*Your* History of Sound (music)

Interesting idea for a thread!

 

Up until my teens I listened mainly to pop starting with Abba, and ending up with Queen/Boomtown Rats/Prince/Kate Bush

Became interested in Prog (Genesis, Pink Floyd & Marillion), David Sylvian, Peter Gabriel as a late teenager, and also in Classical (mainly Mahler and Minimalism)

Was introduced to a lot of "hippy music" (Neil Young/Joni Mitchell/Roy Harper) at university, along with Keith Jarrett, Metallica, Bernstein and some avant garde music

Got heavily into Zappa/Shostakovich/Sorabji/Sondheim in my 20s. Also Tori Amos, Bach and Ben Folds.

Richard Thompson and Folk music in my thirties. Opera, Messiaen, Grateful Dead and Ani Difranco in my late thirties

Umphrey's McGee, Wagner, Nick Cave and John Zorn in my forties (so far)

 

It's actually a very consistent list: there are always one or two singer-songwriters on my listening schedule, one heavyweight classical composer, a bit of jazz for variety. It's really not one musical journey but three: songs (for entertainment), music that requires (& rewards) careful listening, and music that stretches what I would normally (be able to) listen to. Continually challenging oneself tends to move forward ones taste and create the impression/illusion of development, but there is that ultimate reward of being able to appreciate music that would leave most listeners bewildered.

 

I can't remember the order it all happened in any more, but I started out with progressive rock... Genesis, Pink Floyd, Eno, Supertramp. I operated on the drill down theory, where I would find a band I liked and listen to every one of their albums, then every related solo album. I was in the process of transitioning to new wave like the Talking Heads when a bolt of lightning struck me.

I heard Cab Calloway's "Some of These Days" on the radio and it changed my life. I realized that the lousy "kid music" I was listening to was flaccid and talentless compared to this one song I had just experienced.

I went to the record store and found out the genre of music I was interested in was Harlem Jazz. I jumped in with both feet. When I began to get a feel for Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman and Duke Ellington, I thought to myself, "If Harlem Jazz" is this great and I didn't even know it, maybe there's other great music I don't know about." The drill down theory went by the wayside and my tastes and interests started to broaden.

First up was an exploration of the Rusisian Classical composers, which led to big band swing, which led to 50s Pop Vocals, Cuban Mambo, Romantic symphonies, The Blues, the operas of Richard Wagner, bluegrass, Hawaiian slack key guitar, 50s rock n roll, honky tonk country music, Columbian cumbia, Argentinian tango, Balinese gamelan, novelty songs, klezmer, easy listening, exotica, movie library music and soundtracks, rhythm and blues, soul, 60s pop music, jump blues, traditional folk music, Texas swing, Be Bop, ragtime, 30s hotel dance bands, Italian opera, cool jazz, tin pan alley, and dozens more.

Now I have a digital library with over a year's worth of music, over 8,000 CDs, 12-15,000 records and a blossoming set of musical interests that make it so I will have new and exciting music to listen to for the rest of my life.

Recently, I went back and listened to some of the records I liked in college... Peter Gabriel, Yes, Pink Floyd. I honestly don't know what I saw in that crap. I guess I liked it because it was all I knew. Thank goodness I heard Cab Calloway on the radio!
Edited by bigshot - 6/2/11 at 10:04am

I'll do bands. These bands were my favorite bands at different points in time

 

Preteens

Linkin Park (for like 4 years, this was my music) ->

System of a Down (after linkin park, this was the main band for a long time as well) ->

Protest the Hero (As a freshman, I was deep into metalcore) ->

Mastodon (Crack the Skye was released and it changed my perception of music overnight) -> 

Neurosis & Isis ->

Agalloch

 

Agalloch has remained my favorite band for over a year, so my tastes have reached a comfortable point, and I'm branching out into new genres. Also, I listen to more than 10 bands, I have 270 gigs of music.

