my music, part I

thanks to all of you who submitted your musical suggestions and to those who are still working on your lists. i thought it only fair to give you a little insight into my musical world as well. i've thought about how to organize this and am still stymied. there's no way i could just say, here's my top 10 albums, and leave it at that. music is much more than a list to me. so, i'm going to break this up into three separate posts. the first is a list of music by influential times of my life. the second will be my all time favorite albums and the third will be my favorite songs.

so, here goes.

the early yearsin 3rd grade i went to my first concert--peter frampton.
i had no idea who he was, but your first concert certainly opens your eyes to the experience of music. later i bought the album.

before i started buying my own records and making mix tapes off the radio : ) i listened to my parents records. i grew up with everything from johnny cash to lots of motown, all the beach boys, jan and dean and mamas and papas stuff. i sill love this type of music when i'm in the right mood. for awhile i got into all the dance songs back then--the bristol stomp, the mashed potato, etc. i loved poison ivy, who wrote the book of love, elvis presley and the sweet voice of miss patsy cline. when i was maybe 5 yrs old my grandma used to take me to the vfw and i'd pump coins into the juke box to listen to helen reddy and delta dawn.

middle school
in middle school i fell in love with men at work.
they were so different. they were australian. i was fascinated. during that time i also fell in love with andy gibb (shadow dancing). my prepubescent soul longed for victoria principal to die and for him to marry me. sadly, he died of a drug overdose. i also listened to rick springfield (dr. noah drake from genho), loverboy, hall & oates, the grease soundtrack and rod stewart started creeping into my world. i wanted desperately to like men without hats because when i was in 9th grade i had a crushes on two juniors. one, kurt, was an honor society, keyclub preppy w/ izod shirts and the other was eric, a new wave swimmer type that i thought was so incredibly cool. he liked men without hats. i didn't.

high school
my loves were all over the place during this time period. i held on to men at work, but added prince, purple rain and 1999. phil collins, no jacket required, i listened to all the time. i liked springsteen's born in the usa, but argued w/ my best friend that phil was much better. : ) ah, yes, i was young.
chicago 17--that album could be the soundtrack to the beginning of the hubs and my relationship. every song seemed to speak to me or whatever we were going through. i also loved cyndi lauper, she's so unusual, wham and billy idol. one of my best friends and i walked several blocks to a pay phone and pumped it full of money to listen to a recording of billy idol. we did it over and over and squealed like the teenage girls we were.
in high school i went to my second concert. monsters of rock. totally NOT my genre, but it did open my eyes to van halen (with david lee roth) and i loved 1984. the other bands at the concert were dokken, ozzy osbourne and ac/dc. i never did really get into heavy metal though. aside from all the hot, typical 80s songs, i also loved wham, duran duran, pet shop boys, whitney houston (before she turned into a drugged out has been) and of course madonna.

college
in my junior year of college i went to my first rod stewart concert on his out of order tour. though i'd listened to him off and on then and already loved maggie may and the first cut is the deepest and you're in my heart, this sent me over the edge and hooked me for good. i've seen him one other time since then. during that time i also discovered fleetwood mac, randy travis, sinead o'conner and lots of dance music. guns n' roses, appetite for distruction--there are only a handful of songs (and not necessarily my favorite ones) that i remember the exact moment i heard them for the first time. the first time i heard welcome to the jungle i had gone to a club--it was an old house across from campus that had been turned into a dance club. each room played different types of music. i walked into a room and heard welcome to the jungle and had to have the cassette. i also branched out into the cure and robyn hitchcock and the egyptians during this time. some pink floyd and stairway to heaven hit home w/ me because a guy i thought i loved played them on the guitar. plus, those were getting high songs : )

since college
it's hard to sum up all the music i've loved over the last 18 years (good lord, i've been out of college for 18 years!). the ones that have made the biggest impressions on me are train, counting crows, van morrison and matchbox 20. i also love james taylor and carly simon, tina turner, B52s, aerosmith, REM and depeche mode.