My Life Through Music - Part 1

We have all been there. There is always a starting track and for some even an ending track. I have no doubt in everyone's life music has been there. Whether it is the background music to your life or the ongoing soundtrack to your life. I hope some of you do find the time to share you musical experiences and how it has helped shape you as a person or your life and the life of others dear and close to your heart.

Where do I begin? I was born in 1981. The number one track at the time was Woman by John Lennon. It was only months after the man himself was killed on a cold act by John Chapman. I think anyone who is anyone has looked up the number one track of their birthday. Some may base their musical taste on the Artist/Band number one at the time. In a symbolic kind of way, but not me. I haven't warmed to Beatles stuff and Lennon, hmmmmm yeah I guess there is some stuff, but I am not a fan. He is to England I guess what Jackson and Elvis was to America.

My earliest music memory was Jean Michel Jarre that my Grandad played to me. He loved it. strange considering his music diet varied from ABBA to Fleetwood Mac. This Electro-Pop had a hold on him. At the tender age of 5, sat there in the frontroom. My Grandad was retired. Medically he could no longer work was a hod carrier on a building site. One of my Grandad's strongest traits was honesty. He would call a spade a spade and a nasty person on the building site had decided to hit him round the head with a milk bottle and he suffered serious brain trauma and had to have blood clots removed. Apparently he was in hospital for months and with 8 mouths to feed it was struggle, but with the help of the Rotary charity they got through. My Grandad though had to fill the time and music and electronics filled that time. He made speakers and would gladly show them off to me and play his favourite tunes. Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre became his soundtrack. Equianox Part 1-4 would shake the room under my feet. My grandad would stand by the stereo and shake his head and wave his hands side to side like an animal beating the cage he was in. Then he played me the first song I could remember. Something in the Air Tonight - Phil Collins. Now I know some might think Drums, Gorilla, Chocolate. My Grandad however was not interested in that. He would put so much emphasis on the 'syntho' light drumming before the big crashing drums. See for some reason my Grandad was of the view that there was more creativity with thinking about what sounds you wanted, then use the machine to perform them, much rather than sitting behind the drums and playing them. He felt practice never made perfect, but spontaneous one take made perfect. When I went down there to my Grandparents, different songs and emotions greeted me with such delight. The Bangles - Manic Monday, Eternal Flame. He loved them. I begun to love them. He would grab my Nan and dance to Eternal Flame and she would scream 'David stop being a prat' Always makes me laugh when thinking about it. My brother loved it too. We both did. My Grandad one day sat me and my brother down. He got this tape out. He told us "This is brilliant. I know your Mum and Dad don't like this but here goes" He put the tape in. Pressed some buttons and turned the volume up and out blasted Under Pressure - Queen/David Bowie and he stood there while we smiled and laughed miming the lyrics. He was so eccentric and it was always a joy to watch and be there. Power of Love - Huey and the News became a new feature to his collection through his love for Back to the Future. He banged out Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen and tried to move like 'The Boss' and instead moved more like a nervous flamengo being charged at by a Rhino! My Grandad from a time when Cars, TV's, Stereo's, Internet, VHS, were dreams of others. He embraced technology better than anyone I have known. I do wonder how he would be in this day and age with Mobile Phones, I-Pads/Phones/Pods, E-mail. He would pass ut through the excitement I think.

As the decision of sending me to boarding school loomed and my brother with his deafness struggling to fit in school as we started to come of age and face new journies, we were going to face new music too.

Part 2 soon.

I hope you enjoyed this

It's great Legend.

I'll have to think about mine...I'm not sure I want to show my age!

Meh, I don't care.

Born in 1975, I think Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was top of the charts then.

Before I took an active interest in music, I was exposed to everything from ABBA, Michael Jackson, the Carpenters and all manner of disco, pop and easy listening that was really just background music to me. Being utterly disinterested in what everyone else listened to, I pretty much took my own route. I don't attach music to specific events in my life, just phases or stages in my life.

The first records I bought for myself (around the age of 10) included Lies by Status Quo, Antmusic by Adam and the Ants and Ghost Town by The Specials. I was also into music such as the Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Tears for Fears and Duran Duran.

Moving into my early teens I was heavily influenced by rock and hair metal and became a big fan of Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Europe, Motley Crue and lots of similar bands. On the classic rock front I also listened to Queen, Kiss, Whitesnake and stuff like that.

Around the age of 16 I discovered "proper" metal and began listening to Iron Maiden, Megadeth and Metallica. However around the same time grunge exploded on the music scene and I was also listening to Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains.

