I don't remember a time in my life when I wasn't listening to music in some form. One of my earliest memories is of my mother singing lullabies to me as a little girl. Another is of sitting on my father's lap while he played DigDug on our old Tandy 1000 and annoying him by trying to sing along with the highly annoying background music.
I remember sitting on my brother's bed in what ended up being my room when I got older, listening to Vanilla Ice and becoming convinced that he was quality music. I remember one of my older sisters singing along to the radio on a trip up to Maine when I was about 6 1/2. I don't remember ever NOT having music in my life.
I have, as a 23 1/2 year old, what you might call an "eclectic" taste in music. This can be attributed to the musical education I received growing up. Now, I'm not talking about the kind you get in school; the kind that involves learning how to play the violin/cello/viola/clarinet/trumpet/trumbone/saxaphone/French horn/drums/what have you or the kind that you get in a classroom. I'm talking about the kind you get at home, from your friends and family.
My musical education was an interesting mix of past and present, and it came mostly from one source: the radio. Ah yes, the radio; that now apparently forgotten instrument that delivered music to some of the greats and made them want to make great music of their own. The radio was important to me growing up, because most of the time, that was how I got to hear the vast majority of the music that I have on my beloved iPod now.
My parents were eight years apart in age, but their musical tastes was, in my mind at least, one of the things that they shared and part of what made them compatible, despite all appearances to the contrary. My late father was born in 1947, my mother in 1955. My mother first heard "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" on the radio; Dad heard it so much on vinyl in the barracks when he was in Vietnam that he threatened to throw it and its owner to the Viet Cong if the soldier didn't stop playing it so much. They both watched The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, though Dad remembered it much more clearly than Mom does.
Both of my parents had cars, and both of these cars had two important features: a cassette player and a radio. In Dad's cars (first a Dodge Caravan, then a hand-me-down Oldsmobile Delta '88 from my grandparents, and finally a Chevy Corsica that was left to me when he passed away), the radio was always tuned to 94.5 3WS, a Pittsburgh station that played what is now termed "oldies." From him, I learned to appreciate Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and many other bands that most people my age have never even heard of these days. His in-car cassette collection wasn't much, but it did hold one that got played over and over again once my little sister and I discovered he had it: ABBA Gold.
Mom's cars, on the other hand, were always a bit more new. I only remember the make and model of her two most recent cars (a Plymouth Breeze that she got when I was in 5th grade, and a Hyundai Elantra that she got when I was in college), but there was always one thing that stayed the same, no matter what car she drove: the music. Mom preferred a mix of songs from the past and present, so occasionally we would listen to 3WS, but her station of choice was 95.6 KEY 95 FM (now 96.5 96 KEY FM, having jumped over on the dial slightly when I was in either my last year of high school or my first year of college), billed as "The best variety from yesterday and today." It was mostly '90s music up to the present, but every weekend, they'd play '70s and '80s music. It's from my mother that I came by my love of David Bowie, Queen, Bruce Springsteen, and the other greats of those decades. Mom mostly let us play children's music on cassette in her car, but I distinctly remember in about junior high a tape of the Royal Guardsmen getting heavy airplay in the Breeze. The Elantra is probably the best for music, because while we can no longer listen to the tapes, we can listen to CDs. Mom's in-car CD collection includes Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, Adam Ant, and Stevie Wonder, among others. A cursory check of my iTunes playlist would confirm that I got most of my musical tastes from my mother.
However, my parents weren't the only ones who helped me along. I have an older brother and two older sisters, and they listened to their fair share of music. As previously stated, my older brother listened to Vanilla Ice, and though it pains me to admit it now, Ice Ice Baby was a favorite song of mine growing up thanks to him. My status as a Duran Duran fan is undoubtedly owed to my older sisters, and I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't be one without listening to them singing at odd moments when I snuck down to their room as a toddler.
I was also fortunate enough to own some cassettes and vinyls of my own as a child, though most of them are either worn-out or broke when I was little. Two of my prized possessions were a copy of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire" on cassette and Smokey Robinson & The Miracle's "You Really Got A Hold On Me" on vinyl. I had a Mickey Mouse record player and a child's tape recorder, and I listened to them constantly. Consequently, when 8th grade American Cultures rolled around and we did a music appreciation unit, I was one of the only kids in class who knew all the words to "We Didn't Start The Fire" from memory.
When I got older, my parents allowed me access to their tape deck, which contained all sorts of treasures. Thanks to what I jokingly referred to as "stealing" and my parents called "supplementing my collection," I became the owner of some excellent finds: My father's copy of "Hot Rocks," Mom's copies of "Hot Space," "David Bowie: The Singles 1969-1993," two cassettes containing the first four Bruce Springsteen albums, and a Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons collection, and my brother's copy of "Violator."
When you combine all of these and stir gently, you get my present-day iTunes collection, which contains all the above-listed artists and more. It's a collection befitting my musical education.
You also get stories. I have so many stories about music, ranging from concerts I've seen to how certain songs affect me, even stories about who and what I associate certain songs with. I'd like to share some of them with you, which is why I started this blog in the first place.
Consider this your first lesson.
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