The Community
ROCK AND ROLL! => All Them Other Guys => Topic started by: Charger on May 09, 2024, 05:54:39 AM
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So songs that you remember from your childhood that have made an impression.
Lets say songs that you listened to before you turned 15. Or there about. Before your music taste evolved into what it is today...or maybe some songs that made it into what it is today...either way it works.
I don't have a whole lot of memories from my early childhood...music or otherwise so this is going to be a bit of a task for me...I do have few songs in mind.
My mom wasn't that big of a music lover but she did have few albums that she listened to and one of them was this one:
(https://media.s-bol.com/BL4lR9oLNrYX/550x468.jpg)
And I do remember quite often listening to this song from the album:
Gosh haven't played that one in over 25 years I think....it's still a pretty darn groovy track.
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Boney M! - I had never heard that song before, but have heard - of - the group.
I don't really like this song I am posting.
But, I did when I was a little kid - it is the first song I can remember hearing & knowing what it was called and who performed it. It for sure left an impression! When I went looking on YouTube for it just now, the ATCO 45 stuck right out, it's the same one my parents had. I keep thinking I still have it, but it's not in the small stack of 45's in my office, maybe one day I'll find it in a box somewhere.
In any event, I present Bent Fabric's, "Alley Cat":
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I've heard that song before, but not from my mom's collection. :smug:
My mom had several musical passions - folk music, classical music, and the rock and roll she grew up with.
Now, because me and my brother were little in the 70s, there was nothing really she could do in the way of screen time when she needed to take a rest. Sesame Street was only an hour long and the rest of what was on teevee was either over our heads or inappropriate or both. So, she turned to her collection of 45s.
My dad had a pool table in the house that was big enough to define a racing circuit in the living room. It was from a bar, so it had a mechanism for returning balls to the front rather than leaving them in the pocket so that it could be properly coin-operated. After he bought it, he removed the coin operation part and the balls would rumble and clang and ding and come out in the front. I LOVED THOSE SOUNDS. But, they could drive parents up the wall if they went on for longer than once in a while. We go back to that racing course I mentioned.
One thing little kids like to do is just run around for no reason. My mom would pop on a 45 and let it rip. These were songs so good, you didn't mind if you heard them 10-15 times in a row, which is how she served them up. Me and my brother would run in circles around the pool table and sing along. We would sing along because the words were easy and the song was FUN!
"Do You Love Me" by The Contours was a favorite in our house and it still is to this day. It absolutely slams. This was recorded at the dawn of the electric bass and the decent bass amp, so there is plenty of bottom and groove in this tune. Even after I stopped running around pool tables, I still wanted to move when this song came up for a listen. I think it's hilarious that I grew up with these songs even though they were already "oldies" by the time I came into the world. They're evergreens, as far as I'm concerned. Evergreens.
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^ Interesting version of "Still I'm Sad" on that Boney M. album. Still prefer the live Rainbow version, though...
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I think it's hilarious that I grew up with these songs even though they were already "oldies" by the time I came into the world.
I can relate - most of what I heard as a kid was 50s-early 60's rock music. Although I was around when the Beatles did their thing, and when the SanFran sound took over the airwaves, I was listening to classical music on the local radio public station because I was tired of anything with a groove or a guitar haha. My folks hosted parties just about every weekend for years - I learned the words to every damn Everly Bros, Chuck Berry, Paul Anka, et. al. song. Not much Elvis, though - they were not fans. They did, however pick up some Rolling Stones as the years went by. So, I get growing up on music that was not contemporaneous to one's "time".
As I got older and my peers would talk about music like "I Got a Line on You," by Spirit, I was at a loss, but I could speak in-depth about Wallace's, "Primrose Lane" lol.
I eventually caught up.
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Cool, doing it as songs rather than bands/singers, that makes it easier...!
I don't have much input from my parents as dad was into his classical/opera and mum didn't listen to much. I was brought up on Radio 1 and Top of the Pops on the TV.
I was 15 in 1980 which is when I discovered Black Sabbath and as a result heavy metal in general. I still wasn't familiar with Prog and up until that point it was softer rock, pop and punk.
I'll try to keep my choices contemporary to when they came out. I don't think at 15 I liked anything from before I was maybe 7 or 8.
