When did you start properly appreciating music?

[alan nagsworth]

I'm not talking about when you were 8 and thought the Spice Girls were good. Yeah, that's what having no father figure and a non-musically-influential mother will do to you. I still quite like them Spice fellas, especially the one with the twitch. Twitchy Spice.

Nah, when did you first hear music and think "oh yes, this noise lark is great, I can't wait to peruse its many forms"?

As I said above, my mom didn't really make much of an effort to get me into music. The only memories I have are R.E.M. - Out Of Time, and The Doors. So I was left to my own devices...

A friend of mine at the time would wax idiotic about this band AC/DC that his dad was a big fan of, and this song Highway To Hell. It sounded like an atrocity but so exciting! Apparently this heavily mental music was quite popular in wrestling, which I was an avid fan of at the time. It wasn't until a year or 2 later that I went to the cinema with another mate to see Little Nicky. That's where I first got my ears around this Highway To Hell. I almost had a fit! What was this awesome noise and why did I want to bash my head off a wall in time to its insistent beat? As the film progressed, I realised this music would change my life.

The next day I went out and bought Fly On The Wall and For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) by the Deece, and from there my love of music was born. So I must've been about 12 or 13... and from there I saw Green Day on the Big Breakfast and there was my first desire to get an entire back catalogue in my greedy paws. Then it was, er, Marilyn Manson, my first teenage obsession... hmmm.

This all happened within a couple of months, including discovering MTV2 at my nan's house and being besotted with Radiohead - Knives Out, and Muse - Bliss. At the time it was just profound to me as I wanted really heavy music and yet this music was strangely enticing, I wanted to listen to it all the time despite not fully understanding it. Soon after, I was listening to it all the time and there was no stopping me. All my friends were still talking about the same few bands where I was delving further into obscure death metal bands and trying to convince people that The Haunted were the best band in existence. From the offset I had a constant desire to find new music, I was never content with just one Nirvana album so I bought the rest, when all my mates were preaching about Nevermind my mom was recommending Pearl Jam, and ever since that big encounter I have been 75% happier with my life and the person I am.

[Neville Chamberlain]

I've been surrounded by music since I grew up thanks to my dad who was into folk music, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span etc and my older brother who, in the early 80s when I was starting to be 'aware' of things, was into Queen, Brand X and, er, Shakin' Stevens. When I really started to become interested in music at about age 10 or 11, this coincided with my brother getting into punk rock, a bit of goth, and...CARDIACS!!! So, from the time I was about 10 or 11, my favourite bands included New Model Army, Bauhaus, Damned, Crass, Thatcher on Acid, Dead Kennedies, Men They Couldn't Hang and, probably my favourite of all at the time, The Pogues. At the time, I hated CARDIACS with a passion. In a way, I never underwent my own journey of musical discovery (for want of a much less wanky phrase) as I just listened to what my brother listened to and filtered out the stuff I didn't like. He also had an Alternative Tentacles compilation called Oops! Wrong Stereotype, which had a track by NoMeansNo on it, plus a friend who had loads of footage he recorder of The Tube. From about the early 90s onwards, I started seeking out my own music. Cardiacs, The Fall, and David Bowie became my most-listened-to music, and ever since I've just been exploring further, getting into the outer reaches of prog, discovering Can, Faust etc through The Fall, rediscovering NoMeansNo, then loads of related or similar bands, then loads of early 80s post-punk stuff, then listening to Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span etc with older ears and discovering Incredible String Band etc etc. The thing is, I still love the bands I first got into way back when I was a nipper and, also being quite choosy, I've never really made what I consider 'bad choices' over the years - although friends and acquaintances may beg to differ on this one!

[TotalMink]

1981

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

I talked about this on CaB radio t'other day. I didn't get into music properly until Uni. At high school, I hated the cliquey aspect - basically you chose what genre of music you enjoyed then adopted that as your lifestyle choice, dressing that way, only hanging round with similar people and certainly not listening to anything outside of your chosen field - that attitude just put me off entirely.

I only ever listened to classical music or old bands and stuff my dad liked, which was cool as he has a huge vinyl collection. Since uni though, my love of music has grown to a point where I couldn't live without it. I've got an eclectic taste now and love a really wide range of stuff - CaB Radio has really helped broaden my musical horizons, playing such a wide range of styles that you really don't hear on 'proper' radio - but it's still a subject I'm uncomfortable about discussing with other people, basically because I still feel comparatively new to it and there's also still the defensive attitude at the back of my mind, lingering from high school.

I've always known what I don't like, but I've never been able to describe in a nutshell what I do like, which is probably the best way.

