A Moment In Time In Which Music Changed Your Life - Music

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

In the pursuit of objective criticism you're struck by the reality that everything you love about music is in regards to how it affects you emotionally. Most of the time the impact is simply just pleasurable, but every once in a while I find that music comes and saves my life. Here's my story...

I started to write one incredibly long detailed and depressing story, but it was getting to be a little too much information, so I'll start with this.

1 am October 21, 2009, after a night of heavy drinking and watching Pete & The Pirates, The Love Language and let's Wrestle all play incredible sets, I returned home to my apartment. Upon my return home I would find out that one of my best friends had committed suicide. Down I fell into a deep dark hole. Earlier in the same month I had lost another friend to drunk driving and the girl I was dating moved away to be with her sick mother.

So after very little sleep on October 22nd, despite feeling crushed inside, I attempted to pull myself together for a concert I was hosting that night as part of CMJ Music Marathon. I arrived to the venue early, and immediately began to drown my sorrows as I awaited the arrival of the bands.

Once the show finally began that feeling of hopelessness disappeared. Personally knowing the bands, they all felt a deep connection with me that night and I believe they played with any extra level of emotional intensity. For those 5 or so hours of non stop live music by Sky Larkin, Army Navy, Unicycle Loves You, Deleted Scenes, Arpline and Loxsly, I was relieved of a crippling emotional weight that I could not withstand. If not for distraction of those incredible bands playing inspired sets, god knows what would have happened to me. I'd probably be fine, but that night was just one of many in which I feel music lifting me up from a cold dark place.

God. I don't know if that's over sharing. but if anyone else has anything they'd like to share, go for it.
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http://jonnyleather.com

Kiki

meccalecca wrote:

I'd probably be fine, but that night was just one of many in which I feel music lifting me up from a cold dark place.

In a way that is what it is all about Smile

Without Music there is a big hole. I can't even begin to articulate what it would mean to myself because there isn't words to describe it. I couldn't find them anyway. I see people say how they can tell I "love music" usually because of how personal my favorites are. Truth is, I wouldn't use the word "love" and I don't like to say "I love music". I don't. It's like saying "I love Oreo's". The feeling is different with music. It's something else.

I welcome you're topic and stories with open arms. Smile

I will contribute in future... perhaps even today.

HigherThanTheSun

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: UK

meccalecca wrote:

God. I don't know if that's over sharing. but if anyone else has anything they'd like to share, go for it.

Nah not at all, was a nice story aswell, if you know what I mean. I like threads like this, reminds us that we're all real people here not just usernames (sounds dumb but you know what I mean).

I don't think there's been a specific incidence for me where music has had quite the same impact like you're describing but it's definitely helped me through certain situations and periods of my life where I don't know what I'd have done without.

And yeah, your first sentence is spot on, mostly why I don't bother trying to go for objectivity. I know the music I like best is due in part to my emotional response to it which is itself dependant on completely personal biases of mine, but I'm cool with that.
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Shut up mate you're boring!

HoldenM
To Pedantically Split Infinitives

Gender: Male
Age: 29

When I was a freshman in college, I was walking home from this big meeting, and I was very ready to be home alone. Few songs have ever been so cathartic to me as "All We Have Is Now" by The Flaming Lips. I was listening to it on my iPod, but the copy of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots on my device that I burned onto my computer was pretty heavily used with a walkman only a year before (yes, I still use a walkman from time to time). So, I could hear little skips and blips that it's easy to tell where I got it. "All We Have Is Now" is what I put on, and it made me feel happy. It was a clear moment where I knew that not only did I have a copy of a song that I love, but one that was all mine. This is what it meant for art to be truly unique, that this one song had my mark on it that actually belonged to me in the most intimate way possible.

Something like that.

Guest

meccalecca wrote:

God. I don't know if that's over sharing. but if anyone else has anything they'd like to share, go for it.

Sorry to read about your friend man, but glad to hear that music helped you through.

I don't know if there's one moment I feel encapsulates the idea that music "changed my life", but somewhere along the line it obviously did. I guess it's just always been there, really. With that in mind, here's a random story about a gig I once went to. It was a first gig, of sorts. I'd been to others, but this was a new kind of gig. The band in question were Razorlight (embarrassing, I know), the date was October 2004. I know because I'd just started to become one of the cool kids. Well, not the cool kids exactly; at our school the rugby lads were the cool kids. We were the stoners I guess, but that still put us significantly higher up the cool ladder than most of the people in our year. Prior to that I'd just been an average boy, already into music in a major way, but largely just concerned with playing football and going bowling and shit. I went to a friend's birthday party in the summer of '04. We went to the cinema, and then for lunch, and then to the arcade. I've no idea what movie we watched, and to be honest it's pretty fucking inconsequential anyway. It was boring, but it was the type of thing 13-year-olds do for their birthday.

But the first party I went to after arriving back at school in September was thrown by some kid who I'd never really spoken two words to prior to term starting. He went on to become my best friend for years and years. I still see him occasionally, but we kind of went our separate ways around the age of 18 or 19. He went to study to be a surgeon at a good uni, I went to piss about at a shit one. Anyway, we got talking on the first day back at school. I was reading some biography of some '60s rockstar (probably Dylan, knowing me), and he asked if I liked The Doors. I said I liked their first album, wasn't too big on anything else. Nearly nine years on and I still feel pretty much the same way about The Doors. And yeah, that was it really, we were friends from there. I still remember him shouting excitedly at me down a packed corridor, some time in about the second week of school, "yo Neil! My mum let's me smoke bud, do you wanna come round?", and accepting the offer without a second thought. I never bothered to question why his mother let him smoke weed at the age of thirteen. Then again, when my parents found out they didn't much care either. Liberal families and all that jazz. Of course, the next weekend was his birthday party. There were like fifty or sixty kids there, most of whom I'd never met. Everyone was drinking and smoking and dancing and making out. It was literally the most exciting thing I'd ever been to. I can still trace back most of my hometown friends to that party. More than any musical moment, that party changed my life.

