After hearing my good buddy AndyR front the Narband this weekend, making his way through two sets of really fun covers from the ’80s (and a few of the ’90s) I started thinking about the musician who, if I had to set down a musical marker, would be the one who defined my formative musical years. To me, that time was from late high school into early college. And I’m wondering who you guys would name.
Now as a bit of ground rules — I’m talking about an artist that came up (or down) in your time. So, while many might go to the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, etc as their musicians of enlightenment… I would guess these pre-date most of us. (I’m guessing at our typical demographic’s ages, of course.)
For me, that marker would have to Elvis Costello.
Of course I did listen to music before and after Elvis. But (as I was driving home in nice glow) Costello helped me become “alternative” in my high school without having to be really punk, was the first guy my high school friends really agreed on, and bonded me in college to my closest friends to this day. He had such a great string of albums that I could enjoy his output for a good long run. I remember walking around school with My Aim Is True as sort of a badge of honor.
I don’t listen to Costello as much as I should today. But he always brings me back in a way other artists of my Formative Years don’t quite match.
So, as a way to get to know you guys better, who would you point to as the artist that best sums up your time? It might be an artist that you don’t think is particularly good now.
Maybe it’s the weather that’s put me in a reminiscing mood…
I think I know what you’re asking, machinery. Elvis Costello and The Clash were my once-contemporary points of reference. They were My Music.
Mine wouldn’t even be my favorite band, though one of my faves, and they certainly went down in my time, though their 2009 album is their best in a long, long time.
The Meat Puppets were my formative band. They were part punk, part desert, part psychedelic, incredibly unique yet groovy…but most importantly they were from the Phoenix area as was I.
The drinking age in Arizona went from 19 to 21 but 19 year-olds were grandfathered in so I got to see the Meat Puppets quite a bit and coming from a state with shitty FM hard rock stations and Foghat concerts this was quite illuminating. It gave me a sense of community in a place where I mostly felt out-of-place. It gave me hope for creativity and weirdness even in my boring as hell town.
To this day I regard Meat Puppets II and Up On the Sun two of the best and two of my favorite albums of all time. Largely because I can’t separate the music from the life changing memories and that combination is powerful.
FYI- their 2009 release Sewn Together is really good. It was produced by Curt Kirkwood which I think is the first one he has done since the albums I love so much. Hmmm.
For what I would call my formative years, I would definitely say The Clash, The Police, and early U2.
It started with Yes a little earlier, but through Jr. High they were my favorite, and while you are saying the band has to be “of my era,” I should probably still pick The Doors. They had a huge late 70’s resurgence and actually sold more records then than in the 60’s, or so the radio used to say. But the two records that changed my whole outlook were Never Mind the Bollocks and My Aim is True. I didn’t have a favorite band again until after high school, I was too busy trying to hear at least a little of everything new.
I’ve probably told this story before, but my musical awakening came because of a crappy alarm clock.
My older brother and I shared a bedroom until I was eight years old, when we moved into a new house: actually, we moved into the house next door, because our next-door neighbors the Walkers (whose twin girls were by default my best friends because they were the only other kids my age on the cul-de-sac) moved away and we bought their house because it was bigger than ours. So my brother and I had separate bedrooms for the first time, and my parents gave me their old clock radio for my nightstand. Unfortunately, it had lost its antenna, so it could only get local stations, so really, the only station I could listen to on it was KBCO, Boulder’s freeform station that around that time (1978) was transitioning into a new wave station.
So while my friends all were listening religiously to Denver’s Top 40 powerhouse KIMN (and, when we were getting into junior high, the cooler album-rock FM station KBPI, which as we all knew from their ubiquitous slogan, rocked the Rockies), I was also being forcefed Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, The Clash, Split Enz, The Beat, The Jam, etc.
But if I had to pick one band as the formative influence, it would probably be Blondie, because when we moved into this house in the fall of ’78, Blondie was ALL over KBCO. Not just “Heart of Glass” and “One Way Or Another,” which got KIMN play, but also “Hanging On The Telephone” and “Sunday Girl,” which is still probably my favorite Blondie song. So, yeah…Blondie.
