relate most of my memories in life to music. My first album, a gift from my cool uncle, Slayed?, first one I bought, Beatles blue. My first poster, Peter Frampton, the only one I still have, that big White Album one and the 8x10's. By Jr High I was totally into the Beatles, when they were not at all popular and was convinced I would someday marry George. It was at this time I started collecting as above mention uncle started giving me more, and I still have a few of them.
First kiss- Locomotion-Grand Funk
First serious make out session-Saturday Night
Lost virginity- Captured Angel, Ouch, but Dan Fogelberg's dad really was the leader of our high school band and he was the hometown hero at the time. Susan Dey is also from my home town.
First trip-Decade, over and over and over.
Sorta ran away from home-London Calling

I was always the one in charge of bringing the music to parties, well,more like a few years of one continuous party, just moving from place to place. God, I hauled those crates everywhere, until the day a roommate decided to take them and skip town. A very hard lesson learned.

Then marriage, kids, college, widowhood and work caused music to take a backseat. Only time to be mildly in touch for the next twenty years. Keeping up on everything new was easier with teenagers with excellent musical tastes. When they both had moved out, the first thing I did was dive into music with the vim and vigor of a kid. I have lived and breathed music for the last four years. I always have a feeling of needing to "catch up" on everything I missed and sometimes behave with a little overzealousness. Every turn leads to a new and exciting path and being steered here is something I will forever be grateful for.

:D


Hey, you left out the part about being a groupie for Winger!

(By the way, there's nothing wrong with liking the Bay City Rollers)
the science eel experiment wrote:Jesus Christ can't save BCB, i believe i can.

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Postby Cosmic American Girl » 28 Mar 2007, 22:11

Jeff K wrote:
Cosmic American Girl wrote:I was born the year Barbie got a boyfriend and Breakfast At Tiffany's came out, 1961. Ouch.....
My first musical memories were of playing my parent's 45's, in particular, I Got You Babe, Love Potion #9 and Little Red Riding Hood. On TV there was Ed Sullivan, The Monkees, and Sonny And Cher.
I can relate most of my memories in life to music. My first album, a gift from my cool uncle, Slayed?, first one I bought, Beatles blue. My first poster, Peter Frampton, the only one I still have, that big White Album one and the 8x10's. By Jr High I was totally into the Beatles, when they were not at all popular and was convinced I would someday marry George. It was at this time I started collecting as above mention uncle started giving me more, and I still have a few of them.
First kiss- Locomotion-Grand Funk
First serious make out session-Saturday Night
Lost virginity- Captured Angel, Ouch, but Dan Fogelberg's dad really was the leader of our high school band and he was the hometown hero at the time. Susan Dey is also from my home town.
First trip-Decade, over and over and over.
Sorta ran away from home-London Calling

I was always the one in charge of bringing the music to parties, well,more like a few years of one continuous party, just moving from place to place. God, I hauled those crates everywhere, until the day a roommate decided to take them and skip town. A very hard lesson learned.

Then marriage, kids, college, widowhood and work caused music to take a backseat. Only time to be mildly in touch for the next twenty years. Keeping up on everything new was easier with teenagers with excellent musical tastes. When they both had moved out, the first thing I did was dive into music with the vim and vigor of a kid. I have lived and breathed music for the last four years. I always have a feeling of needing to "catch up" on everything I missed and sometimes behave with a little overzealousness. Every turn leads to a new and exciting path and being steered here is something I will forever be grateful for.

:D


Hey, you left out the part about being a groupie for Winger!

(By the way, there's nothing wrong with liking the Bay City Rollers)


And what he said is true. But, oh my gawd Nate and Kip were so hot :oops:

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Postby KeithPratt » 28 Mar 2007, 23:01

Born 1973.

My parents were 45 and 40 respectively when I was born, so my musical education came from my brother, 13 years older than me. My earliest musical memory is the cover of an Atomic Rooster LP, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the Stranglers "Rattus Norveticus", a Killing Joke poster of a Jester that my Sister owned, various 999 7" singles, the Damned's first LP cover, the Buzzcock's debut LP cover, the Apple logo on the Beatles White album alongside the track Bungalow Bill, "It's only a Northern Song" from Yellow Submarine and "Hunters & Collectors" by Can from the LP Landed. I don't remember the music as such, it was more the images.

