Hi for the First Time
I am by no means musically gifted. I played a couple of wind and brass instruments when I was in school, but I had no talent to play music. I enjoy music. Listening to it, going to concerts, it is a way to escape and helps me pass time as I do the menial day to day. Just like everyone, there is music I enjoy and music I don’t, there is also music that I connect with and sometimes that music may not be music that I necessarily enjoy, but I connect with the lyrics or the message of the song. Some genres pull me in, and others leave me flummoxed and confused about the tone of the music. There are also genres that I would never have thought that I would enjoy. Growing up, my parents’ taste in music was bland. My mother mainly listened to oldies and occasionally my father would put on classic rock at home (when it was just him and I in the car, it was always classic rock).
The Beach Boys really are what led me to The Beatles. The Beatles music of the early sixties, at least from my perspective, was fairly clean and helped me serve as a baseline for my tr through British rock, which included Herman’s Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and then the early Rolling Stones.
My dad helped a bit on my journey as he won a couple of sets of tickets. The first set of tickets that he won from a radio station call-in (he would do radio call-ins all the time, including winning a turkey for thanksgiving one time) was a pair of tickets to see my first official concert. That concert was James Brown at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. The second set of tickets that he won that I got to go with him was to Neil Diamond at The San Jose Arena in 1993. I remember a bit more about the Neil Diamond concert than I do of the James Brown concert, and I think that is partly because I mostly didn’t listen to a lot of soul music ever. I know and enjoy songs, but never really had a major connection to that genre like I did with Diamond’s folky rock music. I mainly remember Diamond singing Christmas songs, and I am pretty positive that Dionne Warwick was there to sing Do you know the way to San Jose with him.
The next change in the music I listened to was in high school where my first girlfriend introduced me to country music. I enjoyed and still occasionally listen to 90’s country because I feel it has more of a rock vibe with a twang (and I do like the sound of a steel guitar). Then meeting my now wife and spending time in the UK where genre-based radio stations isn’t really a thing, introduced me to modern rock and pop and really hip hop.
This is a little about my base taste in music and through this blog, I hope to share my thoughts on the music I hear and the photos I take.