Where are your musical roots?

[~Efreak]

I started out listening to some very different types of music. As a child, I had a "Close and Play" record player, (remember those???) and would listen to 45's that my mother gave to me. We would often visit yard sales as well, and mom would give me $1.00 to buy used 45's. Some of the ones I had included:

The Chipmunk's Christmas album (Not a 45, but I had it)
MANY Carpenters 45's
MANY Roy Orbison 45's.
Ernie (from Sesame Street) "Rubber Ducky"
Sonny and Cher "The Beat Goes On"
"Bottle Of Wine" (I forget who sang that)
Ringo Starr "You're 16"
ABBA "Nina, Pretty Ballerina"
... to name a few.

What did you grow up listening to?

Efreak

[~arronc]

Well for AListair and Myself from Eight to Infinity :

Before TV became 24 hour in the UK, in the early morning they would show and engineering test card. As audio they used to pipe soundtrack material by the radiophonic workshop as the BBC didnt have to pay royalties on it as they owned it.

We used to tape it onto reel to reels we used to get from my dad who worked at a local HI-fi shop.

Later on we used to enjoy the soundtracks to old computer games on the commodore 64.

These are our musical roots !

[~conditioner]

I loved listening to Art of Noise, Tony Bennet, Was Not Was, Billy Idol, Raffie, Depeche Mode, Mel Torme', -sounds weird, but my parents always bought vinyl and tapes at swap meets and we had a crate of them. Those were when I was bout 5 to 9. Then when I was about 12, maybe I bought my first cd which was Snoop Dog's Doggystyle. My preacher dad swiftly took THAT one away for a while! But I got it back. Infuences? You got me on that one. my roots of music come from my ma and da, she's classicaly trained opera singer, he wrote the first guitar mass and was an accomplished folk singer who got arrested w/ Joan Baez. I guess those are my MUSIC roots. If it wasn't for my dad's piano playing, I would have never picked it up.

[~labrat]

I played piano for 10 years when I was a kid. Nothing but classical music because my teacher felt pop music was too simplistic to play *sigh*. My parents had some old LPs of movie soundtracks (mostly adaptations of musicals), and they've always been big on what used to be called "adult contemporary". I must've played their LP of "The Sound of Music" to death back in the days... :) And I must confess to being hooked on the Air Supply type of syrupy songs until I was in my early 20s :rolleyes:

[~menstrualla]

hahaha...Air Supply. Poor labrat!
Anyway, my musical influences are vastly different than what I grew up listening to. I grew listening to Donna Summer, ABBA, Fleetwood Mac, Kool and The Gang, Stevie Wonder, and John Denver (my parents had very different tastes). However, my musical influences come from from the synthpop and industrial genres primarily, though I must admit I haven't worked on a new song in about 6 months because my son consumes most of my time. Oh well! I guess I'll let my husband be the musical genius for awhile! haha

[~d3lions]

well, being that I was born in Acapulco....I was mainly listening to Spanish music, mainly Salsa and Cumbia...Musica Tropical ( Celia Cruz, Mark Anthony type music)...

But, my father had a band back in the 70's and the name of the band was OASIS (I'm not kidding). We live on Privada Oasis (name of the Street). They actually had 4 LP's recorded. the first one it was free cause they entered one of the local contest and they won. For those of you who listen to spanish music...Los Yonics were in that contest (before they were famous).

I learn to play the drums , my dad was teaching me. When I came to the states, the first electronic song i heard was Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough". I was hooked after that. I want to take piano lessons, but for some reason...I never get around to it.

Thats my musical roots.

Al

[~Shewolf]

I was lucky in that both of my parents have just about the widest and coolest taste in music ever...I don't think they've ever bought or played a single thing that I couldn't stand. Childhood memories range from The Beatles to Santana to Pink Ffloydd to INXS to Carley Simon to Bob Marely...the list goes on and on...

I was also surrounded by a fantasticlly talented group of people growing up. Many of my parents friends were in bands or play musical instruments...including our dearly loved but departed friend Bob Czina who at aroun 40 jumped right on the electronic movement and owned some of the first synthesizers and computer software systems.

This conglomerate of my parents' college friends and their subsequent families that has now grown to about 50 people and that we call "The Group" still gathers on certain holidays and part of this ongoing tradition involves the guitars, etc coming out and everyone singing along. We also have a tendancy to share music we really like amongst ourselves, as do most friends. The differenct here is that there's such an age range that I get introdused to music I might normally never find, and them as well.

So, my musical history is long and in depth. It has allowed me to explore so may different genres that the question: "What type of music do you like?" is virtually impossible for me to answer. I love it all, and like most things in life, it started with my parents...

[~melibita]

My parents liked mostly classic rock, like Black Sabbath, the Rolling Stones, and Santana. My mother likes Abba and Neil Diamond, stuff like that. I didn't really like a lot of music when I was very young, but I like Culture Club whenever I saw them on TV. :) Also liked Whip It by Devo a lot. Got into 80's and synthpop a couple years ago.

[~pop]

Bowie, STones, Joy Division, Beatles, KISS, Skinny Puppy, Coil, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnyman, Duran Duran, tons of 80s Britpop, and many others.

[~bill]

echo & the bunnymen u2 omd the banshees daune eddy buddy holly
the doors.
playing with old radios that were drifting out of tune the cheesy spring reverb on my old stereo a merlin hand held game.

[~MODyssey]

I knew I had an afinity for music at a very young age. The songs that really moved me, at about the age of 5 were as follows:

ABBA - S.O.S. - this was the first 45 I ever put on a record player

The Beach Boys - In My Room - still one of the greates bands ever IMHO

Elton John - Someone Saved My Life Tonight - still makes me cry

These three bands/artists are credited with giving me my initial hunger for music. I'll never forget the first time I heard these songs...and the others that are too many to list that followed.


