My first memory of music is not cool. Not remotely cool. As I said yesterday, when it comes to music my parents were all about the show tunes. It was the Pirates of Penzance or Les Miserables in my house. Or classical music, particularly choral music, most memorably Handel. There was also jazz mind you, especially Dixie Land Dad loves a bit of Louis Armstrong. As far as anything more modern is concerned, my parents quite liked old sixties pop, which we listened to in the car when driving to North Yorkshire on holiday. Moreover Dad did like the Everley Brothers and we also had a few old Beatles LPs- Hard Day's Night and Sgt. Pepper in particular, but that was about it. Dad always says that he doesn't really like the sound an electric guitar makes, which seems an anathema to me.
I guess the most important thing was that there was always music in my house. My mum was, and still is, a top class amateur alto and whilst my dad would admit to not having her pipes, they were in shows to together for 35 years so they were always learning or singing something. My dad's brother, my Uncle Brian, who sadly passed away on New Year's Day after a long illness, was the musical director of Loughton Operatic Society for decades, and my cousins were in all the shows too. To say that it was in the blood would be an understatement.
SO YOU'VE GOT A LOT OF VICTORIAN LIGHT OPERA ON YOUR iPOD?
No, silly. I remember the first time I got really bitten by the "proper" music bug. It was 1989 and I was eight years old and the ITV Chart Show played the video for I Want It All by Queen. Well I just got hit in the guts and never went back. It was the sense of drama that appealed to me I guess ... and the musicianship. I didn't know much, but I knew those boys could play. After that I was hooked. I borrowed The Miracle from Loughton Library and never gave it back (sorry). I devoured all my dad's Beatles albums and then started to buy my own stuff, at first on tape but then I got my first CD player when I was 12. I guess because of the Queen influence I had a predilection for cock rock- Guns 'n' Roses, Bon Jovi and the mighty Meat Loaf. Plus, not that they are cock rock, but I also maintain to this day that God Shuffled His Feet by the Crash Test Dummies and Pocketful Of Kryptonite by the Spin Doctors are two of the greatest albums of the early '90's. No, really. Please don't laugh, this is my blog after all.
NOT OASIS, BLUR OR THE RUDDY VERVE THEN?
Not really. Oasis were ok. Blur were much better after they were finished with Brit Pop and Richard Ashcroft is the most overrated songwriter in Britain. No, I always preferred American bands. Don't know why. I just thought the songs were better, they seemed to have more soul. And American bands always had better drummers, that is very important. If a band has a good drummer then they are most of the way there.
It was around Year 10, when I was 14, that things started to get serious. Basically I put my cock rock away (I literally sold most of it) and embraced alternative rock, specifically grunge. Typically this was all pretty much after grunge 'died' with the suicide of Kurt Cobain, but none the less the combination of nihilism, punk sensibilities and heavy metal crunch was just what this adolescent needed. The Seattle scene lead the way Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden (though never so keen on Alice In Chains) and the new wave of Californian punk bands (Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX) and the "better" nu-metal bands (that means Deftones and System Of A Down but not Korn or Limp Bizkit). Not to mention Smashing Pumpkins, Faith No More, Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead, Metallica, Counting Crows, Dave Matthews Band and the peerless R.E.M. When I was 16 and started my A-Levels at Epping Forest College I found a bunch of very like minded people (there were very few at school, more of that another time) and started going to rock clubs in London and Romford as well as gigs- the first of which, somewhat embarrassingly, was Bush at Brixton Academy in 1996. I bought a t-shirt and everything.
AH, GAVIN ROSSDALE. NOT EXACTLY JOHN LENNON WAS HE?
Hardly. Machine Head is still a cracking tune though. Anyway, you should know that most of the music I will be blogging about comes from those roots. I feel I am a lot more diverse now. I still love punk, metal and grunge but I also like hip hop, big band swing, folk, jazz, Motown and a lot of the old rock classics. Led Zeppelin, Elton John (only before 1981 and after 2002- the 80's and 90's were not good to him), Hendrix.
I am still up for discovering new artists as well, many of which I hope to share on this blog. It helps that my girlfriend is the marketing manager for Mean Fiddler so I am very lucky when it comes to tickets for gigs and festivals. Did I mentioned festivals? My first was Reading in 1998 (see below- £75 for a weekend ticket! I didn't bother to see Garbage but Beastie Boys and Page & Plant were ACE) and the latest was Download last July. There have been quite a few in between.
Anyway, I'll leave you with this from the last great American rock band, Pearl Jam. As you may find out, I am the biggest Pearl Jam fan in the south east of England at least. And this is part of the reason why (oh and this video is from 2003, not 2008- no matter what the title says).
LS.
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