before i developed a style of music for myself i generally just listened to what was on the radio. my main reason for using the radio was i didn't have access to any computers at the time and youtube was just starting out. in 2005 i got green days american idiot cd. i used to think it was amazing and it was compared to most of what i knew. but that cd's enjoyment died about 1 year later. i went back to the radio. around 2008 i got into old rock. i used to say things like modern music sucked and all the best music was recorded in the past. in 2009 i bought green days last cd as i had waited years for it. it was boring and i was disappointed so i looked for new music. all my peers were listening to scene music. screamo, metalcore, nu metal, etc. so i quickly went for that music. i had thought it was amazing but later this year a friend of mine was talking to me about rock music in class. he was a huge metal head and he showed me kalmah, wintersun, opeth, and children of bodom. i was immediately impressed so that night i went home and looked up all sorts of metal bands most of which were from finland. i had discovered my destined genre of music. a few years later and it still makes up about 90% of my music. but i am starting to try and open up a little to appreciate other talented musicians of other genres of music. i have tried old country, electronic(only genre to give me similar enjoyment to metal), and classical. i have settled on electronic and metal as my go to genres though metal is still my number 1 priority. i now look back at my scene days and laugh. what a fool i was. 

This is tough.  I remember being about 5 with some 78 playing on a little phono pretending I was Lawrence Welk directing the band.  Music was always around, mostly odds and ends my parents picked up: some Sinatra, that kind of thing, the collections of classical from the supermarket.  I started piano when I was 8.

 

Loved the classical, though it was really beyond my understanding then.  Loved the jazz I heard, R&B, the pop on the radio.  By 13 or so, it was the Beach Boys and other American pop, the Beatles and British Invasion stuff.  Dylan, Byrds.  Motown.  Switched to saxophone a bit before that.  And then '67 happened and it was expansion in a lot of different directions: folk, blues, all the proto-genre rock bands, lots of which were pretty obscure.  Which went on for a few years.   By 72 or so, I started getting into jazz almost exclusively for about 10 years, then started catching up on what I'd missed in more pop music.  Since then, serial obsessions with various artists like Richard Thompson, various jazzers, and recently more forays into classical and African musics.

 

Eclectic moving music is where it's at.

 

- Ed

Edited by falis - 6/3/11 at 4:01pm

This is way too long, but.. I already wrote it so I'll post it

 

I started out listening to stuff my parents gave me... I loved John Denver when I was little (that's what I was listening to in my avatar). Pretty much haven't listened to him since I was four... I remember listening to some of my Mom's old records, like Carole King. As I got older I listened to whatever was on TV or the radio, eventually picking up some things when my brother when we got into high school age - REM when they were still alternative, U2, that sort of thing. Strangely I never really was into what any of my friends listened to. I played the piano so I liked piano-based pop music like Billy Joel and Elton John in junior high. When I was 15 or 16 I heard Peter Gabriel's "Digging in the Dirt" on TV and really liked it... picked up that album and was really into him for a while, although mostly his later stuff and not the proggier 70s stuff. I heard a couple of Nick Cave songs in Wim Wenders films (I was a bit of a film buff when I was younger) and got into him. Another Wim Wenders movie soundtrack got me into Tom Waits with "Little Drop of Poison"... I had all of his back catalogue within 10 months or so. I found some of his later stuff difficult at first but eventually grew to strongly prefer it to the older stuff. That was around the age of 20-21.

 

Five years later, in 2004 I saw Tom Waits on his "Real Gone" tour, and his guitarist, Marc Ribot, simply blew me away... I'd heard him on record of course, but he put down an absolutely monstrous solo during one particular song (if you know the album you'll know which song without me telling you) and the audience just exploded... To this day I believe that is the only time I have seen a standing ovation in the middle of a song for a guitar solo. Anyway, I started checking out Ribot's solo output - with the exception of the Cubanos Postizos I found it really too difficult for me at that point - stuff like Spiritual Unity and Rootless Cosmopolitans was over my head. In early 2006 a friend who I met via my online radio show told me I should check out some of his work with John Zorn, and after being scared away by a couple of random selections (Zorn fans will understand...) I heard the Bar Kokhba Sextet and was instantly in love. I spent a lot of time and money exploring Zorn's catalogue with mixed success, my ear wasn't educated enough at that point to appreciate a lot of his stuff. On a last-minute whim, I decided to travel to New York in September 2006 to see a Zorn concert with several different bands (one including Ribot). I am still not sure why I went. Just one of those gut feelings. The first piece they played was something I hadn't heard before ("Kol Nidre") and it was so arresting and emotionally gripping that I realized at one point that I'd been holding my breath and gripping my armrest so hard my fingers were hurting. When the piece ended, the audience sat in total silence for a second or two before Zorn (who was conducting) turned around and gestured to let us know it was OK to start clapping. The rest of the concert just opened me up to a whole new world. Something clicked in my brain while watching Masada Quartet and I finally started to understand jazz. Electric Masada just left me in pieces. I put myself back together afterwards but I haven't been the same since... it's kind of amazing to be able to look back in time and put your finger on that exact moment (like bigshot said about hearing that song on the radio). Since then I've started 'getting' a lot more stuff that I listened to when I was younger and had found difficult. And I find myself downright enjoying music that is difficult and strange. I love seeing something new on stage.

