When I was a kid, I really liked the Beatles. I don’t suppose that’s terribly unusual because I suspect that the Beatles appeal to a lot of kids because of their simple and very regular drum patterns. I used to sit in front of the hi-fi with the set of giant avocado colored 70s headphones (which my dad probably stole from somewhere) and listen to Sgt. Pepper or Revolver. For some reason, cymbal crashes really bothered me, I guess because they seemed so jarring. I wondered why they would go and ruin a perfectly good song with all that cymbal noise. It almost made me want to stop listening.
Sometimes when there was a record playing, I would sit and watch the turntable. I’m sure this made everybody in the room wonder whether I was retarded, but I had my reasons. I was trying to tell whether the record was spinning consistently or whether it paused occasionally. I convinced myself that I could see the turntable stop momentarily every once in a while, so I watched to confirm my theory. Some records seemed to pause more than others. Wish You Were Here, with its interlocking robot hands on the label, seemed to be the worst offender. I couldn’t figure out why all that pausing wasn’t noticeable when listening. Years later I realized that the pauses were actually the result of the way my eyes followed the record around.
My dad traded the pickup truck that my grandfather gave him for a little green Porsche 914, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a sensible family car. He was the envy of all his friends, but just to be sure, he put in an eight track player. The problem was he only had one eight track tape: The Doobie Brothers. He played that thing over and over. I knew which song was going to be next. I knew when the tape was going to switch directions. I knew every note of every solo. I grew to hate that tape more than you can imagine. Again, years later my dad and I were driving somewhere in his secondhand VW Rabbit with the bad alternator and The Doobies came on the radio. My dad looked at me and said, “see, the wise man has the power.” I looked back and said, “dad, the song is called ‘What a Fool Believes’.” I thought he was going to hit me. But really, he should have known that.
Once when music was playing my mother told me to dance. I started repeatedly bending and then straightening my knees. My mom looked at me and asked what I was doing. “Dancing,” I said. Then she laughed and said, “Oh you are? OK.” I’m not sure where I learned this move, but I was convinced that it was what was meant by dancing. It didn’t occur to me that there could be more than one type of dance or for that matter any sort of improvisation on the one that I was doing. I still don’t know how to dance.
My earliest memory is climbing the 20 rickety steps to the patio of my Nana’s house in Queensland. It was Sunday. We ALWAYS had steak, potatoes and salad on Sundays. I was climbing the steps with the cat. As I reached the top of the stairs and all the waiting family, I smelled something really horrible. As soon as my face turned, everyone began laughing at me. I was totally confused and started to cry. Apparently I had squeezed the shit out of that cat.
Earliest memory of hating imposed music…? hmmm. Besides 79Q and KiKK…. in my house, no flashy cars to impress partying friends… Not too much music. Fleetwood Mac, which I can totally tolerate. Some… what the fuck was his name? Instrumental mostly… end of disco… something readers of Hustler would appreciate, but safe enough for family people… Can’t think of it. Most of the records my stepfather at the time had had fiberous hairy spots where it hadn’t been taken care of. It wasn’t a loved over collection, and I guess it affected my tastes. There were no Beatles in my house. Not a one. No jazz EVER. My parents must have been body snatched now that I really think about it… Oh yeah, and there was some Pink Floyd .. thank you Pink Floyd.. and Glenn Campbell and Rod Stewart. .. Thank you Rod… How sad is that? We had the old ass wooden boxed up stereo that weighed 80 pounds. The magic of vinyl.. Truly. I was always mesmerized by the warped ones.
I wanted to ask you, did you see Apocalypto and if so, what did you think?
I thought of something else. There was also Tchaikovsky because, well every ballerina ought to have a copy of the NUTcracker. But, jesus… No jimi hendrix. There were probably 40 records in my house growing up. I think kids today ought to have as much access to music as they can. The chicken egg argument about piracy is just a by product of what we have all done here. It’s not even an argument anymore I care to address.
And I know, you are going to laugh when I figure out the musician who made the “instrumental post-porn” music. I’m pretty sure it was heavy on saxophone. Crap. Someone has to know it. I tried to hum it over the phone to some friends here, but they told me I was old, and the older people here just get wasted and play Johnny Cash and beer cryin’ staticy tunes over the vhf radio. I can’t imagine that any of the 12 people older than me here, could even take a stab at any songs I run by them. They need a dial-a-help for hummers.
Justin – I remember op-tricks from the record player too thanks for bringing back that memory.
My early childhood was filled with music. My parents and the younger members of the extended Irish family that was always around (I was the first born grandchild after all) were into the folk movement, not surprising for New York at the time. Lots of Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Clancy Brothers as well as stuff from the Great American Folk Anthology like Jimmy Crack Corn, Wabash Cannonball. On top of that my mom made sure to sing lots of German children songs. My dad liked to sing Italian Opera on Saturday mornings. He was a giant at six foot eight with that stuff. On top of that my grandparents loved to sing songs from the forties and put on big band albums and also Al Jolson. My grandfather loved to sing me to sleep with Irish songs like tora lora lora. What a difference that early life was to Houston with my stoic german family. No singing, radio or anything sonically memorable from that bunch, save from singing German Christmas songs as rigidly as the von Trapps pre-Maria.
HS, Chuck Mangione? Herb Alpert? those fit the post-porn description for me.
