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I’m sure all of you have had someone in your lives that steered you towards music, and the critical listening of it. We all have our influences, and I think it is high time I paid tribute to mine.
When I was five I asked for a tape of Bach. I didn’t know to ask for a specific title, but I knew my dad liked him so it was what I wanted. I’m still a fan. He had a set of Altec Voice of the Theater speakers which he kept on the third floor of our house, and with the windows open on a Sunday mornings I got to hear almost every piece of classical music ever to run in a Warner Brothers cartoon… Along with The Planets, the 1812 overture, and so much pipe organ I am at a loss.
MTV showed me pop… My first purchase with my own money was Thriller by Michael Jackson. Then a Duran Duran record, then Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus (See how I kept coming back to classical music?)
My mother tells me she went from listening to the Kingston Trio in high school to Black Sabbath in her freshman year of college. When I was little and my parents had parties I got to listen to Yes, Genesis, Joni Mitchell, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Dire Straights, Pink Floyd, Van Morrison, the Eagles, New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Beatles, the Stones, Carly Simon, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, just Young, just Stills, Janis Joplin, and many more of the like.
When I was fourteen my little brother died and the music stopped playing at my house. I had my own stereo by then (Kenwood receiver and cd player with some bookshelf Infiniti speakers that still sound very good.) The music of the seventies was dropped for the grunge of the nineties: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots, or metal: Megadeth, Metallica, amd Prong (who I still love.)
Then something happened that I will always be grateful for. I started paying attention to what my Grandfather had been telling me all my life. Jazz is wonderful. He was into big bands and so therefore I was too, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton,and the Francy Boland Kenny Clarke Big Band, in that order, were his and my own favorites.
From his love of big bands came my own matriculation into the bop trio and quartets. Parker, Davis, Kenny Clarke on his own, Gillespie, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, and so many more. Throw in Brubeck, Don Ellis, and Bill Evans form the “College Jazz” scene, and you had my last two years in high school.
I was a music geek at a school too small for a band. When I went to college I got into Ska because of the horn sections… MU330, Skavoovie and the Epitones, Hepcat, Less Than Jake, Mustard Plug, The Toasters, Chris Murray, The Usuals, Johnny Socko, the Chinkees, and the Scofflaws to name a few.
After school I drifted in my musical tastes, leaning hard on what I knew and not picking up much. When my grandfather passed, he left behind a ton of jazz records that are not available on CD, so I started to catalogue them, ripping each to CD song by song. The benefits to this cannot be described. I went from an fan of jazz to the guy who could name every song the band was playing at a jazz club. As I recorded I read the liner notes on the back of the albums.(PLEASE BRING THIS BACK TO CDS!!!) and learned things like that the Duke Ellington song Lotus Blossom was recorded at the end of the first studio session after Billy Stayhorn died, it was Duke’s tribute to his lost friend. You can hear the rest of the band talking and packing up, but you canalso heard the outright sadness in Ellington’s playing.
Second only to my grandfather, my uncle has played the largest part in my musical growth. He has brought me bands like The Devils Workshop, Blues Image, David Bromberg (If you haven’t heard I Will Not Be Your Fool, do so now and make sure it is a live version,) We have nights that last until 4 am where we each play one or two songs and then the other plays something that they are reminded of. It’s terrific!
Now I have this forum as well, and I have already started picking up new stuff to listen to. So I guess you are all part of my affliction now. You inflictors, you.
And if you read all this, I want to apologize, as it was strictly cathartic.
When I was five I asked for a tape of Bach. I didn’t know to ask for a specific title, but I knew my dad liked him so it was what I wanted. I’m still a fan. He had a set of Altec Voice of the Theater speakers which he kept on the third floor of our house, and with the windows open on a Sunday mornings I got to hear almost every piece of classical music ever to run in a Warner Brothers cartoon… Along with The Planets, the 1812 overture, and so much pipe organ I am at a loss.
MTV showed me pop… My first purchase with my own money was Thriller by Michael Jackson. Then a Duran Duran record, then Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus (See how I kept coming back to classical music?)
My mother tells me she went from listening to the Kingston Trio in high school to Black Sabbath in her freshman year of college. When I was little and my parents had parties I got to listen to Yes, Genesis, Joni Mitchell, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Dire Straights, Pink Floyd, Van Morrison, the Eagles, New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Beatles, the Stones, Carly Simon, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, just Young, just Stills, Janis Joplin, and many more of the like.
When I was fourteen my little brother died and the music stopped playing at my house. I had my own stereo by then (Kenwood receiver and cd player with some bookshelf Infiniti speakers that still sound very good.) The music of the seventies was dropped for the grunge of the nineties: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots, or metal: Megadeth, Metallica, amd Prong (who I still love.)
Then something happened that I will always be grateful for. I started paying attention to what my Grandfather had been telling me all my life. Jazz is wonderful. He was into big bands and so therefore I was too, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton,and the Francy Boland Kenny Clarke Big Band, in that order, were his and my own favorites.
From his love of big bands came my own matriculation into the bop trio and quartets. Parker, Davis, Kenny Clarke on his own, Gillespie, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, and so many more. Throw in Brubeck, Don Ellis, and Bill Evans form the “College Jazz” scene, and you had my last two years in high school.
I was a music geek at a school too small for a band. When I went to college I got into Ska because of the horn sections… MU330, Skavoovie and the Epitones, Hepcat, Less Than Jake, Mustard Plug, The Toasters, Chris Murray, The Usuals, Johnny Socko, the Chinkees, and the Scofflaws to name a few.
After school I drifted in my musical tastes, leaning hard on what I knew and not picking up much. When my grandfather passed, he left behind a ton of jazz records that are not available on CD, so I started to catalogue them, ripping each to CD song by song. The benefits to this cannot be described. I went from an fan of jazz to the guy who could name every song the band was playing at a jazz club. As I recorded I read the liner notes on the back of the albums.(PLEASE BRING THIS BACK TO CDS!!!) and learned things like that the Duke Ellington song Lotus Blossom was recorded at the end of the first studio session after Billy Stayhorn died, it was Duke’s tribute to his lost friend. You can hear the rest of the band talking and packing up, but you canalso heard the outright sadness in Ellington’s playing.
Second only to my grandfather, my uncle has played the largest part in my musical growth. He has brought me bands like The Devils Workshop, Blues Image, David Bromberg (If you haven’t heard I Will Not Be Your Fool, do so now and make sure it is a live version,) We have nights that last until 4 am where we each play one or two songs and then the other plays something that they are reminded of. It’s terrific!
Now I have this forum as well, and I have already started picking up new stuff to listen to. So I guess you are all part of my affliction now. You inflictors, you.
And if you read all this, I want to apologize, as it was strictly cathartic.
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