My first choice is a well known bands first massive hit... 1973s
Killer Queen by Queen
Ridiculously catchy, until about 1977 my favourite group.
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Queen's a tight rock band, I can respect that. In the mid-70s, they were at the top of the rock and roll food chain.
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I've never been much of a fan of Boney M. They were pretty big in the UK in the late 70s and in 1978 had 3 huge hits with Rivers of Babylon, Rasputin and Mary's Boy Child. I thought them harmless but really not to my taste even at that age. They did do one song I rather liked and that was 1977s Ma Baker about a gangster/mafia criminal family and their matriarch!
Do You Love Me (the title) just reminds of a song by the Macc Lads but it's not for polite company!
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Killer Queen I know the others never heard!
Sorry in advance for this next one.
But this came out before I had found metal and it was quite popular with the children around that time so naturally I thought I liked it too...it's still a fun song but not something I'd listen to more than once a year.
Product of it's time...it's crazy to think that these 90s hits are now considered classics by people of my age....yikes!
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^ BARBIE GIRL!!!
Oh man I had a daughter whose friends would spontaneously break into that song, that's how I got introduced to the song. It's a fun bubblegum tune, I have some sweet memories with the kids singing it. :)
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I'm now 5 years old, watching my Sesame Street. I already know all about the letters and numbers and stuff, I just like hanging with the Muppets and getting some laughs. The music on that show was top class, as well, with Joe Raposo leading the way with tunes that had a mellow, emotional touch to them. It was a good hour to be a kid, when Sesame Street came on.
And then...
One day...
THIS HAPPENS
I had no idea who this guy Stevie Wonder was, he just turned up in the rotation. Totally confident with a new audience, the band just started going and proceeded to MELT MY BRAIN. When you see the kids dancing and moving, that's me in my den. These guys knew they would rock it out and mine was one of many homes where this song toasted all the bread and cooked every steak perfectly inside of 6 minutes.
And now, 50 years later, I'm doing a weekly show about Classic Funk/Soul Grooves. :smug:
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Stevie Wonder! I like Stevie. Don't know a lot of his work but the ones I've heard I have liked...but not the kind of music I'd listen to a lot at a time.
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Oh, good grief, I sometimes forget how young Charger is!!
Superstition, stone cold classic!
This was always going to be on my list. First time I've heard it in years though...
Manfred Mann's Earth Band - Davy's on the Road Again
Not entirely as I remember it, but still quite good!
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Z will get a kick out of this: I just got home after attending an all-day meeting concerning writing binary object files (BOFs) to enhance an organization's red team effectiveness. At one point I think the presenter stated rolling your own BOF would also help banjo players from drooling on themselves, but I may have not heard correctly.
This YouTuber video is not the version that got played on air back in the late 60's/early 70's. Not sure whose version did, maybe Art Smith, but I always liked it - my parents didn't own a recording of it, and as far as I can recall didn't much care for it. Then Deliverance came out and this tune somehow became a measuring stick of sorts regarding one's hillbilly proclivities.
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Duelling banjos!!! :lol:
That is exactly the kind of stuff a kid would like...grown ups...not so much! Damn it hurts my ears! :rofl:
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Oh, good grief, I sometimes forget how young Charger is!!
Young? Hahah! That's not a word I hear a lot anymore these days! Quite the opposite! :D
Here's one that I still quite enjoy listening to. This came out in March of 1997 so I had just turned 14. This one I remember quite well actually as it was probably on the heavier side of stuff I was listening to. I bought the album right away as well. Still have it ofcourse. I do remember being bit disappointed with the rest of the album but this song seriously kicks ass...even after all these years.
Also I found her extremely attractive at the time...and I see that I still do.
Now that I think about it, this might have been my first true rock song that I liked. Not sure...it's all a bit of a blur those years....
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Yeah, Dueling Banjos doesn't hold the same sway over me as it did back in the day haha. As far as Bitch goes, I just heard that the other day driving in to work!
Here on out the music gets more...rock oriented, I guess. I recall hearing "Nights in White Satin," on the radio and then not hearing it for a long time. Then hearing it all the time lol. I still like it, but it definitely needs the right time and place.
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The mid to late 90s were when I first worked in IT, with radios or CDs spinning and stuff like Napster and LimeWire only beginning to open up digital music... but I remember that "Bitch" song, good times. But I was 29 at that time, so not a song of my youth.
