quoted 2 lines Good discussion question. I've seen Samu in his underwear, now I can't wait>Good discussion question. I've seen Samu in his underwear, now I can't wait
>for Drukman to show his.
this quote will come back to haunt you, mark my words.
so, the embarrassing truth... well, i was into music from a very early
age since my dad is/was a professional musician and music teacher.
first things i can remember - i had a copy of sgt pepper's lonely
hearts club band that got played to death. my cousin bernie came over
once and left behind a copy of Frank Zappa's double live album "Zappa
Mothers Roxy And Elsewhere." no doubt repeated listenings to that at
age 8 are responsible for a lot of my mental state today. i was
really into disco when it was big (yeah, i had the saturday night
fever soundtrack, donna summer's greatest hits, and some of those
k-tel collections like "disco inferno" and "music machine"). of
course i was only about 10 at that point so it wasn't a big lifestyle
thing, and i wasn't tooting coke and hanging out with gold chains on.
i probably would've had i been old enough though. lucky escape, i
guess.
when i was 13, i had my bar mitzvah (a jewish religious ceremony
expressly designed to foist LOADS of cash on young men). with the
proceeds, i bought an atari video game and one of those panasonic
all-in-one record player/cassette/radio thingies. that stereo saw me
through a lot, and it's still in operation in my parents' basement!
right about the same time, MTV started. this was a crucial juncture,
cos i bought lots of albums that i saw on MTV. fortunately, MTV was
really cool back then and some of the things i was influenced to buy:
peter gabriel, art of noise, thomas dolby, heaven 17 & duran duran.
i'll never forget seeing "close (to the edit)" and immediately running
out and buying "who's afraid of the art of noise." that album totally
changed my entire life. heavy shit for a 14 year old.
it was more or less coincidental to my immersion in synth-pop that i
also found out about more traditional synth stuff. i raided the local
library's electronic music section and heard stuff like Switched On
Bach, and Subotnick's Silver Apples Of The Moon. a friend turned me
on to Jean-Michel Jarre and Deuter.
i stayed in my room a lot when i was in high school, listening to
these albums that i'd buy and playing games on my computer.
meanwhile, i got a job at a pizza place that was right near a really
excellent record store. they got tons of promos so everything was
dirt cheap, and i became a very regular customer. the guy who ran it
started to learn what i liked and recommended some really cool stuff,
so i never ran out of new things to hear. i remember buying the
english beat, howard jones, altered images, funkadelic, let's active
and a trio album there. unfortunately, that shop didn't last long.
things remained the same until i entered university. now i was
exposed to a whole host of influences i had never had before. for one
thing, i got into email and discovered love-hounds and the nm-list. i
also met some email correspondents with similar tastes who recommended
stuff. at this point i got into the industrial disco thing heavily,
with skinny puppy being my fave band (still one of my all time faves,
in fact, although their relevance is slipping daily.) in junior year
of college, i bought a CD player... a very costly move, as i now have
something like 500 CDs...
junior year i discovered public enemy and i got heavily into
hiphop/rap.
but the other big discovery in college was HOUSE MUSIC! my first
exposure was probably a tape my friend Fidelis gave me which had
coldcut, bomb the bass, krush, s'express, simon harris and a few
others from that period on it. i started reading Melody Maker, mainly
because i really loved the writing style, and found out more about the
house scene. i hooked up electronically with a guy who was also
really into it, and we started trading tapes. we didn't meet in
person until about 5 years after that first electronic communication,
but we're roommates now!
well, that's about it, really. i guess the only skeleton in my closet
is the disco stuff, but what do you want, i was only ten...
Jon Drukman jdrukman%dlsun87@oracle.com
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Always note the sequencer - this will never let us down.