I bought my first single at the age of 6, namely Madness with "Baggy Trousers". I liked it because it had the line "Eating Dirt" in it which I thought was poo. My sister aided my singles purchases. I remember Adam & the Ants with "Stand and Deliver", "Dog Eat Dog", "Ant Music" and "Prince Charming". Then I lost interest music for some considerable time. I remember being 10 or so and being at the School Fete and some kids were breakdancing on some gym mats. Electro passed me by at this age.

I had a vague reacquaintance with chart music at the age of 13 or so. By then my brother was sending me tapes of stuff to listen to on my crappy Saisho walkman. I remember taping the charts, and Jazzy Jeff stood out, as did the Pet Shop Boys' "Suburbia" and "West End Girls". The latter in particular seemed rather seedy with its line "West End Girls and East End Boys". At the boys school I was at, there didn't seem to be anybody really into anything specific at the time. I remember Iron Maiden being popular amongst friends, but to be honest I wasn't one of the cool kids and I was more into rolling dice playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Then one of the tapes my brother gave me in 1987 had "Public Enemy no.1" on it by Public Enemy. It contained the first instance of me listening to a track over and over again. It was just 4 seconds as such, Chuck D saying "What Goes On, What Goes On...Well...."

Listening back to this track now, it's amazing just how minimal it is. Just a drumbeat, noise and Chuck D.

I was hooked, not specifically on hiphop per se, but just on music. I remember going on a family holiday with my parents to Menorca and just having the two battered Def Jam tapes of this and their subsequent "It takes a Nation of Millions" LP with me and listening to them non-stop. Funnily enough, Flavor Flav's "Cole Lampin'" remains an all-time favourite. It was a combination of Chuck D's razor sharp delivery and the production. Everything else seemed insignificant. Yet I was on my own. None of my contemporaries were into it at all, and I remember that of the 30 or so boys in my class, I was the only one into it. I had no real desire to buy records either at that time - I didn't have a part-time job and I was more interested in playing computer games than music.

My brother continued to send me tapes of all sorts of stuff - from Foetus to the Pixies, Stone Roses, but in late '87 one tape with two tracks on it, Nitro Deluxe's "This Brutal House" and Phuture 303's "Acid Trax".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc8V5Ytwe2w

The former stood out a mile. It literally didn't sound like anything I had ever heard. My musical palette was particularly limited at that point, but this sounded exciting. My brother bought me the 12" and it remains one of my treasured possessions. Yet I was too young to witness the Summer of Love in its initial incarnation.

I went to my first gig in 1988. A festival in Cornwall headlined by Hawkwind with Loop supporting. It was intensely loud, and I don't remember being grabbed by any of the music at all.

In 1989 I veered towards Indie Guitar music. My brother, by this time in dronegazers Loop and in Melody Maker, making me briefly the coolest kid in the school, took me to see The Stone Roses. They were the first band I truly followed, and I was then caught up in the Madchester hysteria. I was perhaps a little bit young to truly appreciate it, as I wasn't into taking E and essentially none of my friends were into it. I went to plenty of gigs though, and my first girlfriend was also into some of the bands as well, so between then and 1991 or so I went to around 3 gigs a week (my brother knew someone who worked at 4AD which meant I got lots of guestlist) seeing all manner of bands like the La's, Charlatans, Ride, The Farm, Blur etc. At this point I started to buy Beatles, The Stones, Who, Kinks, Small Faces etc. My brother, still guiding, did me a copy of Nuggets and then a tape of 13th Floor Elevators stuff, and I started to really get into the Stooges, MC5, Pebbles, Beach Boys, Ted Nugent and even ZZ Top. The thing that really grabbed me were the drum sounds. I loved them even though they sounded not particularly "tough" as it were, compared to modern production.

My sister was heavily into Dub reggae at this point, so I developed a healthy taste for Tubby, Pablo & other material. I remember going to see the Swans and Nick Cave for the first time in 1990 after the release of "The Good Son". I was also listening to Peel a lot at this time, specifically taping and then copying the "rave" tracks he'd play like 808 state, LFO, DHS, K-Klass, Renegade Soundwave. I liked this stuff, but I didn't buy it a great deal, just the odd track here and there.

In 1991 I questioned my brother about a German band called Can, after seeing an article about the Stone Roses in some magazine and the song "I'm so Green" being mentioned. A tape duly followed, and the first song was "Oh Yeah". In hindsight it was the moment I felt rock music was never going to provide the heights that this music could, and I still stand by that. I listened to that tape for ages. It had stuff like "Mother Sky", "Moonshake", "November", "Spoon", and most distinctly "Chain Reaction" which had this fantastic beginning that had me hooked. It didn't sound like anything else I had ever heard.