Time for 1976... at the start of the year, I was in 2nd Grade and in 3rd Grade at the end. I'm in a crazy, whirling world of near-constant skate parties and bowling parties... Coke was everywhere, went great for washing down the cake... ;) Those were the 70s for a kid, I guess. Lots of events where I put on totally different footwear for the occasion.
I liked the bowling and was terrible at skating - no balance due to a neural issue that wouldn't be diagnosed for decades. But both those places had pinball arcades, I just played the games more at the skating rinks after doing an obligatory, tortuous lap around the rink, dreading the portion without a handrail and only the gaps between the cinder blocks for my fingers to find desperate purchase for steadying me. After those laps, off went the blasted skates and zip went I to the games.
Sea Wolf, Breakout, and Tank Fight were my top three games, and I plowed a lot of quarters into them. As I played, the music at the roller rink or bowling center would pipe out the hits of the day, and there was one that really imprinted on me:
I had no idea what the title was and could barely make out the words over the sound of the places I heard it in. But I remembered that melody and just loved it every time it came up, which was about twice per visit to those places for a school field trip, day care activity, or birthday party.
And then the song faded from the public fancy and I didn't hear it for the longest time. And then, in the early 2010s, I was remembering that song I liked as a kid and all I could remember was that it had kind of a disco sound and that melody. And that "Shine the light" was a repeated phrase in the chorus. Armed with Google, I began my search. I found a lot of other disco songs mentioning lights and had fun with those, all the while wondering why I kept getting this Elton John song, "Philadelphia Freedom" in my search results...
... and then I clicked on the song just to see why it was being suggested. Turns out, it was the answer I'd been looking for. :) I play it every now and again, and remember that kid that was an ace at Sea Wolf, back in the day. And thankful that I don't do Coke anymore... that high fructose corn syrup stuff in the USA is just nasty. :P
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Well there's 3 great choices. I remember Bitch, certainly don't remember her though!
Another bit of AOR from the mid-late 70s...
Tom Robinson Band - Too Good To Be True
I thought this was going to be a big hit single... then they did a live performance on Top of the Pops before it charted... I think the band was drunk, they were off key and lacklustre. The song didn't even break the top 75! Shame, but I still loved it.
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Have not heard Tom Robinson before, but I like this track (had to look it up since YouTube doesn't want UK people sharing videos with the USA and vice versa...).
He's got a great quote, "We've been fighting for tolerance for the last 20 years, and I've campaigned for people to be able to love whoever the hell they want. That's what we're talking about: tolerance and freedom and liberty—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So if somebody won't grant me the same tolerance I've been fighting for for them, hey, they've got a problem, not me."
Much respect for the cat, and he can play very well.
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4th pick
Tubeway Army - Are 'Friends' Electric
I was recently reminded of this song from 1979. I'm a fan of this song, but nothing else they (or Gary Numan) ever did interests me. It would have been a good candidate for the other topic we did a few months back regarding songs we like from bands wo don't care about!.
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My 4th one is gonna be something bit different.
I was an avid gamer in the early 90s. Was lucky enough to get a computer rather early at around 1992 I think and by 1994 I was on my second one. I was playing all sorts of games that I got for free either from shareware floppy discs or copied from school buddies. One of the BEST games of the time (and scariest I might add) was ofcourse DOOM II Hell On Earth. And a biiiiiiiiiig part of it was the music. I could listen to the music (which if I remember correctly was possible in the menu) all day long. Brilliant music.
And this song was probably one of my favourites and what makes this even more special (which ofcourse I did not know at the time) was actually inspired by a song by Black Sabbath and even more specially from the very first album I would eventually get few years later DEHUMANIZER.
It is strange how things sometimes go...Doom 2 was my favourite game and eventually Black Sabbath would become my favourite band and there was a connection that I never knew about at the time.
Level #10 THE REFUELLING BASE = After All (The Dead)
There is a story behind this which I learned years and years later that Game designer John Romero was a huge Black Sabbath fan and wanted to use songs from the Dehumanizer album as music for the game but Tony Iommi and the record company did not allow that for what ever reason Romero went on and just used the intro of the song After All (The Dead) for the basis of the music for this level...