[boxofslice]

Can't really put a finger on it and say when. Growing up I always used to listen to the Top 40 on a Sunday afternoon with my sister and do some home taping (pausing when Mark Goodier started speaking) and listen to it back during the week. Then when I was about 13 or 14 I got into 'metal' buying albums by Metallica, Maiden etc, growing my hair and going to see Motorhead at the Leas Cliff Hall - my first live concert.
Then at about 17 somehow I got a copy of Neil Young's Harvest album and that changed my musical outlook, I ditched the whole metal thing and started getting into stuff like Dylan, The Birds, The Band, and just loads of different styles of music. And to this day I've still got a broad ear for music and will give a wide variety of stuff a try.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I was 15, and the first album I got was 'Automatic For the People' by REM, which is still my favourite all-time album, and REM my favourite all-time band. About a year later it was Nirvana/Metallica/Pearl Jam, then a year after that Britpop.

[confettiinmyhair]

I was really into dance music as a teen and idolized the Prodigy and R'n'B groovesters Blackstreet. Then I got into metal and started buying music magazines like Kerrang, Melody Maker, Rocksound and the NME which coupled with my sudden income from working shitty retail jobs made me what I would then term a 'Conscious Consumer', I brought whatever was in vogue, I suppose todays equivalent would be the hipsters who buy their music because of recommendations from Myspace, Pitchfork or DrownedinSound. Aged 17 I began to regularly attend gigs and festivals from shitty one man and his dog gigs down at The Ferryboat (RIP) to epic weekends at Donnington. I suppose seeing the blood, sweat and noise of live performances made me appreciate the music more. Amazed by what power it has to bring people together and those hair standing up on the back of your neck moments that you only experience on special occasions.

In the last few years I have been revisiting a lot of stuff from the past (80's post punk and hardcore, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Creedance Clearwater Revival) and generally things that I have missed out on after the hype dust has settled (Wilco, anti folk, At the Drive In).

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I suppose by 'properly appreciating music' that means developing your own musical tastes. In which case probably when I was 15/16. I've always appreciated music though.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Ever since I can remember - prior to buying the stuff for myself, I was quite often to be found positioned beside a radio-casette player with my finger on the pause button - Top 40 on the Gary Davies Show, and all that.  I've been 'acquiring' albums through music-killing home-taping proto-piracy since I was about 6.  The first single I owned was Pop Muzik by M, but I inherited my mum's copy of I Want To Hold Your Hand which is pretty much the first music I ever remember hearing (though Yellow Submarine runs it a close second).  IWTHYH remains a favourite to this day - I even nominated it in the 1000 singles thread..

[Smeraldina Rima]

When I went into Oscillations.

I was heavilly into bands as a teenager like Green Day, NoFX, sublime, madness, specials and Reel Big Fish that i would very rarely listen to now and think a lot of it's rubbish. I think that came to a dead end for me. Then a bit older I started listening to indie music and I think there's a more logical progression from that stuff i don't listen to anymore (Libertines, Smiths) towards what I listen to now than there is from the punk and ska. This forum has had a much bigger impact on my musical tastes than anything though, and it's hardly introduced me to any new comedy I like.

Thankyou CAB especially for: Big Star, Jake Thackray, Judee Sill and Heron. A lot of other stuff I might well have come across anyway.

[alan nagsworth]

I suppose by 'properly appreciating music' that means developing your own musical tastes. In which case probably when I was 15/16. I've always appreciated music though.

Oh aye. The earliest memory I've got of appreciating music in the way you describe it is watching some TV show as a nipper, might have been How2 or summat. They were talking about how big a part music plays in adding effect to film and television. They showed a shot of a tarantula advancing menacingly, first with Jaws-esque scary music and then with some frivolous jolly boys outing ditty, I remember being blown away by how silly the spider looked in the second example. I thought music was just made for school discos!

[Ginyard]

When I was about 8 or 9, I carried one of these (or something close to it) about a mile home from a scout fete:



My dad got it working properly and gave me a load of beaten up records. Amongst them was some Depeche Mode, Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven and 'Switched on Bach'. My mum always says that I spent hours doing little else but listening to these albums. I was already playing music at this point but I don't think I really started appreciating it until I had this freedom to put what I wanted on and listen to the stuff I liked. Up to that point, I was having to listen to my mum croon to Crystal Gayle and Don Williams so it was very liberating.

[Duckula]

When I saw my first band at the tender age of 12, it was Radiohead on the OK Computer tour.

[niat]

When I saw my first band at the tender age of 12, it was Radiohead on the OK Computer tour.

That must have blown your tiny little mind.

I can't remember which rock gig was my first, but it's between Faith No More and Fishbone, at the Brixton Academy. Both were fucking awesome, and I have returned to that venue many times since. It was probably around this time that I started to "properly appreciate music", though I had been recording off the top 40 and listening to music from a very young age.

