Play To Z: Where Does It All Come From?

We're halfway through my music collection now (baring any sudden donations or downloading sprees) and as I was writing up my last few entries I began thinking about a very fundamental question - where did my music taste come from?

I didn't grow up in a musical house. Neither of my parents care much about music; I think between them they own perhaps 40 albums, and rarely listen to any of them, and as far as radio goes, the dial moves between Radio 4 and Radio Norfolk with little deviation. Back in her youth, my mum saw bands like The Rolling Stones and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich live but never spoke a great deal about them, and my dad grew up in a pre-pop music era.

My sister did listen to music, but she was (and remains) seven years older than me, and we've always had very different taste in pretty much everything. My memories of her musical taste in my formative years go East 17 -> Guns 'n' Roses -> Anything the Ministry of Sound recommended. None of them exactly exploded my young mind with the possibilities of music.

One of the biggest impacts on my young brain was the radio. I remember getting a clock radio when I was about 8 and tuning it in for the first time, looking for the first station that played anything "modern". I ended up on Broadland 102.4, our local commercial radio station (who knows how life would have been if I'd turned the dial the other way and ended up on Radio 1) and stuck with them for several years. They played a pretty standard mix of chart pop and 80s/early 90s hits, and laid the foundations for me coming back to pop music several years later after some misguided teenage rockism.

My love of music only really took off in sixth form (that's 16-18 for non-Brits). Before that, I'd listened to what friends said was good or mainstream rock without really ever giving it any thought, or feeling inspired by it (this was the age of nu-metal, so there wasn't exactly anything inspiring out there).

Once I'd escaped my old high school and some not-exactly-healthy friendships, I started exploring music a little. I went through a phase of buying albums by artists I didn't know on the strength of one song. I watched High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank, both of which informed my taste a lot. I started going to gigs, mainly thanks to friends who knew more than me, and discovered the joys of live music.

Still, my taste has ended up very different to a lot of my friends, even though I take their recommendations to heart. Some of my favourite bands and artists were discovered in most unusual ways. I found Broken Social Scene based on a webcartoonist's recommendation; Beck came from watching the Futurama episode he was in; Death Cab For Cutie was due to, I think, hearing their name mentioned in The OC. It's not exactly the opening scene to Almost Famous.

I can only say that my taste in music matches my taste in most other things: I like emotional honesty that doesn't stray too far into melodrama or naked exhibitionism. I like intelligent writing that thinks about themes and patterns. I like people who don't take themselves too seriously. And I think you can make something exciting, accessible and popular without sacrificing any of those things.

And I'll never stop looking for new things to love.

Play To Z: Get Awkward to Hate Me For A Reason, Let The Reason Be Hate

Some Observations

Get Happy!! by Elvis Costello and the Attractions is another 50 track beast of an album, consisting of around 22 songs, then 28 live, alternate and demo versions of the same tracks. It's a sign of what great pop music the man writes that they album flew by with relative speed.

  You can hate on me all you want, but the Apollo 440 theme for the terrible 1998 film version of Lost In Space is great. It's very much of its time, but that doesn't stop it from being a brass-fueled triumphant stonker.

  "Drinking In LA" by Bran Van 3000 and "Steal My Sunshine" by Len are seperated by one song on my iTunes (the former is from their album Glee, the latter from the soundtrack to the film Go) which is appropriate, because they are forever linked in my mind as a premier examples of 90s power-pop (see also "Get What You Give" by The New Radicals).

   As I previously noted, mixtapes are a big thing with me, and creative projects I undertake often get a soundtrack built for them. The role-playing game I'm currently running (and have been chronicling here in all the posts that aren't about music) was no exception, and a CD of said mix was given to all 5 players as a sort of "mood piece" to get their brains in the right space. "The Good, The Bad and The Queen", the self-titled song from the self-titled album, was the conclusion to the mix, but in truth, the whole album could have served as a soundtrack to the game. I find it incredibly evocative of London, using a fantastic mix of ancient tradition and symbolism combined with more contemporary rhythms that reflect the diversity of our nation's capital. It's a great album that seemed to fail to capture people's attention when it came out, which is a great shame.

  When I was around 19, my "hangover" routine was solid (I use quotation marks because I now know you don't start getting true hangovers until you're at least 22). I would wake up, usually after a night at The Waterfront (Norwich's alternative club), wander into the city, and have a black Americano and a blueberry muffin while listening to "Where I'm Calling From" by Charlotte Hatherley. It served me pretty well.

  The memory I associate with the Beck album Guero is far too long and too potentially incriminating to go into here. If you get me a little drunk, I may divulge it.

Getting By With Help

  Let's talk about my friends.

  They are a pretty wonderful bunch of human beings, and I owe them too much to even comprehend, but large chunks of my musical taste is included in that. I've lost count of the number of bands or songs I've been introduced to by people I know, not to mention the number of truly indelible memories that have music associated with them, whether it's gigs, moments soundtracked by music or simply dancing down Magdalen Street singing "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" while drunk as hell.

  This chunk of music proved particularly fertile for friend connections, both "real life" and web-based, so let's briefly dissect it...

• Husky Rescue first appeared on my radar thanks to a mixtape from Catherine, who then lent me their album Ghost Is Not Real.
• My knowledge of K-Pop is entirely thanks to Mary on Tumblr, hence "Hoot" by Girls Generation.
• "Glitter Shower" is a great 50-minute mix of self-proclaimed makeout music by Internet acquaintance Miles.
• Similarly, Charlie, who I met through friends in San Francisco, makes wonderful electronica under the name Ring Trick, and put out a perfectly chilled hour-long mash-up called "Greetings From Paris".
• Housemate, BFF and solid gold pal Bret produced a fantastic mixtape of alcohol-based songs for his birthday a couple of years back, which shares it's name with his WoW guild, The Guild of Drunkards. He even commissioned an original song to serve as the guild's anthem.
• Stone cold hustla and Caballero Joey, who I met via the Brian K Vaughan message board back in the day then met in person when I was in the States, is most generous. After sending him a few mixtapes in dribs and drabs, he returned the favour with a jumbo pack: h Destruction, a selection of hits ranging from The Clash to The Bloody Beetroots; h Remixed, with remixes from some of house and electronica's masters; and h YYY/BIG, an inspired mixtape of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Notorious BIG, which work surprisingly well placed up against each other.
• Sweetest gent in the world Nick provided me with a Happy Christmas Trivia Lad album, using the song title's to form the mixtape's name. For this thoughtful act, I will forgive him including "Young At Heart" by The Bluebells on there.
• Finally, the earlier mentioned Miles is in a great band called LookiMakeMusic, and the final songs in this slice come from their EP Hate Me For A Reason, Let The Reason Be Hate. You can find it on their Bandcamp page here.

Rediscovered Gem

"Remedy" by Little Boots