Notes from a Padded Cell 03.29.07: Where Do You Get Your New Music From (A Junkie's Sample Chronology) Pt. 1
Posted by Jesse Coy on 03.29.2007
I don’t know how many people out there consider the question, some of whom might also be music junkies such as myself, maybe not writing from a padded cell, but junkies nonetheless…Where Do You Get Your New Music From?
It's a simple question, but it's a fundamental one, especially for a music junkie such as myself… Where Do You Get Your New Music From?
Pardon my dangling preposition (no, that's nothing obscene I'm saying).
I don't know how many people out there consider it, some of whom might also be music junkies such as myself, maybe not writing from a padded cell, but junkies nonetheless… but it's a fascinating question. It really becomes indicative of how times sometimes change and how times sometimes stay the same.
So take a look at a chronicle of someone in their mid-30's, and see the evolution of Where I Got My New Music From. Even more interesting will be when I do a 20-year update of the topic, and you'll hear of how a music junkie in his mid-50's gets his New Music Fix.
Focus, Mr. Coy. We'll cross that other bridge when we get to it. Let's tackle this one chronological wise first.
MID TO LATE 70's
A. From the Cradle:
This one you can't plan for. Either you had parents or a parent who listened to music, which you absorbed through osmosis from cradle or crib, or you didn't. I was born in the year Richard Nixon resigned from the White House rather than be impeached. My mother was seventeen when she had me. As I was busy doing my infant things… do lullabies constitute my musical backdrop? Hell, no! Let's get a bit more advanced here. The records spun just as my mobile spun overhead, those colorful figurines dancing to the Doors and Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and Neil Young and Jimi Hendrix.
What a delicious sensation of d?j? vu it was, then, when in the late 80's, primarily because some of the metal and thrash bands I'd listened to did remakes of some of these tunes, and I started going in search of the source, I'd pick up albums that sounded SO familiar. It was like I heard them before.
And I did.
B. Hooked on an Image:
Get a band that looks really cool. You see the image, and it makes you curious. For some, that might've been the case with Gwar or Insane Clown Posse, although for me, I was led into those two bands in a different way (the former via E, the latter via D). Who am I talking about, then? I wouldn't even give you a nickel to guess who I mean, because in the late 70's, there was only one band that had an image attracting interest in that way (okay, maybe two, if you consider Alice Cooper, but he didn't have a marketing machine behind him).
I'm talking about Kiss.
They happen to be the first band that I ever owned music by, my step-dad giving me his copy of Destroyer on this crazy thing called an 8-track (ha). I also seem to vaguely recall having those albums (and I mean I had them on record) where each Kiss member did their solo thing. Damned if I can remember what they sounded like.
Nowadays I have Kiss CD's up to and including Rock and Roll Over, and that's it. Back then, I wouldn't say I was a huge Kiss fan. But they did look cool, and I had friends who liked to draw them. They certainly deserve footnote status as being, as I said, the first band whose album I ever owned.
What was yours, oh music junkie masses?
THE EARLY TO MID-80's
C. Taping Music Off the Dial:
Ah, a music junkie and a collector is born! I had a tape recorder, and I began listening to the FM dial. I started buying blank tapes. I'd listen to the radio and record songs I really liked. These were some of the early 80's songs that are so often featured on the Best of 80's CD's. Most were a lot of one-hit wonders to which I was oddly drawn. I've got all of them nowadays on burned CD's via songs I downloaded… yes, without paying. I guess I'm branded now.
All it takes is about eight self-made volumes to get all that I want. There's also been many an 80's band that I've gone on to collect… all the Billy Joel albums, Billy Idol, Blondie (and that's been in the last five years that I discovered how many great tunes she did), the Cars, Talking Heads, the Stray Cats. And then there are other ones on my list for more involved excavation… Wall of Voodoo, Gary Numan, Nena, Adam Ant, the Vapors, and Madness (for example).
That's now, of course. Back then, though, I taped, using yellow school tablet paper to write down the songs I had on each tape. At that time, too, another huge favorite was Dr. Demento. Oh, how many Sunday nights I'd stay awake until midnight to hear the Funny Five Countdown. I've gone on to reclaim all those funny songs via music sharing programs (some of which you can't get any other way, such as the parody of "We Are the World," being "We Are the Worms," because they were sued). Side note… that kid in me danced with joy upon seeing Dr. Demento in person a few years back in Tucson, when he took his show on the road, playing at various colleges, half reminiscing and half deejaying material.
D. Mail-In Music Clubs:
As far as I know, there have always been those big two, even back then, though now I think the one was bought out by the other, because I see ads for Columbia House's DVD club via BMG. Back in the mid-80's, I entered both clubs (only back then, it was tapes). I seem to recall getting stuff like Billy Joel, the Beastie Boys (Licensed to Ill), Dire Straits, David Lee Roth, Def Leopard, and Motley Crue (before I learned those guys were posers… ha!). All of those tapes I sold or traded, especially when I converted both to the heavy metal/thrash genre and the CD format. Some of those tapes, I've gone on to reclaim in their CD incarnations over the years.
So I fulfilled my purchase obligations, and quit, going my merry way. Around '86-'87 is when I both got into heavy metal and thrash, and also quit collecting tapes in exchange for CD's. My first CD ever was Iron Maiden's Live After Death, which cost $18.99. I put both that and a CD player on layaway, using my paper route money to pay for it. My friends thought I was nuts. CD's? That's a fad. They won't last.
Back to the mail-in music club topic, though… I can recall rejoining in '89 or '90, and with a dozen selections to pick, I took a risk on a bunch of bands. They sounded good… give'em a spin. Bands like Sanctuary, 24-7 Spyz, Death Angel, Warrior Soul, and Mordred, in addition to heavy metal forefather Black Sabbath… all in a huge, heaping dose via mail-in music clubs.
