Musical Memories

This is interesting. I didn't even realize that it was Monday when I woke up, but it is indeed Monday the 9th of April. It's supposed to be like seventy degrees today, I'm really looking forward to that. But yeah, because I'm such a lazy bum, I always forget how nice it is to get up at the asscrack of dawn every morning. I woke up at like 7:00, as the birds were starting to chirp and the mist was just clearing. It was peaceful. Maybe that's why Stün does it so much. =)

So here are my musical memories, following FlyingTim's suit. For me, music is more of a motivator and inspirational tool. However, some songs do spark my memories of times past.

My first memories of actually being interested in the music I was hearing come from the days when Syn and I used to hang out literally every day after school. They used to have these mini-cassette type things with only one song on them. They popped into a specially made portable player you listened to with headphones. This was a few years before I discovered the Walkman, so it was a hell of a concept to me. The format of these tiny, one-song cassettes was supposed to be the newest thing, but after like a year they became boring. I'm not sure if they were expensive or not because my parents never told me how much anything cost - it was always, "Too much." But anyway, I remember Syn had three of these little cassettes with "Walk Like an Egyptian", "Hangin' Tough" and some other song by Michael Jackson I can't remember the title of. I really enjoyed listening to those three songs, though.

After that, though, I made a radical jump. My parents bought me a crappy little boombox because all the other kids in my neighborhood had them and I used to get what I know now as Hot 97 from New York and Kiss 95.7 (KC 101 wasn't famous at this point and Radio 104 was still a gleam in some yuppie's eye, still playing easy-listening on Star 104.1... hehe). This was back when Kiss used to play DAS SCORPIAHNS and their ilk. I wasn't too into that stuff, but sometimes Kiss would play Guns N Roses and I loved that stuff. The first GnR song I ever heard was "Paradise City". From Hot 97 I would hear a bunch of LL Cool J songs and Public Enemy, a lot of other good stuff. The first song of any kind of rap I ever heard was "Around the Way Girl" from Uncle L. I had a tape which I would record from the two stations and I remember having all kinds of different rappers and hip-hoppers and heavy metal songs from GnR and Metallica. I used to hang around with this kid Will and rap with him, then we'd dance like fools to the metal. It was fun, and I really enjoyed the music, even though I had no idea what bands like Public Enemy were talking about. I wanted to get up on stage and rhyme with all those people, I wanted to play the guitar and I wanted to combine the two.

Of course, a year or so later, once we got to the middle school, we had this awesome bus driver. Will would bring in his N.W.A. tapes and my rides to and from school would consist of fuck shit dick ass bitch ho gat nigga etc. If only my parents knew. Hehe. I more or less enjoyed the swears and trying to rap along with the songs. After that bus driver's route was changed about a year later, I had my walkman and would ignore the crap they played on KC 101, listening to my Nirvana tape I'd acquired before it got broken. After that incident, though, I strayed a bit. I began reading a lot and ignoring my music. Once Nirvana became famous, though, I was pulled back in. Nirvana, despite what some of you may think, was a very good band. Behind the terrible grunge music was raw power and feeling you can't convey through any kind of music today. Kurt Cobain had something to say, and it was a much more pertinent to me than the advocacy of rampant drug use bands like GnR and The Dead were putting forth. Nirvana factored heavily into my ideals and they're probably the main reason why I'm such a liberal.

After Nirvana's demise, I heard Into Another from Bloody. Of course, this was before the whole hardcore revolution had come on and I was skeptical. I remember saying, after hearing the song "Running Into Walls" by them, that they were good but that I wouldn't go buy one of their albums. A few months later, I bought them all. Hehe. Again, this music changed me. I also began hearing other types of music, watching the high school band play their funky music, like "Pass the Peas" and "Pickin' Up the Pieces". Peps introduced me to jazz and I found myself enjoying the feeling behind the music of Miles Davis and Coltrane. The "Battle of the Bands" during my freshman year was memorable because I met a lot of cool people and heard a lot of new music, too. After a few year hiatus, I returned to listening to rap, as well.

Nowadays, I also find myself highly enjoying "wussy" music like Yanni and pieces from video game soundtracks. Some of those songs have so much power in them. Celtic music and piano pieces have found their way into my musical menagerie, along with some older rock and 80's pop. Caniprokis got me hooked on Incubus (I own all of their albums despite the fact that I said I wouldn't buy any of theirs, either). Now and then, I'll even catch myself listening to The Dead or Phish, bands I used to hate furiously for no reason. All in all, I like my collection.

The song "Nothing Else Matters" sparks a rather tragic memory of mine. I believe Lio can identify with it as well. My mother told me about being robbed at gun point while that song played on the radio. This was before she had the rollerskate, and the Box of Death (though it wasn't called that at that point, it was actually still kind of new then) had a flat tire or something. A car had pulled up and she thought the people were going to help her. Instead, they took my mother's purse and made her strip off her clothes. I can listen to the song, though, and enjoy it normally, it just sparks that memory.

Most Into Another songs get me thinking about Liz. I was really listening to them a lot when I first met her. "May I" bothers me because it's what was playing in her parents' minivan the night I could've had her for my own. "Two Snowflakes" was the song I sang when I tried out for the musical at Eastern, and whenever I hear it I think of the people looking at me funny and this kid, Ian, telling me I did a great job and that Into Another was hard stuff to sing.

I can't stand DMX, but that "Y'all gonna make me lose my cool... etc." song makes me think of the Mets/Diamondbacks game I went to last summer because it was Jay Payton's intro song. That was the game that Mike Hampton outpitched Randy Johnson and the Mets won six to nothing. Anything by Snot makes me think of Bean saying, "I could fuck to this," and thrusting his hips forward. Hehe.

I also think back to my childhood when I listen to bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival and Neil Young & Crazy Horse because those are the bands my Dad listened to. He never listened to James Taylor, though, because, as we all know, James Taylor's a pussy with soft, womanly hands. Hehe. (Actual words of my father. =)

And fuck you... I still like "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down. Suck my dick.