I think seeing a band live enhances any future listens of their music. I always seem to hear songs in a new light after seeing them performed live. I think it's the memory of a good performance coupled with hearing things at a gig that you may not have picked up on when listening to the original recording.

[Neville Chamberlain]

^^^

Ha, Fishbone are blooming marvellous! They're on my list of must-experience-live bands, along with Fugazi (who haven't officially split I don't think!)...

[Mindbear]

Ha! Fishbone! I saw them a ton of times, me and my mates even had their t shirts....yet I can't remember a single bloody song. I don't think I actually even liked them, I just saw them accidentally all the time.

I think my music appreciation came very early, I remember my dad used to play these scratchy 1920's blues records to me all the time when I was tiny, so anything other than that sounded like fun. I remember loving Dr Hook, Paul Simon and Dire Straits as well as all the stuff my older brother listened to, which in retrospect, was rubbish, mostly just Now Thats What I Call Music 1 through to 18. I also remember picking up a liking for Joy Division when I was at boarding school in the late eighties. My first real loves were the Lightening Seeds, The Cure, Inspiral Carpets, Morrissey, Neds Atomic Dustbin and Blur, so that would have been around 91 or 92. My first gig was either Huggy Bear at Notre Dame Hall or The Cure Wish Tour at Olympia....I can never remember which came first....but I do remember I got beaten up on the way home from The Cure for being a goth by a girl covered in her own dinner. The miseries of being a goth in Feltham in the early nineties!

[alan nagsworth]

Dr Hook ... was rubbish

I CAST YE OUT!

I grew up on storytellers like Dr Hook and Harry Chapin and it's bloody great stuff. I even went to see Hook singer Dennis Locorriere do a solo set in my town last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was all seated and I was the youngest person there by about 20 years! Brilliant!

[Cambrian Times]

About 1995 when at the start of the whole Britpop phenomenon. I heard "Sorted for E's and Whizz" on the radio and thought that it was a beautiful song.

[DJ One Record]

Around '94 to '95-ish it was for me (so I would've been around 8 or 9). Up until that point in my life I'd just gone along with whatever my mum would play at home or in the car so I'd been innoculated to everything from Madonna, 80's soul or electropop compilations, Depeche Mode's "Violator" and the Peter's Friends soundtrack. One particular CD she owned, however, was a two disc compilation called "Dance Zone Vol. 4", which contained the Dub Of Doom version of Nightcrawlers' "Push The Feeling On".

Two things attracted me to this track:
1) It was rather minimal, especially compared to the various radio edits that packed out the discs.
2) It was six minutes long.

I was fascinated by this track because not only did it contain a handful of melodic (well, fairly) loops, which were something I enjoyed in a lot of dance music at the time, but it dwelled on them for longer than any other track I'd heard and played around with their configurations - taking the main loop out, bringing it back in with the second keyboard part rather than the first one, blah blah - causing enough subtle variations that I could've happily stomached a version that went on for maybe even nine minutes. The indecipherable cut-up of John Reid's vocals was also the first time I'd heard the voice used that way in a track - a bizarre intangible half-way point between a voice used lyrically and instrumentally. Watching Reid mime along to them in the song's video on YouTube still hasn't translated them for me, and I'm actually glad about that.

But yeah, that was the track that set up my love of dance music. It wasn't the first dance track I heard, but it was the first one that impacted on me as much as that.

[purlieu]

When my dad played me Revolution 9 by The Beatles when I was 10.  Blew my mind, I've spent probably four fifths of my money since on CDs, gigs or musical equipment.
I was always known at high school as the kid who was too obsessed with music.

[Mindbear]

I CAST YE OUT!

I grew up on storytellers like Dr Hook and Harry Chapin and it's bloody great stuff. I even went to see Hook singer Dennis Locorriere do a solo set in my town last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was all seated and I was the youngest person there by about 20 years! Brilliant!

Why have you misunderstood me you bastard! The stuff my brother liked was rubbish, because my brother likes bad bad bad music and says things like 'TUNE!!!!' and 'KERRRRLASSSICCKK' when he hears Faithless, or Bon Jovi.

I loved that Dr Hook album, for some reason it reminds me of the feeling I used to get when watching Short Circuit. A kind of hazy happiness, like a photo of a field on a summer evening taken through a vaselined lens.

[Lfbarfe]

1981

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isTmK_lw-CI[/youtube]

Music's always been around, for me, but I started listening properly, reading sleeve notes and stuff when I was about 6 or 7. The Shadows were my first obsession, but I fell in love with Ian Dury, Squeeze and Duke Ellington around the same time. By the time I was 8, I was spending all of my pocket money on records.

[Marvin]

To be honest, I don't really get the question - I've always enjoyed and appreciated music for as long as I can remember and I don't think I could say that I ever suddenly started liking it 'properly' (although I have enjoyed some music improperly).