The Replacements were the band that made me choose between music that my High School friends liked (Def Leppard, Van Halen, The Doors, ZZ Top, Iron Maiden) and the music I was hearing on WREK (Georgia Tech) and WRAS (Ga State).
Funny enough, it was Dan Baird of The Georgia Satellites who turned me on to the ‘Mats. He took over the afternoon DJ on WKLS / 96ROCK one 1987 afternoon and played NRBQ, Replacements, Jason & The Scorchers etc. but it was “IOU” that got me to get a ride to “Turtles Records and Tapes” and buy Pleased To Meet Me and then wear that tape out over the next few years. The same years that I was starting my band The Stonesouls and trying to figure out a sound.
I wanted more of this kind of music and it was obvious that 96ROCK would not offer this to me. The answer was “Left Of The Dial” to WREK and WRAS (GA State) for Guadalcanal Diary (who were also from Marietta GA!), REM, Drivin N Cryin, Smithereens, The Ramones,The Smiths, TMBG, XTC, Talking Heads,Elvis Costello and a whole world of “College” music.
(NOBODY I knew listened to this stuff, the suburbs were about Loverboy and Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Boston getting back together, Van-Hagar, etc)
Next thing I was ready to leave Atlanta suburbs for Athens GA, the promise land!
LOVED Blondie as a kid (7,8 years old) and loved them every since. Saw them last September and took my wife for our anniversary!)
I guess I’m over the demographic but the one-two punch for me are The Beatles and Dylan. I was a few weeks shy of my ninth birthday on that February Sunday night in 1964 when I settled down in front of the old black & white TV to watch The Ed Sullivan Show which was a family staple. And from the first notes I knew something had irrevocably changed for me. I still love Sinatra and Chet Baker and the other music my dad loved and that I listened to constantly growing up but The Beatles were mine, the music was mine and it was all different.
A few years later I got into Dylan and that has led, directly or indirectly, to so much music that I love. It was because of things Dylan said that I investigated people like Hank Williams and Robert Johnson. And a common love of Dylan led to my friendship with Geo (“well over 40 years ago” as I’ve seen it phrased) which led to more great music than I could list in hours of typing).
Having given the question quite a lot of thought, I don’t think that I can deny that the artist who had the greatest formative influence on me was Gary Glitter.
His music was instantly accessible, you needed only the most rudimentary sense of rhythm to thump something along with it, and he looked absolutely fantastic.
He played in the park after Hastings Carnival in (I think) 1973 and that was the first gig I went to, at the age of 10. The Glitter Band did a set first, and then he came on and did all the hits. I had pictures of him all over my bedroom wall and would save my pocket money to buy the records.
He made a comeback in the late seventies and we would all go to see him, the shows were just amazing, he was adored by the punks in a way that bands who could actually play their instruments effectively or put together a coherent tune struggled to achieve. He did a great show in Brighton supported by Otway and Barrett, and a couple of times a group of us went to see his Christmas show in Birmingham.
His fall from grace was a real kick in the face, a betrayal of everyone who had loved him and his music, and more so for those who had taken their kids to see him.
I met him once while he was warming up for a gig and he was charm itself. There are very few people whose hand I regret shaking, his may indeed be the only one.
Two of my school teachers and the father of one of my friends at school were imprisoned for molesting young boys, so we were certainly no strangers to the concept of child abuse around this time, but it still seems very hard to reconcile with the fame, money and applause we granted him.
His records are no longer played, although his Christmas hit can still be heard on CDs (presumably compiled before his conviction) in shops over the festive period, and if I hear it being played I have to leave.
