Music and its influences

Just thinking about where my main music influences came from. Then I think of the first 4 gigs I went to…

Iron Maiden - Southampton Mayflower 1990

Monsters of Rock at Castle Donnington 1991 - ACDC- Metallica - Motley Crue - Queensryche - Black Crowes

Guns N Roses supported by Skid Row 1992 - Wembley Stadium

Reading Festival 1993 - Rage Against the Machine - Neds Atomic Dustbin - Babes in Toyland - Stone Temple Pilots.

Quite crazy really! 4 of these bands are easily in my top 10 bands with 2 in the top 5 for sure.

Ok yes I like other music, Duran Duran, Kate Bush, a bit of rap and some dance, but even the dance and rap came from Aerosmith with public enemy and Anthrax with bring the noise. With the dance coming with fat of the land with some rock/punk cross over with fat of the land.

What were your first gigs and how do you think that has influenced your music taste?


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We’re all sponges as young kids…whether it be music, literature, art, film, sport, politics, anything. Parents, school mates, music teachers, radio, wind-up gramaphones all played a part in my influences.

If you’re wired up right for music you’ll find something in it that’s more than a pleasant noise and that’s what happened to me, it played with my emotions and I liked it. It was probably inherited because my father’s side of the family were all music lovers. No pressure from anyone to follow a genre…I had and still have a wide range of musical taste. Music should be easy to like…if you have to work hard to like or understand it, don’t bother.

There’s a lot of music I really love and other stuff that sets my teeth on edge. That doesn’t make any of it good or any of it bad, just preferences. I’ve never got to like Bob Dylan but love Tom Waits, so it obviously not about voices, or is it? Don’t try to analyse it.

There’s no bests in music, putting something above the other in music is pointless.

First notable gig…The Impressions at The Royal Pier 1966?..loved Curtis Mayfield.

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I was spoilt. I grew up listening to The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Kinks, The Byrds etc. My first gigs were T. Rex, Deep Purple. I then got into ELP, Yes, Gabriel era Genesis, Zeppelin. The older I get the more diverse my musical taste becomes, but my fondest memories are of those early bands.

I’ve still a nostalgic fondness for NWOBHM bands. It started when I walked into the old hmv and Saxon’s “Wheels of Steel” was blaring out of the speakers with the dial turned up to 11.

Then spent most of my available cash buying tickets to gigs at the Gaumont.

Saw bands like Def Leppard, Iron Maiden Saxon, Motorhead, Scorpions etc etc typically on their first headlining tours.

There was a little too much spandex in those days but you’d come away deaf for a week knowing you’d seen a show.

I

PARDON?

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Bands that had the biggest impact at the time were Zep, clash, Stones, Doors (it really fucked me off when they became trendy cos of the film), Queen

I am generally influenced by loud bands consisting of mainly of men but occasionally I’ll let a lady take control of my body’s rhythmic functions. E.g. Nikki Minaj.

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Who?

:lou_wink_2:

Tbf

I’ll let a lady take control of my body’s rhythmic functions but its a bugger trying to find one who will…which ain’t gonna happen if Mrs C_S has any say

:lou_sad:

Hmm to respond. Oh ok then.

My first gigs…

1990ish NKOTB (Brighton) with my best friend who screamed a lot. As did the other girls and I found it all a bit weird.

1991 NKOTB (Wembley Arena)

Then a whole heap of friends bands in pubs n stuff

Mids 90s - Charlatans at Pompey Pyramids. Then probably I think Echobelly.

I like most stuff.

When I was a kid, my parents had about a dozen LPs, almost uniformly terrible. But that’s all there was to listen to. The only decent one was Bridge Over Troubled Water. I guess my taste has been a long-term reaction to theirs.

Got into synth-pop and electro, before my older brother persuaded me that ‘proper’ music had guitars in. There followed an interlude of trying to learn to love his soft-rock tape collection (I retain a warm regard for prime Def Leppard), before someone at school taped me a copy of Ride the Lightning by Metallica.

Can’t remember what my first gig was, but after that my horizons have never stopped expanding. If I don’t listen to at least a couple of albums I haven’t heard, every day, then it feels like a day wasted. There’s so many different types of music, and so many ways of doing music, it’s like being in a never-ending Supermarket Sweep.

Generally speaking I want to hear things that don’t sound too much like something else (unless it’s really, really good), or if it does then it needs to be a style that’s in its creative ascendency, rather than one that’s run out of juice and retreading old ground. So I’ve long lost patience with what passes for ‘indie’ music these days.

The only time my parents ever came to see me perform music live, they asked me afterwards if it was “supposed to sound like that”. Which I took to be the highest possible compliment and the closure of the circle of my influences.

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