A few weeks later Mathew (my brother) took me to see Kraftwerk at Brixton Academy. I remembered he had played me bits here and there, but I wasn't grabbed by it. The gig I don't really remember a great deal of as we were near the back, but the videos, Tour De France in particular stood out. A tape followed and I began to dig them, but not as much as Can.

Between 1992 and 1996 my tastes veered a bit. I travelled a lot, so was out of the country a lot.I continued to buy a lot of indie guitar stuff, but was slowly branching out into 60's and 70's stuff like the Pink Fairies, Faces, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, some blues, Beefheart, Joy Division, PiL, Gang of Four, Cheap Trick, Neil Young, Badfinger and The Byrds. In 1993 I do remember buying DJ Shadow's first single "In Flux" and the first "Headz" compilation that had material like Autechre, Plastikman, La Funk Mob as well on it. Slowly but surely I was beginning to buy more techno and hiphop. When living in Berlin in 1994, I had begun to make the odd trip to Tresor, and by 1995 I was fully fledged into going to Techno nights, and in particular Lost. This would be the core of my electronic music education from now on, guided by Jeff Mills and a coterie of other Detroit DJs. Mathew's influence had finished. Andy Weatherall's Bloodsugar and Metalheadz at the Blue Note in Hoxton Square were delightful nights to attend.

In 1997 I went to see Kraftwerk at Tribal Gathering. It did change my life. I hadn't witnessed anything so fundamentally different to their performance, and I needed to get to the bottom of why they had such an impact on me. From then on I discarded rock music. I listened to the odd bit here and there, but it just seemed old, dated and meaningless.

In 2000 I went to Sonar in Barcelona for the first time and had my "House Moment" to Frankie Knuckles. It made me understand house and I'm forever grateful for that, because it had always been a bit of a mystery.

The internet essentially allowed to me to meet a new circle of friends with the same tastes. Going out to nights no longer with just 2 or 3 people at the very most, it was now going out with 20 or 30 people or so. My musical tastes exploded, especially with regard to Jazz, Classical and Experimental material.

I consider myself very lucky. I have a coterie of friends and contemporaries my age and younger who share the same tastes. If I go to see Fennesz, or a concert at the Proms, there will be someone I know. It's an aside to BCB as it were, which I love, but at the same time none of you guys and girls I imagine will be bobbing alongside me at 6am (except Snowdog) listening to Surgeon bum my brains to bits. I've learnt a hell of a lot here however - much more than I ever expected to, and it's the one place I can talk about music where people most importantly will understand and appreciate passion, however it materialises.

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Guy E
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Postby Guy E » 29 Mar 2007, 00:28

Born in 1954. My mother tells me that my fascination with recorded music started when I was a toddler; she’d let me play my dad’s 78rpm’s on his portable… I apparently trashed the entire collection, but she was happy to keep me busy doing something. My grandmother was a concert pianist and gave lessons when my mom was growing up, but I don’t remember ever hearing her play… I do have memories of her playing the accordion. The first song I remember singing was the theme to the Davey Crocket TV show. I remember Big Band music playing in our house and watching my parents and their friends dancing at parties.

The British Invasion, The Ed Sullivan Show, Beatlemania… that was ground zero. The first record I bought with my own money was I Want To Hold Your Hand/I Saw Her Standing There. Meet The Beatles was my first long-player. I remember being sick for a few days in the spring of ’64 and my mother decided to cheer me up by buying me a new record. Knowing how much I loved The Beatles she bought a 45 titled Ringo… by Lorne Greene. I did my best to conceal my disappointment.

In the next couple of years every nickel was squandered on 45’s with occasional LP purchases. The LP’s always bore ‘The Beatles’ imprint until late 1965 when I broke rank and sprang for The Byrds Turn! Turn! Turn! – still a major touchstone.

In the next few years I worked hard at developing the skill of recognizing the difference between solid albums [Beatles, Byrds, Lovin’ Spoonful, Who, Procol Harum, Stones] versus singles-plus-filler disappointments [Cryin’ Shames, Electric Prunes, Monkees, Strawberry Alarm Clock]. Eventually, I got pretty good at it. There was a lot of good rock and roll on the radio as well as television in the 1960’s… very exciting.

