Back when alternative really was...

Emili asked me the other day what Alternative music is. That leads me back into where I left off in my evolving musical tastes.

With all those records to listen to (so many in fact that the sheer weight of them was more than likely as structural hazard to the EOSC library) I began to use my copious spare time to listen to as many as I could. This lead me to take my radio show into some interesting directions as well. This is when Guadalcanal Diary, the Smiths, and the Cure were hot on all the college radio charts. This is also the time that, for the most part, REM was still not as popular as say...Hewie Lewis and the News. So the term Alternative meant something. And in La Grande it meant almost anything that wasn't Top 40, Country, or oldies. So much of my radio show took a more college radio format. And that was fun for a while, but even that was getting stale to me.

One Sunday I decided to fill in for someone as DJ of a Jazz show. This was cool but it got me thinking about what else a sunday show could be and I decided to take a permanent 1 hour sunday slot playing the blues. I didn't know anything about it other than I liked what I heard so far.

Then came my first trip to Japan. I got a job as a disk jocky at a so called "urban contemporary" format cable radio station. I was playing soft soul music and jazz fusion from the lobby of an upscale Japanese health club. As people came into the club they could see me sitting behind the turntables spinning Kenny G, Spyra Gyra and Anita Baker. I was there because I had some DJ experience and I could speak English. But it gave me some spending money so that I could explore Tokyo. One of the other DJs there was a guy in his 40s who found out I was a budding blues fan and made me a cassette with Earl King and Roomfull of Blues on one side and a greatest hits compilation of B.B. King's early years. The Earl King stuff was the most accessible to me at the time, but it wasn't long before I was rewinding to the beginning of the B.B. King side of the tape more often than just playing the Earl King stuff. And that started me into my exploration of the blues in all it's rudametary glory.

Kevin looks up from his navel for a second

Recently Emili has discovered that she is in a bit of a musical rut and is in need of guidance. The problem is she is looking to me for it. I can't be much help to her because the stuff that turned me on as a kid had so much balls it was bound to be considered "cool" by the other kids. Emili's tastes are leaning more toward the orchestral and acoustic, which is fine for occasional Coldplay song or Jack Johnson or something like that, but there aren't any genre that lean toward that other than folk or classical. If she is looking for music that will help her to relate to her friends at school then I don't think this is going to do her much good.

Weird. When I chose heavy metal and hard rock to be my music de jur I didn't choose it to fit in with the crowd but that is what it helped me do. She is choosing from show tunes and Peter Paul and Mary (and Frank Sinatra) and her friends at school are going for Evanesence and what she calls "punk rock." I think when she gets into High School and mixes with the folks who are into the Theatre clubs, then she will have some friends who enjoy the same kinds of music as she does.