I was raised on classical music: my grandfather was a well known Bach scholar and I grew up playing classical piano. But we listened to a lot of 70’s AM radio in the car (there’s a lot of driving involved with growing up in AZ), and when I got to be of record buying age, my parents totally stoked my fire for Abba. Maybe it’s because of their European origins (both of my parents are off-the-boat Europeans) or because of the inherently cheerful, melodic music, but we all went to see Abba in 1979 or 1980 and I still have the tshirt to prove it. My husband is still amazed at my knowledge of Abba lyrics…
Moving along to later high school, I was really in to Queen. Once again: Mr. Mercury’s operatic voice was considered ok to crank loudly on my stereo and I didn’t get any guff for it (my father still sings in a local choral group and they recently performed a group chorus version of Bohemian Rhapsody; Dad couldn’t understand why I hated it so much, purist that I am).
College was Pink Floyd, British synth pop and REM. I still love those first few REM albums, and when I became a college dj when I went away to grad school “Radio Free Europe” was the first song I played on the air.
I spent my childhood with two older brothers who had transistor radios constantly going, so some of my earliest memories were rock and roll of the late 1950s and “teen music” was my youthful soundtrack. I was nine when the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan and that indeed was a life-changing moment for me, as it was for a zillion other kids. I entered my teens in the so-called Summer of Love (1967) and embraced psychedelia in a big way. Also, my older brother would bring home the cool new albums from college for me to listen to – Hendrix, Doors, Airplane, Cream, Beck, and so on. In 1969, we got a “progressive FM” (not “prog” but pre-playlist, free-form AOR) station in our area and that’s when I basically stopped listening to Top 40 (except in the AM-only car). That’s how I learned to appreciate and later love prog.
For me the transformative time was at the start of high school and just before that. The one that really influenced me the most was The Police, but close seconds would be Tom Petty, The Cars, Joe Jackson, Cheap Trick, and Talking Heads. Our various garage bands were good enough at covering those songs to play parties and high school dances, so I’m sure a lot of little bits of that style and technique seeped into my own writing and playing.
Before that I think I took a lot of the Beatles, solo Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, Clapton, Who, etc. off my parent’s record shelf and played them to death. Bowie to some degree, but he was definitely *not* on their shelf — I must have bought his records myself. So all that stuff is almost as deeply embedded in my brain. But as much as I love it, I guess that stuff tends to seem more “classic” than “mine”.
In college it was early- and mid-80’s and all that 80’s “new wave” sort of stuff was everywhere in LA. I remember going to freshman orientation week the summer before school started and it seemed like this group The Go-Go’s that I’d never heard before were coming out of every stereo. KROQ was the source. U2, The Cure, Peter Gabriel, The Fixx, XTC, The Clash, and Depeche Mode were added to my heavy rotation list. It may not be a particularly accurate memory, but the image in my head is of crowded, dimly lit dormitory hallways on Friday and Saturday nights, with The English Beat’s “Mirror In the Bathroom” and U2’s “New Year’s Day” blaring and people dancing while holding red plastic beer cups.
I got my first record player in 1976. Untill then, I just listened to a.m. pop. I still love 70s pop. Even the goofy songs sound great.
Once I got the record player, I got way into KISS for about two years, then ditched them for Springsteen and Aerosmith. Then came the epiphany of hearing Sweet Jane on the way home from school. 35 years later and I’m still working through that day.
Ah, I remember KROQ in those days! When I’d drive from AZ to CA, I would look forward to getting in range of that station!
Like ladymisskirroyale, my family were off-the-boat Europeans (I was the Welcome to the USA Baby) & my siblings were 9-11 yrs. older than me. My sister was a Beatles fan & had most of their albums up to Revolver & I also soaked up in my 4-yr. old mind what was on the Top 40 radio circa 1966. I still listened mostlly to Top 40 (especially Casey Kasem’s American Top 40) until I got into high school, when I started listening to WBCN.