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My Gary Numan fix was "Cars". Was mad about it when it came out and it became a hit in the USA. Good times. :)
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When I was around the 4th grade, I got permission to BE VERY CAREFUL and to use the record player and go through my parents' albums. :D
So I start giving them a spin, letting the jammers play through and sampled the boring stuff, never to go there again. This is when I got to hear the sides of albums that they hadn't played before and my mom lectured me about mature content and how I shouldn't go singing certain tunes around the house or neighborhood and why. Thanks very much for that, by the way, mom. :)
My mom had played pretty much ONLY side 2 with tracks like "Wowie Zowie" and "You're Probably Wondering Why We're Here" from Frank Zappa's Freak Out album, none of the other 3 sides. So one brave day, I fired up side one...
(Hungry Freaks, Daddy by Frank Zappa)
... and the guitar work in it blew my mind. Most of what I'd heard before was vocal heavy with only things like a melody or a bass line standing out. This was my first real guitar solo. It was also pretty heavy stuff, of which I found more of on "Helter Skelter" from The Beatles' White Album. It would be like one track on a whole album that I'd really get into for the heaviness and then the rest would be either good or passable. "Trouble Everywhere" from Freak Out was a bonus heavy track that I really dug.
Side four was way too experimental, so I gave that a hard pass after one or two listens.
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DOOM... a life changer when it was release (December 10th 1993 if I remember). I'd already been a fan of Castle Wolfenstein and this just blew that game out of the water!! Quake was a little bit of a let down but the music was better. It wasn't until Half Life that I felt Doom had a genuine successor.
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DOOM... a life changer when it was release (December 10th 1993 if I remember). I'd already been a fan of Castle Wolfenstein and this just blew that game out of the water!! Quake was a little bit of a let down but the music was better. It wasn't until Half Life that I felt Doom had a genuine successor.
Indeed. I had Wolfenstein (as it was called here) as well and enjoyed it a lot too. Another one that came bit later that I felt was a really good one was Rise Of The Triad which had a lot of good things.
I never really liked Quake either although the multiplayer was great against bots. Half Life was SUBERB.
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I said earlier that my selections would be more in the rock vein moving forward. That was before I recalled this song lol. I really liked this when it was hot, and liked the Helen Reddy version much better than the Tanya Tucker rendition. Had never heard the Bette Midler version, still haven't, and don't plan on it either :)
Delta Dawn. God help us all.
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For my number 5 I'll go with an obvious one.
I was in the 6th grade when this came out. It was huge. And it was around the time I started listening to more music...not just stuff on the radio but on MTV and a music show we had here called Jyrki and this one ofcourse was all over the place. And it hit a sweet spot for young Charger...And eventhough this isn't my favourite Spice Girls track this one still probably has the most meaning.
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Your choice reminded me of this...
Sadly I didn't share a hotel with them!
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Ah yes, WANNABE!!! I was working in IT when that came out, so I got it from people playing their music at work AND from my 7-year-old daughter and her friends singing that during soccer practice. Good times.
Delta Dawn is a 70s Country Song, and there's a certain charm in that. It's Nashburg Muck, as my mom would call it, but still something I'd be able to catch on the Hee Haw show when performers rolled around. Waylon Jennings also did that song.
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We moved to a new house in the summer before 5th grade and I got a radio - yay! Had fun with that, playing the rock stations and all. When 5th Grade started, I had Mr. Wiese as my teacher, and he was a great, kindly guy that made everyone want to be like him when we grew up. :) He would play records in the class as we did work, mostly popular soundtracks of the day, the day being 1978-ish. Shaft, Grease, and Saturday Night Fever were heavy spinners. And although the gym class did aerobics to some of those tracks, first place I heard the deep funk of The Trammps was in Mr. Wiese's class...
Disco Inferno - The Trammps
That's a Tom Moulton Mix there, I would later learn. But the textures, sounds, the whole package - that set me up for my love for House EDM decades later. This wasn't flyaway copycat disco that didn't know the rules. These cats knew to keep it funky, to keep the blues-based chord progressions and intervals.
I later picked up a copy of the SNF soundtrack for a buck and side 4 with Disco Inferno was the one I played most. I came for the BeeGees, I stayed for The Trammps. And Tavares, too...
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Pick 5 (Parts 1 and 2!)