Earliest memories I have are the smell of hotel grilled hot dogs by the pool at the Hotel Condado where my mom and i used to go when i was around three (she was dating the french lifeguard named Pierre, i kid you not).
As for childhood music, my earliest records where the disney storytime series stuff with the bell chime on the record to tell you when to flip the page of the accompanying book, but those werent really all that much music, just stories. After that it was stricktly beatles and stones for me. Starting with the earliest beatles records from my mom and the mid 60s stones. For years my mom would give me a beatles record for every xmas and one for every birthday. First lyrics i ever memorized were I Am The Warlus, even before i knew what any of it meant. At some point i had all the beatles records on Capitol, so i started with the stones, and then disco hit and it was all downhill from there. You should see my collection of disco 45s. Dan Hartman, Musique, Celi Bee, Grace Jones, Gary’s Gang, Sylvester, Goody Goody, Meco, Macho, Edwin Starr, and of course all the majors, Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Chic, Rod Stewart (yes, he’ll always be disco to me), etc etc etc. I may have said too much.
But there was also my uncle blasting all the brazilian, jazz, and heavy instrumental and more abstact stuff out of his room, and my dad with his heavy prog rock stuff (first time i heard Sabbath, ELP, Yes, Zeppelin, Cream and many others was from his records).
Of course that is only the english language music, there is a whole other set of music in spanish that goes from children groups like La Pandilla (early menudo type stuff) to various folk musics to the salsa hits of the day…. Music was really all around all the time. I guess i was lucky that way.
Stapler, I have not seen Apocalypto because I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, a movie about pre-European invasion South Americans sounds interesting. On the other hand, it’s Mel Gibson, so my reservations about supporting his bigoted ass in any way aside, I feel like the movie would just be a sweaty, historically inaccurate, machofest.
Also, is your 70s post-porn music Gerry Rafferty?
Kilian, I wish I had memories of an Irish family.
I grew up with an early 70′s spin.
I was convinced I lived in “China Grove” and it consisted of the brightly colored pink, white and green houses near the Sonic in New Braunfels ,Tx.
My idol was Rick Derringer and I used to listen to “Shambala” non stop.
I also remimber hating the song “Benny and the Jets”. I think that was cause I was convinced that a person named Benny would not be the pilot of a Jet.
I did not have the family you described but it seemed that I was surrounded by it, inthe middle of it.Great memories of drunk fathers on the lawns,staring up at their El Caminos as we would ride or bikes around them taunting them as they would hollar at us.
Monday would come and all the cus words were gone and Olivia Newton John would echo again.
“Have you ever been Mellow?”
My earliest musical memories (and I don’t really come from a musical set of parents at all–they were geezers compared to my friends’ parents) were two specific records: A collection of childrens songs that included “Puff the Magic Dragon”, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and “Davey Crockett”, and Hank Williams Sr. Man, I just loved “Hey Good Looking.”
My brothers and I used to take turns singing along to the records with my dad’s old reel to reel, while standing in front of the window unit to keep cool. Good times.
Mangione was my guess too… I have to go through some of the music I downloaded to confirm.
Apocalypto is worth watching even if Mel gibson is a retard.
I guess all of this just shows that musicians/music aficianados come from all backgrounds.
Has anybody seen Terrence Malick’s New World? I haven’t seen it but the Apocalypto talk got me thinking. I like most of his other movies…three of four I think.
THE NEW WORLD is kind of a mess but has moments of grace and beauty the kind only Malick can create. (Which is pretty much how I feel about THE THIN RED LINE as well.) I kind of wish he’d give up on narrative cinema altogether – his films works best when they’re semi-abstract meditations on emotion and discovery and worst when they’re handling plot mechanics – but then he’d never get funding.
I started working on a documentary (for lack of a better word) filming people asking about their earliest memory. I even have footage of Justin asking this question. Unfortunately, I never figured out how to edit it into something watchable. The fact that I had wildly divergent audio, often with background music, didn’t help. Maybe I’ll give it another spin.
My earliest memory is being in my crib attempting to entertain myself in the morning while staring at four white walls. Then my parents came in all beaming and excited to see me and all I could think of was, oh, it’s them again. I think I even raised my upper lip and snorted in condescension. I was full of irony pre age 2.
I really had nothing to do back then but chew on things, so I chewed on the bars of my crib. I graduated to chewing on pews at Catholic churches around central Texas. I actually had them rated at one time as to which was the better tasting.
Music didn’t come until much later when I could sing with it, and then it was 50s and 60s, like Little Richard and stuff.
I told you guys you were going to laugh when I remembered what that post porno music I was talking about. It was “Baker Street”, by Gerry Rafferty, at least that’s what I am convinced of, and there’s probably nothing funny about it for you guys. And sadly, it plays right into my testimony of growing up in a house with ten records, since I have noted in my initial guest spot in this blog that the music of Gerry Rafferty is Evil. I know that other recent comments I have made regarding Evil may confuse this issue. But I hope you understand, and that we see eye to eye on Evil. Though I am not entirely sure that it was Baker Street… I actually laid in bed watching 20 minutes of paid advertising for a Soft Rock hits 10 disk set. I think it would be interesting to do podcasts with themes… like soft rock 70′s… but sometimes I feel like we are doing that already..yak. So, Justin… you know your post disco porn. You saved me from humming it to too many people.