My crystallized image of those years is being down in the basement with my gang of friends where I had my road race set laid out on the abandoned ping pong table. My portable flip-down record player was perched on dad's tool bench and there was always a stack of great 45’s on the automatic changer. We’d be having a blast playing slot cars and there was never a parent in sight. That’s a Wonder Years kind of image, but life never seemed quite as perfect as that again.

1968 was a watershed year with John Wesley Harding, Music From Big Pink, Shine On Brightly, Beggars Banquet and the White Album opening my mind’s ear. I always had a job after the age of 13 so I’d pretty much buy any record I wanted. My parents didn’t ever lecture me about it; I was a conscientious student and had other artistic interests.

I started going into Chicago to attend concerts by the time I was 15 or16. My mom had grown up in the city and had no problem with us taking the train at night by ourselves. Most of the shows I saw were at The Auditorium Theater and the Opera House; primarily rock bands [Who, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Procol Harum, Leon Russell, CSN&Y, King Crimson, Hot Tuna] but also some folky singer-songwriter ones; Laura Nyro (a few times) Judy Collins, Peter Paul & Mary, Donovan. There was a venue downtown for a while that catered to inner-city blacks - “The Oriental is the YO-riental now!” I got to see Little Richard, Stevie Wonder and Chuck Berry there, but the music of Black America still seemed a bit remote to me when I was in high school... Al Green cracked the ice a bit in 1972.

My college years saw a broadening of musical horizons and the opportunity to hear great music in club settings; Willie Dixon and The Blues All-Stars played at our freshman orientation mixer and I got to see loads of great stuff in the next few years; jazz, folk, blues.

My parents moved to New Jersey while I was overseas in a senior year abroad program. I returned to the USA in the spring of ’76, just in time to witness NY Punk and a second British Invasion of sorts. Those were great years, musically. I happened to move into Hoboken a few months before Maxwell’s opened and as luck would have it, I lived across the street from the club. One thing lead to another and I became deejay and soundman – an avocation that lasted about 10 years. When I wasn’t working I was hanging out; listening to music and drinking pretty much free of charge seven days a week. Those Indie years were fantastic and deejaying opened my ears further to Soul music, Disco, Jump Blues, Rockabilly, Reggae, Rap… you name it. There were some great record stores back then and I always spent every penny of my deejay ‘earnings’ (and then some) on vinyl. I also dabbled as a rock-crit for a while, writing for the NY Rocker. It was fun being in the inner circle and I got a lot of free records, but the writing part was frustrating.

In the 19 years since I stopped working at the club I’ve continued my passion for music, collecting it, going to shows, etc. and my wife loves music too - she's never given me a hard time about bringing home bags of fresh musical goodies. But I have to say that as much as I still love it (and as much time as I spend on it) the intensity isn’t the same as it was from ’76-88. I do try to keep my toes in the water though.

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Jeff K
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Postby Jeff K » 29 Mar 2007, 00:36

Guy E wrote:Born in 1954. My mother tells me that my fascination with recorded music started when I was a toddler; she’d let me play my dad’s 78rpm’s on his portable… I apparently trashed the entire collection, but she was happy to keep me happy doing something.


Totally punk rock, dude!

Guy E wrote: I remember being sick for a few days in the spring of ’64 and my mother decided to cheer me up by buying me a new record. Knowing how much I loved The Beatles she bought a 45 titled Ringo… by Lorne Greene. I did my best to conceal my disappointment


:lol: :lol: :lol:
the science eel experiment wrote:Jesus Christ can't save BCB, i believe i can.

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Postby king feeb » 29 Mar 2007, 01:42

Guy E wrote:I remember being sick for a few days in the spring of ’64 and my mother decided to cheer me up by buying me a new record. Knowing how much I loved The Beatles she bought a 45 titled Ringo… by Lorne Greene. I did my best to conceal my disappointment.


I had that fucking record too! Let's flash back...

"And when the smoke cleared (dramatic pause) Ringo (shorter dramatic pause) was dead!"

Riiiiiinnnngggoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

:lol:
You'd pay big bucks to know what you really think.

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Postby & » 29 Mar 2007, 01:42

Born in '81.

Listened mostly to The Beatles, Simon And Garfunkel, ABBA (ahem!) and (more embarrassingly, but it's not like I had much of a choice) John Denver and Cliff Richard as a child. The first LP I owned was a copy of the Simon and Garfunkel reunion live album my mum bought for me for my third birthday.