Yes I know it's cheating but I couldn't decide which to go with!
Part 1: The Boomtown Rats - Rat Trap
Part 2: The Boomtown Rats - Like Clockwork
Ok, so in 1978 it's a fair chance that The Boomtown Rats were my favourite band. Their earlier songs like Looking After No.1 and Mary of the 4th Form were more punky but they quickly matured and Like Clockwork was their first Top 10 hit and Rat Trap was their first No. 1. They followed that up with another No.1 - I Don't Like Mondays - but I lost interest quickly after that as The Jam (and others) then became my favourites.
Obviously this is Bob Geldof in his pre-Saintly Saviour days and the ripping up of a photo of John Travolta on Top of the Pops was just a dig as they had just knocked Summer Nights from Grease off the No.1 spot after 7 weeks!
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These guys were never played on the radio in the USA. I had no idea who they were until Live Aid and The Wall movie came out. I'll give 'em a listen after I'm done with this meeting I'm in...
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Those Boomtown Rats tunes remind me a lot of The Knack... but October 1978 was dominated by other forces on USA album-oriented rock (AOR) radio:
The Who - Who Are You
Boston - Don't Look Back
Foreigner - Double Vision, Hot Blooded, Blue Day
The Rolling Stones - Miss You, When the Whip Comes Down, Beast of Burden
Styx - Blue Collar
Heart - Straight On
The Cars - All I've Got, Bye Bye Love, Moving in Stereo, My Best Friend's Girl
Bob Seger - Hollywood Nights
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Listen to Her Heart
Joe Walsh - Life's Been Good
Cheap Trick - Surrender
Talking Heads - Take Me to the River
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street, Down the Line
And for the albums on the charts that first week of October... Besides the ones spawning the singles above, there was also...
Steely Dan - Aja
Jackson Browne - Running on Empty
Van Halen I
Blue Oyster Cult - Some Enchanted Evening
Journey - Infinity
Blondie - Parallel Lines
The Kiss Solo Albums
Eric Clapton - Slowhand
David Gilmour
Kansas - Point of Know Return
AC/DC - Powerage
Todd Rundgren - Hermit of Mink Hollow
ELO - Out of the Blue
Eagles - Hotel California
Night Moves - Bob Seger
Source: 7 October 1978 Cashbox Magazine...
Typing out those lists really takes me back to when I was 10-and-a-half, listening to the Dallas AOR stations The Zoo and Q102.
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Neighbor was several years older than me and bought this record when it hit the stores. The whole thing is great, but I especially dug this tune from it when I was 12-ish.
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Back to the world of games for my 6th one!
Dune 2 was my first contact with real time strategy games and I loved it, and the music of it was brilliant as well but in 1996 the world saw the arrival of THE GREATEST STRATEGY game of all time in Command & Conquer Red Alert and the music was off the charts good. And it had a jukebox feature in which you could choose which track plays and create your own playlists while playing. Brilliant.
And this song still after almost 30 years remains to be THE greatest piece of gaming music ever created.
Frank Klepacki and HELL MARCH!
The whole soundtrack of Red Alert is pure gold though and Klepacki has since done some amazing music but this remains the top dog!
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^ When I first heard that Heep track, I though, COOL! Dude is traveling in, like TIME!!! Now I listen and I imagine a person trapped by memories of the past. I think I might be older than I was when I was a kid and heard that for the first time! :)
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HELL YES RED ALERT!!!
When I was working at Microsoft, supporting Windows 95, they had us contractors do weekend shifts, when call volume was looooooooooooooooow. Managers would look the other way when we started LAN parties and Red Alert was the game of choice as we hoped we'd finish the game before getting taken out with a customer call. The rule was no games when with a customer, so it was sudden death if the phone rang.
HELL
YES
RED
ALERT
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Back to the kid in Richardson, Texas with a second-floor bedroom, looking out to the north at the rows of suburban houses, marching to the horizon. It's 1979, August, and sixth grade has just kicked off. I'm home from school and this track comes on the radio...
(Carouselambra by Led Zeppelin)
I'm 11, and I don't know nothing about musical influences and references. At the time, I'd have no way of saying that it's proto-EDM in the use of synths or that it's a cousin of Kashmir in its use of drones and melodies or that its tripartite structure is reminiscent of sonata form... but I did notice the orchestral bit was kinda like the Ode to Joy theme from Beethoven's 9th Symphony. That part I knew.
