There was a time when I thought that I had to listen to certain kinds of music. It took a long time to get to the point where I could admit that I liked other kinds of music. I don't think I am alone. If I were, then the term "guilty pleasures" would be meaningless in a musical context, but it's not. For example, if you liked or still like anything by Millie Vanilli, orVanilla Ice, then you have what many people would consider a guilty pleasure. So why should anyone feel guilty about liking any certain kind of music? Because we do. I still do, but now I will admit it and embrace it and listen to all the Bread songs Ima want to. That goes for Three Dog Night too!
When I first started getting into music I was more attached to the kind of music that went with the objects of my interest. So at the age of 10 or so I started liking trucker music. I'm talking about CW McCall specifically but there were others too. They all had a country and western feel to them, but they were all about life on the road in those big 18 wheelers. If there were a lot of rock and roll or blues songs about the trucker lifestyle then I bet that would have been in the mix as well.
At some point my mom bought me an album call "Golden Summer" and it had a picture of a beach babe on the inside laying face down in the sand and topless. You could just see the beginnings of the curvature of her breasts...right then I new two things for sure: I liked surf music and I liked blond chicks with their bikini tops no where to be found. (That may be the first moment that I knew that I was straight, though I would not think about that until just a few seconds ago.) The double album had songs from the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Venturers, Safaris, Chantilies, etc.. I loved it and wore it out from playing it so much on our big monster Hi-Fi cabinet. My sister and I would have to fight for what we would play and sometimes she would win and we would have to listen to Shawn Cassidy or some guy running around calling "Wildfire!" or "Seasons in the Sun."
I liked the beach music, but something happened when my sister brought home some records from a couple she had been babysitting for. She put them in the corner and they stayed there unplayed for quite a while. But I'm getting ahead of myself so let's go back a little. Before my sister was babysitting, we had a babysitter who would come to our house to watch us. We used to listen to music on our aforementioned Hi-Fi (as big as the couch looking like a credenza) and would argue about what radio station we would listen to. For the most part we were listening to the top 40 station. I don't remember the call sign but it was the biggest station in the Eugene/Springfield area. The babysitter wanted to turn it to KZEL, the "hard rock" station. I was adamantly opposed to such a change because I would not be able to take all that noise! They were bigger than me (her and my sister) so I was outvoted and had to run to my room for refuge.
One day I was board. It was a beautiful summer day and all I had to do was go ride my bike down to the river and go fishing with my friends, play touch football in the middle of the road, shoot hoops in my driveway or take the city bus across town to go to the mall or something like that. In short, nothing to do. So I grabbed one of the records leaning against the wall that my sister had put there a long time ago. The first one I grabbed was a big black cover with BAD CO written on it. I put it on as an experiment in self torture to break the boredom. Before I knew it, I had a couple of pencils in my hand and I was playing the air drums. My sister walked into the room and laughed at me and said something like "I thought you hated rock and roll". I just nodded and said this is OK I guess. But inside I knew I was going to be a rock and roll drummer and this was the best stuff I had ever heard. I was just getting started.
No comments:
Post a Comment