There were two sorts of eighties boys, those who owned 'Machine Head' and 'In Rock' and those who owned 'Deepest Purple', and I was the latter sort.

In '91 I bought my first cassette tape of my own free will, and that was 'Off The Ground', an album which isn't all that strong in retrospect, but 'Mistress And Maid' led to a lifelong love affair with solo McCartney and (much later) with a certain Declan McManus who was credited as a co-writer on the sleeve.

About this time MTV made its explosive entry into teenage lives all over the country and let me finally see what Guns 'N' Roses actually looked like and sowed the earliest seeds of musical snobbery in my nascent brain.

Two things happened in '96. The Beatles Anthology documentary was screened on TV setting off a new wave of obsession with the Fabs - who could resist John and Paul screaming into the same microphone? And, more staggeringly, I chanced upon an Elvis concert film on the TNT channel called 'That's The Way It Is'. Now, I must've been behind the times like nobody's business, but this was completely new to me. I'd seen nothing remotely like it, nothing that exciting, that seminal, that fundamental to life. That was the exact moment when the guitar that I'd been noodling around with from the age of ten became a serious instrument with serious girl-attracting potential.

Elvis. Dear god, what a kick in the seat of the pants. A command to get up and move.

And then music was important.

On my seventeenth birthday, an uncle gave me a Bob Dylan best of. That was the second huge revelation and since then Elvis, The Beatles and Bob Dylan have permanently been a sort of musical triangle, markers of my territory.

Then came junior college and getting wasted and pub bands and the whole goddamned slew that was Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, XTC, The Velvet Underground, The Band and the whole bloody lot all at once and then I grew up.

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Postby Muskrat » 29 Mar 2007, 01:44

Crude Art wrote:Toni Fisher > Meredith Willson > The Beatles > The Beach Boys > The McCoys > The Association > Mr Bloe > The Small Faces > Thunderclap Newman > The Rolling Stones > The Who > The Doobie Brothers > Bachman Turner Overdrive > Golden Earring > David Bowie > Roxy Music > TheClashTheDamnedTheSexPistolsTheJam > The Fall > C86 > Grunge > Butthole Surfers > Blur > Psych > Psych > Psych > Psych > BCB > Prog > Krautrock > ?


Points for spelling Willson's name correctly.
And that's "Miss" Toni Fisher!
Things that a fella can't forget...

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Postby mentalist (slight return) » 29 Mar 2007, 06:34

Born in 1969

Mother worked in a classical music record and sheet music store and as I inherited her musical genes, took much pleasure in the various pop singles and LPs she brought home (they sold some pop). They were mostly whatever was popular or didn't sell, ABBA, Three Degrees, Sparks. Older brother was into Rush, Alice Cooper, The Beatles. So of course, I was too for a while. Remain a Beatles fan - the others, well, it was a phase. As my brothers weren't really into punk and I was a bit young, it was always a disocvery after the event for me. Dad, love him, is musically disinterested.

Took a shining to bands like Supertramp, Queen, Toto, ELO and the like. Yes!

One day watching the tube, saw Van Morrison live and this sparked my curiosity no end. Bought various Van twofer cassettes, and albums. Proceeded to be blown away by the Moondance / Astral Weeks twofer. Never heard anything remotely like the Astral Weeks album. Around this time, Joe Jackson.

Towards the end of High School me and a mate used to wag a lot (ie; play hookey, leave early) and ended up in record stores at Chatswood buying Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac and Alan Parsons Project albums.

Started uni, started wearing black, Paisley Shirts, Harrington jackets, discovering the Australian indie music scene. Weekend after weekend at the Trade Union Club, Hopetoun, Graphic Arts Club, Three Weeds, Evil Star, Harold Park, etc getting pissed and watching bands. All those bands that are now in compilations like Do The Pop (Celibate Rifles, Died Pretty, Hoodoo Gurus, Lime Spiders, Ed Kuepper, I could go on and on). These bands of course were into the Stooges / Velvets scene, so thence was I.

At uni James Brown and the funk continuum. starting with this album, also my original avatar on Mojo Bulletin Board

Image

Mr Brown continues to be a musical love. Bands like Parliament and Funkadelic also enter my consciousness from James Brown. Rap. Hip-Hop.

Peter Gabriel's Real World label started an interest in African music. Used to venture to Folkways Records in Paddington (it's still there) frequently and buy African records with interesting covers. Although this only lasted a year or two, there's some great music I have, particularly from Madagascar.

