My Music Through Time

It all starts here:

Isaac, Zac and Taylor Hanson

My older sister is Zac’s age, and was a Hanson fan in the crazy days, when I was just eight. It gave my other sister and my mother an unhealthy aversion to their music, but since I was younger my mind was open and, more importantly, moldable. I distinctly remember chasing a guy around at primary school with my friend Jen, singing Man From Milwaukee at him relentlessly. I don’t remember how that story ends, but the image is plenty enjoyable. I don’t remember actually liking them all that much, certainly not the way I do now, but boy did I hear the songs, and that’s enough to leave a very strong impression on a kid.

Remember these?

This was the way I heard all my music for many many years. I had a tape player of my very own, and tapes made for me by my delightful sisters. I had Hanson, of course, but also in later years Judas Priest, Savage Garden, Smashing Pumpkins, Dandy Warhols and blink-182 from that sister, and They Might Be Giants, Marcy Playground and the Blues Brothers from the other. I also acquired from somewhere a Beach Boys CD, but the first CD I ever owned was the Second Solution/Prisoner of Society single by Living End, bought for me as a surprise by Hanson Sister. A friend of mine at school (primary still) expressed surprise that I liked “normal music” when I said good things about the Living End, I’m not sure exactly what impression I had been giving previously. I have always seemed to have a natural avoidance mechanism for pop radio and charts and things, so I guess my lack of interest in Spice Girls or Eminem or whatever it was then could explain it.

The Birth of MY Music

It all started with this man. I had seen Labyrinth in I think primary school, but then heard it again in middle high school and discovered that the lead actor was actually mostly a singer. Yes, that’s how incredibly little I knew about music; I had no idea who David Bowie was. I found Space Oddity (the song), and really liked the sound of it, so I looked further. My music-finding skills were pretty poor at this point, so anything I got took effort and I had decided was worth it. I went quickly to Ziggy (the one that really worked its magic on me) and to Aladdin Sane, then back to Hunky Dory, and for a while was satisfied with just that.

I was seventeen by the time I started using last.fm, so that’s when I can really start to be accurate about times and things. Early last.fm artists I found were the Magnetic Fields, The Who, Murder By Death. Also I seemed to play a lot of Barenaked Ladies, probably because I was given a lot of it (by non-Hanson sister) and it’s pretty digestible pop. I don’t dislike them now, but I just have so much more to choose ahead of them. Like pretty much everything I have. Looking back, it surprises me that I listened so much to these artists before my revelation: the then-free last.fm radio, which came almost six months after I’d started to use last.fm. There was  nothing I liked in the Hanson channel (stupid 90s pop), but the David Bowie similar artists were the greatest:

Cate Blanchett

The decadent upper class

Those guys who ripped off Green Day

Mickey Finn and his wife

Four vile hippies and some straight guy

A bunch of shameless hipsters

In quick succession, I found T. Rex, Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, Bob Dylan, the Kinks and the Zombies. Okay, now I need to take a deep breath. It took me until I was eighteen to find that music. Of course, the Hanson and the Bowie stayed strong through this upheaval, and I’d found things like Scary Monsters, Station to Station, the Berlin Trilogy, Heathen, Reality, Underneath and the Walk, and though Bowie seemed done as far as making music was concer ned, Hanson were just getting better as time passed.

Also, I never ever thought I would find a picture like this:

Isaac, Taylor, David and Zac in 2000

Anyway, my next music event was just before I turned 19: the discovery of Big Star, who hit the top of my charts and stayed there for about six weeks. Then not long after that, I found Television, who don’t stand out in the charts since Big Star has three times the number of albums (ie three), but got much much much listening. At a similar time I also got into Flight of the Conchords, who would eventually put me in the path of the Mighty Boosh. Nick Drake popped up around now too, but this time ended up being my 60s pop phase, with huge amounts of the Beatles, Beach Boys, Hollies, Mamas & Papas, Kinks and Zombies spinning through my charts. At this point I was firmly convinced that this music was the height of human achievement and was happy to tell people so.

Big Star smoking! And DRINKING! And wearing, uh ...

Then, just over a year ago, names like Richard Hell, the Specials, John Cale and the Clash started to pop up for a while in the middle of all this blissful innocent harmony. This would prove to be a false alarm, however, as it was in September 2008 that a band called Sparks first topped my weekly charts. But despite what you might think, Sparks then nicked off again for a while! I’m as surprised to learn of this as anyone could be. Iggy Pop, New York Dolls, the Damned, the Dead Boys and the Doors made themselves known to me, but it didn’t take too long for Sparks to come back, pushing everything else down in their wake.

For 24 out of the next 26 weeks (December 2008 – June 2009) Sparks were my top artist, usually obscenely extremely so, beaten out only twice, once by Hanson, very narrowly, and once by both Hüsker Dü and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, that week’s find.

Not a good look

During this six-month binge on Sparks, a few very important names also popped up in the lower echelons. Neutral Milk Hotel got a look-in, as did Buzzcocks, Pixies, Hüsker Dü, Tubeway Army and Gary Numan. This is only about half a year ago now, so it’s starting to resemble my current taste a lot better. The reason Sparks lose their ascendancy is mostly because I went on a Find New Punk Music rampage, a search which found me 999, the Vibrators, the Adverts, the Heartbreakers, the Lurkers, the Avengers, MC5, the Descendents and the Replacements, quite a few of which are still firm favourites today. I also took a trip back into Judas Priest, listening to more of their albums than just the ones I’d heard when I was littler, and finding them good.

So. Friggen. Adorable.

Dean Geyer, Luigi, Eugene Mirman

The Pastel Pink Punks

Pink wishes she could be as cool as Penelope Houston's left little fingernail

By now it’s August, only two months ago, I get into the Mountain Goats, Wipers, Associates. At this point there’s only one phase to go until I have reached the present.

The hardcore is a pretty recent thing. Despite my listening to Hüsker Dü and early Replacements, I wasn’t convinced that hardcore would be worth checking out. By the time I had listened to Minor Threat, Circle Jerks, Gorilla Biscuits, earlier Hüsker Dü and Screeching Weasel, I had changed my mind. There is just something incredibly appealing about angry men shouting angrily over angry music about how stupid everything is.

And in just the last week I took a leetle peek into psychobilly, and tried out some hip hop, which I’ll prolly write about soon.

My last 7 days at time of writing