Over the years, I've fulfilled my obligations, quit, and then rejoined numerous times, occasionally inventing a new name. As a matter of fact, I just rejoined a club last week, getting that intro package. Yummy... new tunes.
While I still get new acts through these mail-in music clubs on occasion, I tend more often nowadays to do a lot of backlog stockpiling, occasionally picking up a bonus track reissue CD (although as a rule, I try to always get those used). Some bands in the last ten years or so who I first picked up via these clubs? Insane Clown Posse, T. Rex, Tool, 4 Non-Blondes, Rage Against the Machine, and Mother Love Bone.
My most recent order? A 2-disc Motorhead reissue, a Best of Blondie that includes a DVD of videos (that's why I'm getting it), a live Rage Against the Machine CD, Radiohead's Hail to the Chief, and Bob Marley's Soul Rebels.
THE MID-80's TO EARLY 90's
E. Peers:
This is all mingled together, yet leads in part to what got me into metal and thrash. While there were other side outlets, it all funneled into discovering this music via and along with my friends. Early MTV got us into Van Halen, because we'd sit around waiting for the "Hot for Teacher" video to play. Oh, we loved that one… "Sit down, Waldo!"
The harder metal came around the same time as video arcades flourished. We had this local video arcade guy who also doubled as a seller of pins and patches of the cooler bands. This ties into B., but it was also a peer discovery, because we all thought Eddie on the Iron Maiden albums, plus on patches and pins, was damn cool (while Iron Maiden was almost the first heavy metal band I got into, Judas Priest's one album came a little earlier… talking about Unleashed in the East).
Maybe a year or a year and a half later, enter thrash. My friends and I compared, collected, swapped, and had a good old time. Throughout high school, from '88-'92, working in the cheap ass dish room of our local Italian-American restaurant, the tunes flowed, and they flowed copiously. Dish room veterans brought their favorite tunes in to jam on the boom box, and we (a couple years younger) brought ours. There was much overlap. Soon, we became the dish room veterans, bringing our own favorite tunes into work to jam, and the new, younger guard shared their new buzz bands.
I'd be hard pressed to list all the bands I first heard in the dish room of that joint, or all the bands I brought into work that no one had heard of before. Mostly, the individual members of a crew would take turns jamming their preferred tunes. The one golden rule, though, was that breakdown was reserved for the fastest, most intense of albums. Breakdown was when the restaurant officially closed, and all those super caked-on pots and pans came our way, standing between us and freedom.
Slayer's Reign in Blood was an all-time favorite, but other thrash acts factored into the intense breakdown jam fury, including Nuclear Assault, Testament, Kreator, DRI, and Sepultura.
F. Pen Pals
This is where I'll close for now. But on this topic, when I say pen pals, that's what I mean. I wasn't quite on the boat when it came to early 80's tape trading of metal bands. This was the mid to late 80's, and these were mostly mix tapes. The reason I got a ton of pen pals was because I had not one, but three different letters printed in the course of a year or two in Metal Maniacs (or some such magazine that was primarily heavier metal and thrash, with some poser bands mixed in). One letter criticized the increased inclusion of poser bands, and another blasted the PMRC (I forget what the third letter was about).
[friggin' SCARY PMRC pic… and you would've voted for Gore? Please… that's Tipper's minions up there!]
Anyway, at the end of each letter, I was sure to include a postscript, as follows: anyone who would like to write me and swap music, feel free to drop me a line (or something like that). The end result was that at one time, I had up to thirty or forty pen pals. Many petered off after only a short letter or two. The upside, though, was that (and it wasn't as though I specified any gender preference… I only wanted to swap music), 90% of those pen pals were chicks. Not only that, but I'd end up meeting five of them (two in PA, two in NY, and one in WV), and of those five, with three of them, I made it to some nifty bases on the playing field.
Okay… mind out of the gutter, Mr. Coy.
As for the exchange of music, it basically took the form of total mixes, whereas we'd begin by sending each other a list of all the bands/albums we had. After consulting that list, we'd send each other music we never heard before. I'll never forget one phenomenal mix from a gal in Pittsburg who I never met in person, but which was so great, because in one fell swoop it got me into Jane's Addiction, Skinny Puppy, and They Might Be Giants.
The two gals I wrote to from New York City were totally in tune with the hardcore scene at the time. From one of them, I heard Type O Negative for the first time. A gal from Japan sent me a copy of one of the Helloween albums that hadn't been issued in the U.S. at the time, which was cool. One gal who I visited in Rochester, NY (a little past second base… but who's keeping score) left a permanent imprint of the Violent Femmes' debut in my mind, because that's what she was playing in her car when she picked me up at the bus station. Plus, it was either her or my pen pal from New York City who I visited with whom I first attended a Rocky Horror Picture Show (saw the flick in the theater on each trip… I just can't recall which was first).
THE END FOR NOW
My brain is hurting from all this jarring. Point is… I know the concept of pen pals and real letters is really quaint now. I know that virtually any band out there, you can myspace or download (legally or illegally) nowadays. But there's just a charm to music mixes via the mail, aside from the fact of getting a present in the mail, that the internet can never replace (they used to be on tape, but I'll concede to burning them on disc in these modern times). Doing it all yourself, trying to explore new bands the solo internet way, is like boarding a ship with no captain.
Point is… if there's anyone out there who longs for the old days, or who doesn't remember the old days (being a young'en), but who thought this concept sounded cool… I say, email me. Then let's trade mixes, not on the net, but via snail mail. That might be a fun inclusion in future Notes from the Padded Cell… reactions to CD mixes by music trading pen pals.
Also, if you have any, Where I Get My New Music From stories, send them while the topic is hot. I'll have one more edition of this, two tops.