Dropped Ecstacy? Whoa! What The?! Verve, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses (those crossover bands), then the typical rave music fare.

Somewhere along the way a long term girlfriend got me into The King.

From thence on, it's a blur. A continual education. Which many of you supply.

Next concert - V Festival this weekend - Pixies, Rapture, Pet Shop Boys, Beck, New York Dolls, Gnarls Barkley, Jarvis, 2 Many DJs etc
king of the divan

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Postby Pete the Pick » 29 Mar 2007, 13:23

For those that have been on these boards for longer than half an hour, look away now...

Being born in the year that Helen Mirren ascended the throne, it wasn't until 4 lads who shook the world woke up my pop sensibilities with Please Please Me. Steven, a schoool mate had tried to get me into Cliff, but fortunately that never worked. It was those guitars, y'see? I bought the first edition of Fabulous, later to become FAB 208, and a bit of a girlie mag, purely because it had a big photo of Heinz on the back, but not because of him, but because of the beautiful red Gretsch he was holding! There was a red electric guitar hanging in the window of a pawn shop on the way into Middlesbrough that my parents religiously avoided buying me: I remember entering a competition on the back of a Cornflakes packet to win a Burns electric guitar "as used by recording artistes The Ramblers". Naturally, I didn't win, but was rewarded by photos of The Ramblers, who I'd never heard of, and never heard anything by!

Hot on the heels of The Fabs, was devotion to Merseybeat, Small Faces, Stones, The Who, Spencer Davis and The Animals. Going to boarding school in Ipswich proved a fertile ground for getting into the pirate radio stations: Radio City, Radio London, and Radio Caroline until the Marine Offences Act in 1967 put paid to that. Hearing Cream and Hendrix singles suggested something different in the air, and by 1968/9, I was jettisoning pop, including Motown (travesty, I know) for album bands. There was also something different in the airwaves , as I discovered Radio Geronimo and Kid Jensen's show on Radio Luxembourg. For my 16th birthday, I finally got a record player, and my first purchases were Disraeli Gears and Blind Faith's eponymous, and at that time, brand new LP. First singles were Bowie's Space Oddity followed by The Nice's America. Subsequent albums were of a predictable bent: Free, Taste, Ssssh, Looking Back, Stand Up, A Song For Me.

I escaped from boarding school, and did A levels in Feltham, an armpit of West London, near Heathrow. Before I'd got to know anybody, I'd been to Floyd's Hyde Park freebie, and memorably to the Isle of Wight Festival (for which eternal thanks go to my dear departed mater and pater who gobsmacked me by letting me go!!), catching lots of my faves, Hendrix notwithstanding. Back in Feltham, I was into the letter F. Free, Family, Faces all did it for me and my new mates. Somebody had the idea of going up to Regents Street on a Thursday to catch the recordings of John Peel's Sunday-repeated-on-Wednesday concerts, so I did that for a few years seeing lots of good stuff, and getting to know the man as a friend. Carlsson and BOSH can testify to the fare on offer. For my 21st, I got a Telecaster copy off my Mum, which unfortunately wasn't the Les Paul copy I wanted. Tsk! So, after a few years of long hair, Melody Maker, festivals, illegal chemicals, and loads of gigs (an alarming number of "Underground"-type affairs usually involving Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come, Hawkwind, Pink Fairies and the like), I was rocked to my core by the sight of Dr Feelgood at Kingson Poly in October 1975. You didn't have to have long guitar solos or involved intricate noodling to be good. Hurrah! Subsequently, Nils Lofgren and Graham Parker proved that, on vinyl, songs were the deal. On stage, it was The 101'ers and The Fabulous Poodles that were shaking my tree, and I crossed over to NME. Then I went to see Joe Strummer's new band.....