But it's not what drew me into the song. Whatever got the Album Rock DJ to like this, got me as well. "Fool in the Rain" was the single from the album, and it got played on the radio plenty enough. But this one... it teased out things in my mental fabrics and let me dwell on them for what seemed like hours in just 10 minutes.
First album I bought the next year, when I started buying albums, was Led Zeppelin's fourth album, Atlantic SD 19129. I bought it for "Stairway to Heaven", which I liked. But I wanted *THIS TRACK* and had no idea what the name of it was. I stumbled into it when I got In Through the Out Door as my second album I bought and played the hell out of it.
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6th pick is:
Ian Dury and the Blockheads - Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
The more well known song is Hit Me With Your Rythm Stick which got to No. 1 in 1979. But this earlier track encapsulates more what Ian Dury was about.
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Loved this tune. Still do! It was such a departure from the Damned (my first punk love affair) and to me that made it more punk than anything else.
Talking Heads - "Psycho Killer":
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For my #7 gotta go with an absolute classic!
Hey yo CAPTAIN JACK!
I still kind of remember when this came out in 1996. It was quite the radio hit....and MTV hit as well.
This was a whole lot of fun back then and an old buddy of mine still even has the cd and we do listen to it time to time. Now more for the humor factor but back in the day it was the ace!
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Had not heard the Ian Dury or Captain Black, fun tunes each in its own way. Psycho Killer is a classic Talking Heads track that I do also enjoy.
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In 7th Grade, I started buying albums, got all the Led Zeppelin. Then I tried ZZ Top and got their El Loco and it was... about half good, disappointing. I wanted to be more discerning as I planned my next album purchase.
Now, I'd heard Smoke on the Water, Highway Star, Space Truckin', and Woman from Tokyo on the radio. I knew Deep Purple were a good band, so I was ready to set sail and give them a proper go. I figured a greatest hits collection would be a good way to start, even if it meant buying those songs again on later albums.
I got Deepest Purple, the awesome-looking purple guitar explosion cover one.
Side one had 5 tracks I didn't know and Woman from Tokyo. Side two had the hits from Machine Head and three others. All righty then...
Black Night was fun, Speed King crushed it, Fireball got my heart racing, Strange Kind of Woman was OK, and then...
dun dun dun
CHILD IN TIME
I was 12 years old and this is where my heavy rock itch truly and well got scratched. I was already planning on checking out more of DP's stuff before this one, but Child in Time made me have to go out and Get. Them. All. 44 years later, I plan to get one more, albeit with a different lineup. :)
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Pick 7 today...
Sky - Toccata
The classic / electronic crossover group included such notables as John Williams and Herbie Flowers. This and the associated album were big hits in 1980. This still impresses me!
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That Sky tune - haven't heard it in, well, probably since it came out. I didn't know it was by Sky (in fact didn't know who they were), but then I played the video and it unlocked a hidden memory and I exclaimed, "I've heard that!".
Over the years, many musicians have pointed out that watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show made them realize that if those four regular looking dudes could play rock music, then they could too.
This tune by the Buzzcocks made me feel the same way. I never saw the video - first time was just now when I looked for it - but when I heard the song I thought, "If that whiny mess of a song can garner success, hell I can too!" And I set about learning to play the guitar. Here I am 46 years later, still learning to play the guitar lol.
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^^^
I quite liked them, their flame burned bright but fast.
That's not a bad choice, Ever Fallen In Love and Harmony in My Head are my favourites. Pete Shelley died too young (early 60s I think).
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Had not heard the Ian Dury or Captain Black
:rofl:
My number 8 is a big one.
As kid I was a huuuuuuge James Bond fan! Had all of the movies on VHS (recorded from tv!) and watched them quite often.
Some of the theme songs I liked but non as much as I liked the original theme! Just a brilliant piece of music. I even forced my mom to buy a CD of all the bond themes just to get this one! And I think I played it to death! But funnily enough I still love it and it hasn't gotten old one damn bit! That's how you know you have a real classic in your hands!
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I blame Jack Black for my confusion. Also a good deal of sleepiness yesterday morning. :D
JAMES BOND THEME TOTALLY ROCKS
I muted my mic for the meeting I wasn't saying anything in and played that theme.