Doug

[~Strasser]

My "roots" are Spanish guitar and classical.

Indeed, being that my mother taught Spanish guitar, my earliest memories of music are of flamenco. From there, the soundtrack to my childhood was filled with the sounds of Carlos Montoya, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Vivaldi.......and Led Zeppelin.

[~cliffwalk]

Wow.. my god... everything...

Early years (0-13): The Beatles and LOTS of classical and soundtrack music.

Puberty+ (13-18): The Cure, DM, Japan/Sylvian, Art of Noise, basically the same list as everyone else on here... PLUS... I was always into Yes, Rush, GTR, Asia, ELO, FLoyd, Bowie, etc... Loved the musicians who could, well, play their a.ss off.

College (18-22): [realize I was a music student so I spent just about every hour of the day doing something musical.. wow, was that my life???] Cecil Taylor, Thelonius Monk, Coltrane, Miles Davis, LOTS of Modern Jazz artists, German Lieder (Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, etc), and tons of more Avante Gard stuff ... some of which I outgrew quickly... and Frank Zappa... big influence.

Since college (22-29): The dark ages. Whatever was on the radio or force fed me at work. Sad but true, I totally tuned out.

Now (29-present): LOTS of newer electronic acts as well as old electronic stuff that I "grew up on". I also still listen to the radio but with a different pair of ears.

hummm... interesting night! great threads.

peace
dave

[~Jonna]

I think that I first got into music when MTV hit the air...you know, back when they actually played videos.

[~DoFIXER]

*stealing Cliffwalks' format

0~8: Michael Jackson, Prince, and whatever my babysitter made me listen to (Madonna and Debbie Gibson spring to mind)

9~13: Start with hair metal, Motley Crue, Poison, etc, gradually getting heavier, from Iron Maiden and Venom, to full blown death and thrash metal (Bloodlust, Sodom, etc)

13~15: Rap, the whole GRUNGE thing and some indy rock. Juliana Hatfield and 2Pac, standing out. These were some of my darker years. D:

15~16: Was forced to a KMFDM show, and was blown away by Chemlab. I ended up falling completely into the more guitar driven industrial, gradually getting more electronic, like Puppy and FLA, basically the bigger name stuff. Then I discovered Zoth, Machinery, etc

16~22: My favourite era, the stuff that came out in 94-96 is still untouchable. I was into the dark EBM stuff at this time, especially anything Offbeat (even the horrid stuff like Genital A-Tech or Dementia Simplex) or Celtic Circle was putting out. Had a brief affair with power noise, too ><

Since then, I've gravitated more towards poppy stuff, trance, J-Pop, back to rap. A lot more open minded now, I suppose. Anything that doesn't put me to sleep, I guess.

[~Jupiter 4]

My musical roots are in Birmingham, England...my parents listened primarily to classical and awful 70s pop. They had a few choice albums from the 60s...but for quite a while, I'd hear nothing American...

[~scottym]

I've always loved music and I imagine that like lots of people here what was on the radio was what I was first exposed to during my childhood. My mom would play the muzak heard on stations like Kiss 100 or something like that. I would find myself listening to music on Hot Hits 98 which wasn't bad since it was things like Tainted Love, Der Kommisar and Our House.

My first few cassettes that I purchased would have been The Cars, B'52s, Billy Idol and Depeche Mode's Speak & Spell. First video I ever saw on MTV (which I sadly didn't have since my parents were anti-cable) was Depeche Mode's Just Can't Get Enough. First concert I saw on MTV was Adam & The Ants. With both of these bands I became a lover of everything new wave. From there it was Devo, Flock of Seagulls, Cure, Simple Minds and more.

Ahhh the good times. Nothing better than being 16 listening to Black Celebration and burning incense/candles in your bedroom. Great times indeed!

[~KrystalWrists]

When I was between the ages of 4 and 6 my mom would often take me driving around in her car. We would would just drive around, never really went anywhere. I loved doing this so much because I wanted to listen to music. I couldn't wait for her to pick me up from school just so I could hear some music. She had hundreds of cassettes at that time, mostly R&B (Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Starpoint, Full Force, etc) and rap (Eazy E, 2 Live Crew, Whodini, etc), but she also had some other stuff like ABC. It was from hearing them 20 million times that I memorized the words to Alphabet City and fell in love with Martin Fry.

When I was 7 I met a friend who was into rock and I started listening to bands like Bon Jovi as well as pop rock like Madonna. Then I fell into my teenybopper phase until I was about 10 and listened to Tiffany and NKOTB. Then I moved back into rap and R&B as well as country music (Garth Brooks) since my dad started listening to that alot. Next was my "alternative rock" phase where I listened to Collective Soul, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Everclear, Counting Crows, etc. My Mansonite phase came when I was about 15 and I listed to Manson, NIN, 16 Volt, etc. Then I moved into my New Wave (Cure, Joy Division, New Order and side projects, Depeche) phase at 16. Then my goth phase (Bauhaus, Sisters, etc).

Now I listen to alot of synthpop and indie rock among others....as long as its good, I don't care.

So I guess a better question would be, what didn't I listen to?

[~Efreak]

Originally posted by KrystalWrists
Then I fell into my teenybopper phase until I was about 10 and listened to Tiffany and NKOTB.

Believe it or not... I still have my Tiffany and NKOTB CD's. I had a bit of a crush on Donnie Wahlberg. :D
Jamie