Since then I've also taken in American punk (Offspring and Green Day), nu metal (Korn and Linkin Park) and gothic metal (Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation, Midnattsol, Apocalyptica) and progressive music (Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree) as well as a shedload of contemporary rock. I've also started looking back and discovering some of the great older stuff out there, like Pink Floyd and Rush.

I absolutely despise R&B, disco and overly-mushy love songs (don't mind decent rock ballads though), but really enjoy "mood" music and celtic stuff, hence my love of Enya and tracks like Children by Robert Miles and Crockett's Theme by Jan Hammer.

OK here's mine...it's a bit long...and edited!

Well my musical journey started when I was about three. My mother used to play a lot of music from her own youth - which was mainly ‘50s/’60s rock n roll songs. The first song I remember hearing and enjoying was Dream Lover by Bobby Darin. I didn’t have the happiest childhood, so music became an escape and comfort to me as I was growing up. It was cheap, accessible and allowed my imagination to run riot. I bought my first single when I was about six. It was Good Morning Universe by Toyah, which isn’t one of her best songs, but I loved the way she looked on the cover. Her image was very striking and that appealed to me. Adam Ant was another favourite - again it was his unique image I liked, and I remember borrowing my sister’s Kings of the Wild Frontier album on cassette and really enjoying it. Having older siblings, I had access to some great music. We had a lot of compilation LPs in our house and some classics. I really enjoyed classic LPs like Tubular Bells, Oxygene and Bat Out Of Hell in addition to discovering my own tastes at the time - some of which are now classics in their own right.

One band I really loved was Duran Duran. Their music was fantastic, although I didn’t really understand their lyrics at the time, and I had a mad crush on Simon Le Bon. I suppose that was inevitable considering they were the biggest “boy band” around in the mid-‘80s and what with me becoming a hormonal young woman. I also had a crush on Bono after seeing U2's set on Live Aid in ’85…yeah well; mullets were acceptable in those days… They were another band whose music was puzzling and yet amazing to me. Someone who I’d say has been hugely influential to the women of my generation was Madonna. Like A Virgin was the first album I bought of my own, and I played it to death. I still have the original cassette that I’d got in 1985. She made it acceptable for women to be sexy, intelligent and shrewd - all at the same time. She was also the first female pop star. There really had been no one like her before the ‘80s, and whatever people thought of her, she made some great pop songs. I’d put Like A Virgin and Like A Prayer up there as two of my favourite albums of all time. For what they were - just pop albums - they’re superb. She is someone I still respect to this day, and she’s continued to make some good pop music in recent years, and has just always been around somewhere in my life - a bit like a cultural godmother.

Politics started to play a part in my life from an early age too. I think it was expected considering I grew up in South Wales under Thatcherism. My sister was a leftie skinhead around the time of the miner’s strike, and was letting me borrow albums by the likes of U2, The Alarm, The Redskins and The Clash. Although I didn’t fully understand the political messages in some of their songs, they just sounded great and allowed me to discover more classics like The Joshua Tree and London Calling. I suppose it was politics and popular culture which led me onto the whole Madchester/Rave culture movement in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. It was an amazing time because I started to get into a lot of really diverse stuff - from indie bands like The Stone Roses to electronica by The Future Sound of London even '80s rock like Guns n Roses. This was helped by the legendary DJ John Peel whose show I listened to religiously every week. It was also through him I discovered the next band I really got into which was the Manic Street Preachers. I heard Motown Junk on his programme and thought he’d dug out an old punk record from the ‘70s. When he said the record was out now on the Heavenly label, I was intrigued because that label was normally associated with dance music. From then on I followed the Manics as they were a band I really understood as a Welsh working class teenager. They seemed to provide a voice for my generation as well as come up with some cracking music. I also got involved with the production and distribution of a fanzine of theirs, and that was something I really enjoyed up until it ended in 2002.

I went back into higher education in my early twenties, and got into music again through my part time job in a record shop. I didn’t really get into anything unusual, but I thankfully came across some albums that I’ve enjoyed ever since - DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… being one that really reminds me of those days.

Nowadays, I find myself going back to stuff I haven’t heard for years. I suppose it’s easier now with the internet and remastered/reissued albums. I actually like that though. It really shows how some music can withstand the test of time and not sound dated or stale. There’s a lot of stuff that still sounds fresh to me even though I’ve heard it so many times before. I’ve also been able to understand some lyrics much better these days too!

funnily enough I was reflecting on something similar just the other day; I wrote a blog about my favourite band P.O.D. and how I've grown up with their music and how much it has meant to me - they truly are the soundtrack to my life.

you can read it here:

http://ewenebsworth.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-favourite-band-pod.html