My 1st real record purchase was the Rolling Stones’ December’s Children album from the Record Exchange here in the Witch City (which is still here) in 1978. I got heavily into the Kinks around the same time, starting w/my brother’s hand-me-down copy of Everybody’s In Show Biz & going from there to the Ann & Hope bargain bin copy of Soap Opera & the $2,99 used copy of the Great Lost Kinks Album. My first contemporary musical acts would probably be Elvis Costello & Devo (which was my 1st rock concert experience in 1979).
I really struggled with this question, because my overseas upbringing really resulted in a fractured musical growth chart. I followed a fairly standard, US-centric, rockist path through my junior high years, up to “London Calling.” Records could be purchased three or four times a year, in the Army PX’s in the Panama Canal Zone, where we’d go for our quarterly dose of American “stuff.”
Then, we moved to Africa, and all the rules changed. There were *no* records to be had in-country, and a pretty weird selection in Johannesburg, where we’d go a few times a year for shopping purposes. Most of my “oh my God” musical growth moments came from cassettes various kids brought home with them after trips to the UK, or when they returned from boarding school. My experience with the first Stiff Little Fingers album was cassette-based, and *nearly* life-changing, but it was too isolated. Same goes for the first time I heard Motorhead’s “Ace Of Spades” album. Plus: how many lifestyle choices could (or should) have been made in a sleepy African mountain kingdom after listening to those two albums?
No, for this reason I had to turn to Rory Gallagher as my great point of music/lifestyle inflection. Rory was as punk as the Clash, SLF and Motorhead in his own working-man’s way. He dressed in a uniform that I could emulate without fear of excommunication (and did — see photo from the Christmas Saga). He was a mean, and utterly *righteous* guitar slinger, whose blues cred was impeccable. And Rory ROCKED. He was a man capable of being possessed by music — something I needed to see and — more importantly — believe when I was a teen.
Townsman Machinery met me in college, shortly after I washed up on America’s shores from my admittedly weird African experience. He probably perceived that the musical flag I flew was a patchwork affair, unbalanced in color and unusual in shape. But I like to think that the things that made us vaguely “punk-compatible,” and led to us forming a band together, were the life-lessons Rory Gallagher taught me.
“He probably perceived that the musical flag I flew was a patchwork affair, unbalanced in color and unusual in shape.”
That’s a hell of a sentence. Nicely done!
I can understand the nobody knowing part of your experience. Mostly nobody knew half of the stuff I listened to because they didn’t want to even give it a try. If it wasn’t on WMMS, then it wasn’t worth listening to. So some of that stuff I just listened to in my room and it was good enough.
Rory Gallagher is an artist who I’ve never really “got into” in a big way, but whose music nevertheless has given me a great deal of enjoyment whenever I have heard it, and from the interviews I read he came across as a decent, intelligent guy, and I was completely shocked when he died.
I used to have a tape of some sessions he recorded for the BBC and there was some really good stuff on there.
He was certainly highly respected by punks over here, there were a small, eclectic and often highly improbable band of blues/ heavy metal/ prog artists who seemed to be able to ride the punk wave despite their obvious non-punk credentials – Rory Gallagher was very high up on this list, along with Motorhead, Hawkwind, Thin Lizzy, and peculiarly enough Pink Floyd, mainly through Nick Mason’s production of the second Damned album.
As BostonH has said, great phrase, which reminded me in an oblique way of a slogan on an anarchist poster which a friend used to have on his wall, and transported me straight back to those happy times.
I would have to say the artist that pulled me from the dorky high school guy who listened to “Supper’s Ready” and “The Return of the Giant Hogweed” at the student paper office to the edgy, spare art-punk of “Exposure” and “Intruder” was Peter Gabriel. By the time I got to college, I could talk a little about Eno, Fripp, the Talking Heads and Adrian Belew and was ready to jump into student radio, punk and post punk college rock.
I forced my High School Art class to listen to Pleased To Meet Me and Doolittle. The teacher was hip and she liked Talking Heads and TMBG. (in between Whitesnake)
Tortured 3 guys on the way to Florida by insisting that we listen to Ramones Mania every other cassette for an 8 hour drive.
They all thanked me later