Punk gave me what I felt I'd always missed out on in the 60s, ie., the Beat Boom, the R&B Boom, or whatever. It was something to get immersed in initially, being pretty small and fairly localised, albeit in London. I finally started playing that electric guitar in a band, got involved with a short lived fanzine and met loads of people. It was a great time to be around! The next 4 or 5 years were spent playing and seeing bands all over the place, buying up 45s at an alarming trend, quite the reversal of my previous album purchasing habit. The taste veered toward Wire, The Cure, Bunnymen, Furs, that kind of thing. Oh, and when Quadrophenia came out, it ignited a passion for Motown and Soul that I'd thrown out of the window when I achieved puberty and Progressive music all those years before, well, 10 actually! Well, the band never amounted to anything, but after a period of excessive overtime / standby covering our Accounting system at work, I had the dosh to convert a demo that we'd recorded into 500 singles. Exploiting my old acquaintance with John Peel, I delivered him a copy, and some three months later played it on "National" Radio 1. Shame we'd split up about 6 weeks previously! Actually, that single ended up in Peel's producer John Walters' collection, and about 5 years ago I had a call from a Welshman in Utrecht who wanted to know whether I had any further copies, as his mate had one, and he wanted to sell it on his web-site: his mate had inherited Walters' record collection!

Anyway, we all grow old, calm down a bit, and inevitably the gigs have dried up as I can't be arsed anymore.The love of music remains undimmed, however, and after getting all my musical tips from GLR (radio again!!) for 12 years, until it folded in 2000, I had no direct influences until I joined up on MOJO4MUSIC in May 2001, then jumped ship to BCB. Fat lot of good that did me, you lot know nothing!
"Buy Bovril, And Take A Bite Out Of Communism!"

sloopjohnc
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Postby sloopjohnc » 29 Mar 2007, 19:03

That took a long time and I'm still not happy with it, but what the hey. Here goes nothin'.

I remember four records in our house when I was three or four: Hard Day's Night, Ray Charles, an album of cowboy songs, and a kids' album of Peter and the Wolf, which I played over and over again. I still have that old copy of Hard Day's Night---where I drew in a a spinning basketball on the photo where Ringo's finger points up.

Both my parents were born in the late '20s and came of age in the big band era. Big band, the Ink Spots and early Sinatra were mainstays of my parents listening. On the way to the dumps on Sunday mornings, my dad would listen to old comedy shows and C&W on the radio. He'd become a fan of C&W while at boot camp in the Marines and would tell stories about the "okies" playing guitars in the barracks.

My dad can play almost any instrument and my brother has somewhat inherited that gene. My dad started playing violin pretty young 'til he quit in in high school, but I've seen him sit down at a piano, pick up trumpet and a guitar, beat on drums, play harmonica, and be almost proficient from the get-go.

When I was 9 or 10, I started listening to KFRC, the top 10 radio station in the Bay Area. Top 10 was great in the '70s, as you'd hear Smokey Robinson, Elton John, Grand Funk, Ray Stevens :? and lots of really diverse acts. Like lots of folks, the first albums I bought were K-Tel albums which reflected my radio listening.

When I was 10, we went back to New Jersey to visit my cousins. I really admired my oldest cousin, Gordon, who was a freshman in high school. I distinctly remember him listening to Cream while washing the car one Saturday and I thought how cacaphonous and noisy it sounded. Even though I'd never seen drugs or smelled marijuana, I knew this couldn't be good.

In 8th grade I went to a small Lutheran school cuz I had changed a science grade on my report card. For such a small school, it had a big sports program. The school was also pretty evenly divided between, white, hispanic and black kids and R&B and funk were the order of the day. I remember my friend Arthur Nicholson trying to show me the bassline to Shining Star. Note: In high school, Art finished 2nd in the CA state meet in the 440.

Between 8th grade and high school, my brother and I used to hang out at a friend's house. They still are like our second family and my brother is best friends with one fraternal twin and I with the other. Between and during driveway hoops games, skateboarding and mischief, the 8-track player was on with a constant barrage of the Beatles blue album, Endless Summer and that new sensation, Frampton Comes Alive.

Reunited with elementary school friends in high school, my friend Tim and his girlfriend Karen introduced me to Houses of the Holy. We'd listen to it 'til I could tell they wanted to have sex and I'd walk home.

High school was pretty much FM radio rock. After smoking pot for the first time in high school, the same fanaticism I had for baseball cards wandered to rock music. And my friends were the same. The only reason we joined The Key Club at school was because they controlled the lunchtime courtyard music stereo.

My brother started taking guitar lessons freshman year with the goal of learning every Jimmy Page solo ever. I'd make him write down the chords when he learned them and I'd bash them out on an old acoustic. A couple years ago, I fixed it up as best I could and gave it back to my brother so he could bash around with it with his kids.

I still don't know why I got the idea, but my junior year I suggested to my brother that we start a band. We'd always played together in our rooms---mainly I'd cadge together some chords and words and Bill, my brother, would polish 'em up.