My tastes have evolved and broadened over time but my appreciation of music has always been there.

[Spang!]

shitty one man and his dog gigs down at The Ferryboat (RIP)

The Ferryboat Inn on King Street?

[LadyDay]

I was seeing bands from a really early age as a result of having two much older brothers, but I think the first thing that I felt was actually "mine" was a copy of Music from the Big Pink in my early teens which sent me off in all sorts of musical directions.

[Paranormalhandy]

When I was about 13 I started making up C90 tapes of TV theme tunes, comedy songs (mostly Smith and Jones numbers), and anything else of interested either taped direct off our TV speaker or off FM radio.  I made roughly one every three months and continued making them for about three years - the last one I made was called (squirms in embarrassment) "Peculiarities From the World of the Phonetic Volume XIII".

Mid-teenage years were spent mostly listening to Now albums, Status Quo, Paul Simon, Dire Straits and Jeff Wayne, until slowly - in around 1991 - things began to change.  I bought Vic Reeves' "Dizzy", my first 7" (at least, my first one since a primary school dalliance with Bucks Fizz) and quickly bought up everything by the Wonderstuff before progressing through REM, James, the Smiths, as well as punk bands like the Kennedys and the Pistols ... A big thing for me was buying a Warhol biography the summer before going to Uni and buying a Velvet Underground best of off the back of it.

Then in late 1992 I re-discovered the KLF (after a big obsession with the Timelords in 1988) which basically set me on the road to spending probably £30,000 on music in the last 15 years.

[confettiinmyhair]

The Ferryboat Inn on King Street?

yes.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I'm also confused about what appreciation means, so I'll just list a few milestones on my own musical road:

1988 - My twin sister and I find our elder sister's copy of Living Doll, by Cliff Richard and the Young Ones. We play it ad nauseum.

1995 - My twin sister went on the school skiing trip while, for some reason, I stayed at home. As a consolation I was given Pulp's Different Class, the first album I ever owned. Pulp were thus the first band I took an active interest in, which had the knock on effect of making me pay closer attention to music. Before then I would listen to the radio and watch Top of the Pops and the Chart Show, but I never really took any of it in, even when there were songs I liked.

1997 - Britpop is declared dead. I feel annoyed at this and spend much of the rest of the decade building a dislike of manufactured pop and dance music. Britpop was my musical awakening and, though it may not have been perfect, I won't hear any revisionist types deriding it as being entirely guff.

2000 - I first experience live music at Reading Festival. I buy Never Mind the Bollocks - my first 'old' album. My tastes harden somewhat, leading to me and a friend smashing and scrawling slogans on my copy of Manic Street Preachers' This is My Truth... as some sort of youthful protest against corporate sell outs or something. Maaaan.

2001 - I go to university. With increased social activity, I gradually stop listening to the radio. I also volunteer for the student radio station, deliberately choosing that graveyard slot so we could play our own records rather than the playlist. I buy my first bass guitar too.

2002 - My computer literate housemates get broadband. Suddenly I can get any tune I want. And in only 3 days! a few years later I would get a decent connection that allows me to download whole albums in minutes (if I'm lucky) I probably listen properly to only half of what I download.

2007 - I join my friend's band. I also get a full time job down in London, which necessitates a two hour commute each way. This proves to be a very good way of listening to music and ignoring other passengers at the same time.

2008 - A friend introduces me to the music of Primus. As a bass player, it's the first time I really pay attention to technique and I start ham fistedly trying to emulate Les Claypool.

Which brings us up to now. Do I appreciate music? Well I certainly enjoy it. One thing I'm acutely aware of is that I don't pay enough attention. Since giving up on radio (specifically Radio 1) I tend to rely on friends to tell me about any decent new bands. I'm also recently discovering a lot of early to mid '90s alternative stuff that I was perhaps dimly aware of at the time but paid no mind. It does make me wonder what I might be missing now.

[homesickalien]

ah sorted for ez and whizz......yeh pulp was the first serious band I really loved, thougt Jarvis Cocker was very cool back when I was ten (still do).  Liked various stuff here and there until I bought ok Computer on the fly to see what the fuss was about back in September 2001, didn't like it at first and wondered what the hell fitter happier was about but then by November, all the tracks on ok computer just "clicked" to me - and they were my instant favourite band ever - for some reason every track resonated me like it was the music I'd been waiting for - listened to that album at few times a week for like a year.  Bought a guitar that Christmas pretty much just cos of that album and their subsequent back catalogue got me "into music" as opposed to mainly being "into films" as I previously was

[The Boston Crab]

Thanks for your thoughts. Could you please change your avatar though? It's an exceptional eye-sore.