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The year is now 1982 and I've almost finished buying up all the Deep Purple released product, time to start on the next part of the collection.
Now, I've heard Paranoid, Iron Man, and Heaven and Hell on the radio and saw a video just once of Die Young that blew my mind. I knew I was gonna get into Black Sabbath. But where to start?
Rather than do a greatest hits collection, I decided to buy an album I knew NOTHING about. The only thing going for it was that it was on sale and I could get that and something else later on instead of blowing all my lawnmowing money on one platter.
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
Ye gods, it's electrifying to my system even in my wintry years! :rockon: :headbanger:
That riff had me from the get-go and I knew if I liked that, previously unheard, I'd like most of everything else they've done to that point in time. Glad I didn't start out with Technical Ecstasy, because I might have come to a different conclusion about the band if that was my first one.
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Just realized I got two songs to go and two years to go, when I was 15 and 16 in 1983 and 1984. Working out nicely!
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Going backwards a few years. I bought this 45 when it came out and played it all the time.
I loathe this song now. In fact, when I went looking for a YouTube video of it, I played the first few seconds just to make sure it was the real thing then I stopped it. I can't even listen to it nowadays. For as much as I was enthralled by its atmosphere, and ethereal-like wistfulness, at some point its overwhelming sappiness did me in. I clearly recall my parents hosting a bunch of people prior to heading out for the Bicentennial celebration in 1976, and I gathered up the handful of records I owned, to toss on the pile of records getting played on the stereo. And I looked at that Terry Jacks 45 and said to myself, "Hell no".
But for a year or two, it was my number one fave:
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^^^
That was a big number 1 in the UK around 1974(?), and even to my young ears it sounded corny and cheesey. We did have fun at school re-working the lyrics in humorous ways. :D
SBS is my favourite song off my favourite album. It first came to my attention when I was 15 around the same time that the re-issue of Paranoid and Neon Knights were charting... that was a transformative period for me.
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My Pick #8
The Damned - Love Song
This song from early 1979 was my introduction to The Damned (although I later realised I knew a couple of their earlier songs). Still one of my 5 favourite bands.
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My Number 9 is from a childhood favourite tv show!
Frankly there were a lot of cartoons with great themes. Biker Mice From Mars, Pinky And The Brain and ofcourse Looney Toones that I watched but Ducktales I think was the all around favourite.
And this was still a time they did NOT dub these things so I was treated with the original not the idiotic finnish version that was later shown in the late 90s.
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^^^
That was a big number 1 in the UK around 1974(?), and even to my young ears it sounded corny and cheesey. We did have fun at school re-working the lyrics in humorous ways. :D
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This song from early 1979 was my introduction to The Damned (although I later realised I knew a couple of their earlier songs). Still one of my 5 favourite bands.
Mocking Seasons in the Sun must have been a universal activity, we did the same thing. Used to bug me when my friends would get into it. I mean, how could anyone possibly make fun of such a deep, introspective work of art? It hurt, man. It was painful. Somehow, I battled through the anguish and came up with a couple of good ones myself :)
Love The Damned - here's the first one that caught my ear back in the day:
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Yes, New Rose was one that I was aware of but couldn't at that time have told who it was by.
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Pick Number 9
The Jam - Going Underground
I think when this came out in the first half of 1980 The Jam were still my favourite band. I was aware of Black Sabbath at this point but it would take a few months before they steamrollered everyone else out the way!
Going Underground was their first (of 4) number 1 singles in the UK. It was the first single in 6 years to debut at No. 1, that's why I chose this over the marginally superior Down in the Tube Station at Midnight from a couple of years earlier. I still remember listening to the chart rundown, and thinking "Where's the new Jam song? We're nearly at the No. 1 spot! Did it not chart at all?!" I really wasn't expecting it to debut at No. 1... it was special in those days... these days it happens every week!
And now one for Zs to recognise the reference!
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I guess my musical taste was starting to gel mid-late 70's. I was into punk before I got into hard rock/metal full time, but my tastes were all over the board for a while. Sabbath had been a big name in my musical world since hearing Paranoid a few years prior to learning about Thin Lizzy. But when "The Boys Are Back in Town" came out, I was all over it. I really liked this song, and jammed to it every chance I could. Sadly, wasn't able to buy the album (the case with most of what I was digging) since I was a broke ass kid, and when I managed to save up enough odd-chore money, hard decisions had to be made lol
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My final pick is going to be the one that changed my musical direction once and for all.