 

In 2009 I made a New Year's resolution to start seeing many more live concerts, and between that, and having finally found some good online music communities and making friends with a lot of very interesting people who are passionate about good music, I've been thrown into worlds of new and interesting stuff. This year I've seen 25+ concerts so far, from folk to avant garde to classical to surf to rock to soul to New Orleans jazz to bluegrass to... etc. I've learned so much in the last few years but no one knows better than me how much more I have to learn. I still feel like I know next to nothing about most genres of music... there's so much out there and I've only scratched the surface. Right now I have over half a dozen mix CDs to listen to from people in three different countries as part of a mix exchange program a friend set up... all kinds of bands I've never heard... looking forward to some new discoveries.

Edited by Sarah - 6/3/11 at 7:13pm

As a kid:

 

My older brother gave me his old computer with all his music on it. So I listened to The White Stripes, Nickelback, The Hives, Guns n' Roses, Foo Fighters and so on.

 

As a teen:

 

Mainly hard rock and metal, Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, but I also loved The Killers and Mando Diao.

 

As a young adult (now):

 

It varies. I love Electro and Dubstep (for example Skrillex), Rock (Muse, Hard-Fi), Alternative (Bloc Party), Softer Rock (Dave Matthews Band) and some modern classical music, such as Two Steps from Hell.

Good man! Agalloch has really changed my outlook on metal, and I guess more or less, music as a whole.
 

 

My history of sound can be summarized in my two separate last.fm's;

 

Early teens: http://www.last.fm/user/SalvusExcidium

 

Mid-teens (now): http://www.last.fm/user/LaBrosseN7

ok i just found them. they are amazing but i do not like the sound quality.

 

uhh... What?  Maybe you should listen to Ashes Against the Grain (or the Mantle). 

 

if this is it then i don't like the sound quality.

 

I assume you're not judging a band based on youtube quality. 

 

Agalloch is deeply rooted in Black Metal, so if you want utmost recording principles, look elsewhere

 

Beautiful thread...

 

Until I was seventeen I listened to everything the popular media (TV, radio, internet) had to offer) but I always had a weak spot for Classical music and Funk. At one point I just ignored it and carefully started my CD-collection. 

 

Used to like Linkin Park, System of a Down and bands like the Offspring. Then by a Metal lovers recommendation found Kyuss; I still dig Kyuss. In the mean time old Funk and Soul combined with Hip Hop interested me. Jazz and Classical music were not interesting enough for me yet but my eclecticism grew.

 

One day I walked into a life concert of the Instant Composers Pool; I was pleasantly fascinated and lost for words. This group and Willem Breukers ensemble made me rediscover music, both Jazz and Classical music. 

 

In 2009 I found Head-Fi (vBulletin, I still miss it.) A new world opened up and the overdose of information led to new discoveries. I have since then found out that I love the experimental sixties and seventies and King Crimson will be part of my lonely island collection. At the moment I have a stack of CDs of such various genres that I still have no idea in what order to give each CD a listen. Add to that I am still on the hunt for special music so my music addiction is still not satisfied. 

 

Since I have found Head-Fi I almost gave up on Hip Hop due to the discoveries I made in Metal, Progressive Rock, Funk, Soul, Jazz, Classical music and quirky artists like Kate Bush and Suzanne Vega. Via Coroner I found Gore and I am still trying to catch up with my collection of Classical music. I largely gave up on mainstream music and only use the internet and my CDs to provide my music, otherwise the occasional concert. If the Funds are good North Sea Jazz is a go...