We bonded mostly over the fact that we were thirteen years old and we smoked weed and drank beer and got off with girls, and most of our peers were still going to the cinema or the arcade or whatever. We probably weren't even perceived as particularly cool, but we thought we were. We got tickets to see Razorlight. They were this young and exciting band, who sounded like a shit version of The Libertines, to be quite frank. I haven't been able to get through more than thirty seconds of one of their songs since about 2006, and I can't even work out what I used to see in them. They had this one cliche-ridden tune called 'In The City' that I used to love. I thought it was so clever. It wasn't. Regardless, we bought tickets to see this gig. I can't remember if we got high before, but I'd be surprised if we didn't. My mate's older brother and his mates were going too, so we had someone to buy us beer, not that we needed more than three. They were amazing. I can't remember a thing about their music (OK, slight exaggeration; they definitely (maybe) finished with the aforementioned 'In The City', which in my head was destiny or some other form of rock'n'roll bullshit I'd heard about, or imagined I'd heard about, courtesy of Almost Famous or a stray Bobby Gillespie interview or something), nor do I remember much about their stageshow, other than there was a countdown to them arriving on stage, which was thrilling to me at the time, but is the sort of thing I would baulk at these days. To be honest, the only thing I really remember is going crowdsurfing. Like five times. I'm only 5'8" now, and a significant fraction of that came through a late growth spurt. I must've been about five foot fuck all, and thus less cumbersome and irritating than your average crowdsurfer. As far as I can remember, nobody even tried to steal one of my shoes.

Now I fucking hate crowdsurfers. As I said, I'm 5'8". Gigs are difficult enough already without some drunken buffoon kicking me in the face four times per song. However, back then it was amazing. I'd never even been to an indoor standing gig before (although by this point in my life I'd already seen Dylan numerous times, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Arthur Lee & Love, Bob Weir, Robert Plant, and various other artists you might label "dadrock" - in this case, "dadrock" actually seems a pretty fitting label, given it was my dad that took me to all of those gigs). But yeah, this was the first time I'd been to a gig without my dad and, what's more, where the crowd were closer to my age than his. I'd still wager that I was one of the youngest people in there, but this was a whole new experience. Crowdsurfing was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever done. My and my mate made it our mission to go to see as many young indie bands as we could afford to, and we used to have competitions to see who could crowdsurf the most during one gig. How we didn't get kicked out of most gigs we attended is beyond me. Also, what obnoxious little twats we were.

But yeah, that Razorlight gig instilled in me a need to see as much live music as possible. The things I'd been to with my dad were great, but without that Razorlight gig I'd never have seen as much live music as I have. I must have been to at least one gig a week between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and often two or three. I reckon I saw every shitty post-Strokes band the UK had to offer at one point or another, and a bunch of American ones too. Thank fuck dubstep came along (though not so much the cheap pills that came with it). But that first gig was what really kickstarted in me... well, I don't really know, maybe a desire to crowdsurf some more. And it didn't really change my life if I'm being totally honest. And, thinking about it, if it hadn't have been Razorlight it would've just been some other shitty indie group. Sorry to everyone that read this in the hope it might go somewhere, or make some sort of point. Didn't really work out that way at all. It was quite fun reminiscing though.

nshaw75

Gender: Male

25th Dec 1989

After my mum gave my uncle a rocket the previous year for buying me Viz's Dog's Bollocks' annual. He bought me MADCHESTER Rave ON the Happy Mondays VHS video of the singles and live footage from the Albums Squirrel and G man and Bummed.

This then changed my view on life and I started listening to some serious music. I started taking illegal substances and this changed my life completely. Twisted Evil

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

HoldenM wrote:

When I was a freshman in college, I was walking home from this big meeting, and I was very ready to be home alone. Few songs have ever been so cathartic to me as "All We Have Is Now" by The Flaming Lips. I was listening to it on my iPod, but the copy of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots on my device that I burned onto my computer was pretty heavily used with a walkman only a year before (yes, I still use a walkman from time to time). So, I could hear little skips and blips that it's easy to tell where I got it. "All We Have Is Now" is what I put on, and it made me feel happy. It was a clear moment where I knew that not only did I have a copy of a song that I love, but one that was all mine. This is what it meant for art to be truly unique, that this one song had my mark on it that actually belonged to me in the most intimate way possible.

Something like that.

I love this. The imperfections of your cd make it uniquely special. Just like the little skips and dust of an old record.
_________________
http://jonnyleather.com

Guest

I will say sth that didn't change my life but it did change the way I lived it for about two months. It was 2005, 20th of June, Rock Istanbul Festival. Kraftwerk took the stage that night and I were there without knowing anything about Kraftwerk. There came these four guys in dark suits and red shirts standing there like robots (I think three of them were bald). My friends and I haven't heard that kind of music so we didn't know what would happen within the next minutes. There was very professional lighting and great sound quality and frenzy. We didn't know what these four men were toying with and we even suspected the music was just played back or sth. It was great and apparently they played many classics (we didn't have a clue) but we enjoyed it very much and the atmosphere was great. Even now after 8 years people in Turkey consider it one of the best concerts in Istanbul ever. That same year when schools started I bought Kraftwerk's most recent album (Tour de France Soundtracks) and I was thrilled about it because I went to school with bike everyday. For almost two months it was the only album I played on the way to school and back home and those were the days that I pretended to be a cyclist in Tour de France. I enjoyed it esp. when it was raining. Great days.