Post subject: What was your Musical "Awakening" moment?
Hi everyone! Long time viewer, first time charter, looking to get more active and find music that is new to me!
I was waxing poetic about my "Coming to Real Music" moment, and I was curious if any of you had a musical revelation or specific time where you found your tastes.
I'll go first!
When I was a kid, I grew up in a very conservative Christian household, and rock music was strictly off limits. Pretty much the only stuff playing in my house was Michael W. Smith. When I was 16 I met a girl that I was sweet on, and spent a lot of time with away from my house. It was then that I heard "Here Comes the Sun" for the first time. I went home, and asked my father about it, and why I was never allowed to experience it.
My father responded by bringing a record player into my room with Led Zeppelin IV. I will never forget the moment that I realized what an electric guitar could actually sound like. My father and I consumed music by Pink Floyd, the Beatles, Stones, and I started getting into the 90s music that I had missed, like Nirvana and Radiohead.
As a music teacher now, I have to admit that I'm a little bit salty that my teachers never exposed me to any of this material, or at least never made it important enough that it just passed me by. I try to give my students a little bit more in the ways of variety in music class, and don't shy away from the guitar and synthesizer, as well as Jazz! The kids are into all of it, at least some of the time.
Anyway, do any of you have a specific moment that shaped your musical tastes?
I was completely illiterate towards english speaking music as a kid. My general attitude was that I valued lyrics above all else back then, and since i didn't understand English i didn't bother listening to it.
However once i was studying in my room while someone was watching tv. There was some news about the Beatles going on, probably some anniversary of some kind. The news was playing "Help" and for someone who didnt speak English, my first reaction was "oh I think I get what he is saying".
From that moment on that song wouldn't get out of my head, so the next day I told my friend about it. He then mentioned that he had a Beatles CD he could lend me if i wanted to listen to more.
The album was Past masters 2, he said that he would also lend me Michael Jackson's thriller with it as a bonus.
At the time i had no idea that past masters was a collection, i didn't even know the concept. I immediately fell in love with it and thriller as well. As a young Brazilian kid, albums werent cheap so i just proceeded to pirate a load of Beatles and got to the point of obssession.
Then English speaking music started to make sense to me, and i started learning the language. One song from Franz Ferdinand (tell her tonight, it sounds very beatley)perked up my ear in the radio, so i also started listening to post punk revival rock.
From that moment on there was no turning back... I soon stopped pirating and learned to love most genres
A bit boringly, I’d say it was buying BEA’s number one album OK Computer for my 16th birthday, which was around the time the album was first released. It was my “Sex Pistols Moment” in a sort of way. Before I heard OK Computer, I listened to loads of 90s alt and stadium rock, after OK Computer I didn’t want to hear anything that sounded like a normal guitar record for a long time. I was searching for more artistic sounds and statements in music. It opened my mind up to way more stuff, but at the same time I lost the innocence of just sticking on Mtv or bumming copied cassettes off my mates and not caring about whatever it all meant or stood for. Still really glad I bought the album though. I was on a collision course with OK Computer from birth.
Nice question btw. I have often thought about this. The next year I got into Pet Sounds, which seemed to complete the transformation for me. OK Computer and Pet Sounds performed a beautiful right and left hook on me and I was knocked out completely.
Interesting chat, I have a few of them that come to mind (because it's hard to narrow down to just one) but I'm absolutely, positively, missing a bunch including MJ.
- In 2006, when Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds dropped and flooded the market, I was 5 years old and began from there to see how
1) you can dance as carelessly to an electronic groove as to a classic R&B rhythm, 2) you can stretch a pop song to over 5 minutes when it feels right - LoveStoned and What Goes Around still blows my mind - and 3) you should go so melodically deeper than your contemporaries that it'll last longer than expected. Flash forward to 2016, it rarely left my player around the time it turned 10, and I greatly discovered that you need to make music that will last and have replay value, years and years to come. Even though I've chosen Justified on my chart and had heard groundbreaking music since I opened my eyes for the first time, I consider FutureSex to be essential both for its time and my musical tastemaking.
- One of the first essential rock albums I ever heard was The Who's Tommy at the age of seven (or eight). There, I started to learn that albums can have stories behind them instead of just being a collection of great songs.
- Now I've known and loved Prodigy's Fat of The Land since I was a tiny little baby, but at around 13 when I heard The Chemical Brothers' Come With Us, its experimentation played with my mind and expectations (principally the title track).
- From the end of the 2000s to the mid-2010s, all I discovered of music was what was on the radio at the time (good and bad, but I ate it all up). In 2015, when I got around to Ed Sheeran's debut album +, something of authentic taste in music hit me hard.
- When I cringeworthily was a P4k'er in 2016-2017, the first time I liked something of noise rock was when I experienced AYWKUBTToD's Source Tags & Codes.
- In 2018, when I had listened through Neutral Milk Hotel's ITAOTS for a good 4-5 times, I 1) realized how pure, genius, otherworldly and strange it is.... to be anything at aaaaaalll.... and to have a completely passionate voice without a care for vocal technique. This changed my outlook on singers. 2) came to love how music can have multiple lyrical and musical layers that make people of different breeds love them. It was absolutely inspiring to say the least.
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