How I became a music nut 1: Planting Seeds

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a 100% Musicphile. In fact, I'd say I love music more than comics. (SHOCK!) Its true. I am obsessed with music, albums, bands, playing, etc. In another world, I would have been better at playing and made being a musician a full time job instead of art. I thought it would be neat to do a series of blogs about how I became a music obsessed person. Lets go.

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The best way to describe how I came to love music was my family. I was the youngest kid in the family. My two older brothers, Tony and John were in their late teens by the time I came around. My next oldest brother was nine years my senior. He was also mentally handicapped and thus I didn't have much interaction with him. Although all of my brothers had one thing in common: They all loved music! And I know that it is because of their influence that I became who I am today. But the first memory I have of music is an old light up 70's style record player we had. I remember being at the store and buying it. It was set up in our living room and mom would always play a lot of records to clean the house to. One day when I was five she showed me this album:



the Beeatles greatest hits. We had both of them, the red and the blue versions. She puts on this first record and says "This is the greatest band in the world. You are going to want to know who they are. Listen to them!" And the songs were planted in my head from then on.

Being that my brother was mentally handicapped, the one thing that would keep him calm was music. We listened to a lot of his favorite records: Roy Orbison hits, Carole King Tapestry. But we had a Betamax tape filled with Music Videos of the era. All 80's music, all gold! I still love every song on that tape to this day. But one thing it had on it was this Jackson 5 reunion Motown celebration on it. Everyone was Michael Jackson crazy and my brother, despite his condition, was no exception. Something was magical about Michael when he sang that made even my brother calm down and sit and watch him. The special featured a performance of "Billy Jean" and he first did the moonwalk. I had seen nothing else like it. No one had. And I swore then that Michael Jackson was my first real musician that I liked. I even had a Michael Jackson record player! It was the 80s, and everyone was an MJ fan. I still am. He made fucking THRILLER for fuck's sake!!




The only records I had of my own were kid's turn the page story books for HE-Man, Star Trek and Indiana Jones/Star Wars. Records that followed along and had sound clips from the movies that were in the theaters that I never got to go see. My family didn't go out to the movies much. In fact, I think I only went to the movies with my mom about 4 times. Those being Trek 3, 5, Generations and Back to the Future 2. But anyway, one day she gave me her Billy Joel greatest hits and I became obsessed with Billy Joel. I was starting to pick out favorite songs that were hits on the radio station and I got a radio for my birthday and listened to the radio all the time. But there was one final piece of the puzzle that needed to be in place to shape me into who I am today...

My brothers were in their late teens, early twenties and trying to strike out on their own. Off and on, they'd move back in to save money and with them came their lifestyle. They'd hang out and bring friends over and listen to records or cassettes. My brother John had a nice record collection and there was one album cover that always faced out from his stack of albums...



I stared at that cover every day, but never listened to it. Years later, I got over my feelings about Geddy Lee's voice and really feel in love with Rush and prog rock. But thats for later. My brothers were heavy into the 80's metal scene. Moreso my brother Tony, who was a drummer in various bands in that time. I remember them always out fixing their cars and listening to cassettes of albums from AC/DC, RATT, WASP and Ozzy. Especially Ozzy.



I wanted to be cool. I wanted them to like me. So I had to sit there and enjoy their music. And indeed, I did. Though it would take years before I could comfortably say that I loved that style of music. (will be explained later) But I always loved when they come over to the house to fix their cars. Cause that meant I could listen to rock and roll and appear "cool" in their eyes. I so wanted to impress them, even though we were close to 15 years apart in age. One of my best memories is them setting up a record player and speakers through our house one day while mom and dad were gone and listening to the new Van Halen album that just came out that day...



It was all these things that influenced me and would be stuck in my head for the years to come and I would re-discover and re-fall in love with all these bands and albums. Of course, I'd take the long way around the barn and get there on my own terms. So who planted the seeds? My brothers and my mother. My family.

Next: late 80's, early 90's, grunge and Floyd!