We had one rehearsal where we had like five guys with guitars all trying to learn the intro to Johnny B. Goode, which was kinda discouraging. Somehow I found that one of my oldest friends, Jeff, was a closet guitar player and that one of my other friends, Dave, owned a bass. Through Dave, he knew a guy in our class, Steve Schmidt, who had a drumkit. It was officially on!

We were crappy but eventually got OK, and played the usual array of house parties, and later Stanford frat parties and opened at some small clubs. I still miss it. It was fun. I think I like playing sports better than playing music, but probably just because I'm a lil' better at sports than music.

Among my friends, I was always kind of ahead of the curve re: music listening. As Jeff and my brother were the best musicians, they kinda dominated the band's sound, which meant lots of AC/DC.

Senior year I discovered punk, mainly through a local Sunday nigh radio show, and tried introducing the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the DKs. They were having none of it. The closest I got was talking my brother, Jeff and Dave into seeing the Clash on the London Calling tour.

Free of my friends and suburbia, in college I started working in record stores and latched onto various genres at various times---reggae, R&B punk, and new wave. As I lived in the athletes' dorm (I wasn't on a team, just lived there), I was introduced to rap, which I immediately liked, but I think that stemmed from listening to AM radio when I was a kid with its eclecticism. I transferred to SF State for a couple years and discovered clubbing through a girlfriend. It was kind of a precursor to raves, as the parties would hop from location to location every week. It was a good time to be in SF, as there was a good mix of live music and clubs. Lots to pick from.

Like my choice of professional careers, my music likes and knowledge are more broad than specialised. Meaning, I like and I'm ok at lots of things, but don't know and am not really good at any one thing.
Last edited by sloopjohnc on 29 Mar 2007, 21:22, edited 1 time in total.

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Yyzlin
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Postby Yyzlin » 29 Mar 2007, 20:59

Born in 1986. My parents were immigrants to America, and never were really into music, so my first musical experiences were really from friends. Got into music around middle school. Listened to mainstream hiphop, like everyone else. First album was DMX's And Then There Was X. In high school, I got really into heavy metal. Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, Judas Priest, that stuff. I had a shitty internet connection back then, so instead of MP3s, I used to download MIDI's to get my music fix. Around my junior/senior years, started listening to prog rock/classic rock/60's-70's music/ and random others. King Crimson really got me going into prog. Stevie Wonder's music made my happier than any other artist. Van Morrison's music was magical and nostalgic. And Kate Bush was my female musical crush. In college, I just began devouring everything. All the classics, the diamonds in the rough, and everything in between. High speed internet helped me with that. The internet was my guide to everything, and I would usually spend hours of free time just browsing random music sites, reading reviews, going down lists, to find new and interesting stuff I haven't heard before. And that's pretty much where I am today as a senior now in college.
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Martial Lawniz
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Postby Martial Lawniz » 29 Mar 2007, 21:43

Walk In My Shadow wrote:We had pirate radio as well. Broadcasting from ships in the North Sea.
Veronica (Dutch), Radio Caroline, Radio London.
On the AM dial in the evening these sounds would wash in and out of the ether. Listening in bed under the covers with a small transistor radio.


Do you remember a Caroline Dj called Tom Lodge, Yves? I met up with him via his sons about 20 years ago, played with them in a punk band. I heard many a tale of old Tom hiding Vietnam draft dodgers and other drug-related stories many a time. Tom in the past couple three years has been doing his memoirs on line on the Radio Caroline web page. Or something similar dedicated to RC.
I was eating Strawberry. Hello.

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Cantankerous
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Postby Cantankerous » 29 Mar 2007, 21:48

Walk In My Shadow wrote:yes, even Quintessence.


They were better live - did you ever see them Yves?


.
Croan wrote:One thing about the Yanks - they never seriously piddled about in
anything as preposterously pointless as prog.

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Cantankerous
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Postby Cantankerous » 29 Mar 2007, 21:51

Cheepniz wrote: Tom Lodge.


Ovary Lodge yes- Tippett's band


.
Croan wrote:One thing about the Yanks - they never seriously piddled about in
anything as preposterously pointless as prog.

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frimleygreener
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Location: between the rose and thistle and the old weatsheaf...

Postby frimleygreener » 30 Mar 2007, 08:00

C wrote:
Walk In My Shadow wrote:yes, even Quintessence.


They were better live - did you ever see them Yves?


.
i did many a time :)


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