Old story so no need to go to much detail here but I was in the 8th grade and walked into a second hand music shop we had in town and saw the cover of this album and was totally blown away by the sheer awesomeness of it. Never had I heard about the band before but the album art just looked so damn amazing that I had to buy it....and I was hooked for life.
The album was ofcourse DEHUMANIZER by BLACK SABBATH and the first song on that album is COMPUTER GOD!
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It's interesting to look over the selections we've posted and realize that though our musical paths have differed to varying degrees, there are still touchstones of familiarity across time.
Of course, Mr. Z could blow my thesis out of the water with his last two selections :)
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My more surprising directions start up after I turn 18. Most of my junior high/high school years were a period of consolidation, as it were.
After getting all the albums from the Heavy Three - Zep, Purp, and Sabs, I was branching out into other bands like Grand Funk, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Uriah Heep... research was done by reading about them in rock almanacs and illustrated encyclopedias of rock and stuff like that. But those books only covered the really big names, mostly in the USA. Acts that were bigger in Europe or the UK than they were in the USA, I didn't have much to go on.
What I *did* have were used records at the ol' Half-Price Books & Records. I could look at the covers and read the lineups and make judgements based on the art. I had gotten burned with Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell - great cover, good names in the band, material TOTALLY not what was advertised. But, I pressed on.
And I got these two gems that I played over and over and over again. I got these with that method and I feel greatly rewarded, as I still love 'em today:
Those opening lines of Rainbow's Tarot Woman and Rory Gallagher's Shin Kicker got me sold on those albums and on exploring more music based on where the musicians and the history led me.
Ten years later, I got the Internet and that made doing research that much easier. But in the intervening timespan, looking at those covers could tell me so much. It's how I got into Mountain, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, loads of good bands.
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My final pick
The Stranglers - Walk on By
A cover from 1978 of the Motown classic originally by Dionne Warwick, but done very much in their style, I defy you to find much "Motown" in this song, although there is a definite 60s feel to the lengthy instrumental section.
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Quite a variety of stuff here.
I took a concious choice not to include stuff after I got into metal when I was 15 part from the track that launched it all.
Bunch of great songs got left out...and theme songs and such that could have been included.
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But keeping it to pivotal tracks made me think hard about what guided my direction. I liked this exercise.
I'd like to investigate the explorations of our 20s, should be interesting fun. What did we get curious about, whether or not we liked what we found.
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20s? Hmm! That's 1985-1995 for me, I'd need to think about it, but at first I'm not sure my tastes changed much in that time... but I can think of a couple of acts, but also it excludes 16-20 years where a lot of changes happened. Hmm :think:
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Mine were 1988-1998 (I seem to be 3 years your junior, KDC!) and I got very exploratory after about 1990. Happy to toss in post-16, make it a long decade of young adulthood.
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81-91, I think we've got the 80's and 90's covered. I can say that I didn't really expand my musical palette any, although it did get refined. I didn't really have an age range doing the previous top 10, more of a "stuff I liked and therefore was important" before I settled into musical xenophobia for ... my twenties :)
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Maybe just discoveries and explorations in general... ?
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Since I found metal nothing's really changed...sure I found different styles of metal at some point but can't really remember when and in what order. It's all kind of a blur really.
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Since I found metal nothing's really changed...sure I found different styles of metal at some point but can't really remember when and in what order. It's all kind of a blur really.
Whereas for me, just as I started getting into the really heavy stuff, I was also getting into Texas Outlaw country and folk. I looked metal in my hair and clothes, but I'd still put on Herbie Hancock's Inventions and Dimensions on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
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Maybe just discoveries and explorations in general... ?
Works for me!
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I thought we were supposed to do singles next?
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I thought we were supposed to do singles next?
Me too! Let's do that, then we can revisit the age-progression hits.
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I was thinking non-album tracks. so yeah singles but also live only recordings etc.
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Oh yeah...right that's what it was. Non Album tracks.
So this includes one offs, single b-sides, soundtrack songs...right?