Coming soon…Summer Songs

I’m formulating my list of favorite summer songs and I’ll be asking you for yours. Stay tuned, kids.

Personal Music Timelines

After talking with a friend and a Fernsehturm commenter this week about how we have changed our tastes in music over the years, I thought it would be a good topic for a blog post.

Famous musicians are always asked in interviews about the first album they owned was who were their musical influences. I’m no musician but I would consider music my main hobby since I was kid through listening, reading or talking about it.

Many times I’ve thought about how I got to the place I am now with musical tastes. I started listening, REALLY listening, to music starting with what my parents had on in the car or the stereo at home. I didn’t have a choice in the matter so I can’t help but have those experiences as square one in my musical tastes.

After writing down some of those memories, I’m not as embarrassed as I thought I might be in some of those musical steps.

Additionally, after taking some time to list the bands and albums in the order by which I was exposed to them or chose them (see below), the progression seems to make sense. At least to me. There is a nearly constant stream of rock or rock-influenced music over the years.

I still actually have a lot of the early parental music in my collection if not only for the sake of nostalgia but some of it is still damn good.

Without further ado, in rough chronological order!

My parents’ music (1970s into early 1980s)
Seals and Croft
The Eagles – “Best of My Love” has got to be the first song I remember that reminds me of a specific place and time, Bloomington, MN in the summer of 1975)
Waylon Jennings
Willie Nelson
Simon and Garfunkel
Neil Diamond
Beatles
Chicago

My older sister’s music (early to mid 80s)
Several K-Tel records (“SuperSonic, “Powerplay” and “Rainbow”)
Prince (who in the Twin Cities didn’t have “Purple Rain”? The guitar solo from “Let’s Go Crazy” was something I just liked to listen to over and over. My musical tastes would return to that kind of stuff over and over through the years)
A-ha
Duran Duran
Limited Warranty (Twin Cities 30 and 40-somethings know this band)
Tears for Fears
U2, “Under A Blood Red Sky”
Hall and Oates (“Rock and Soul, Part 1”)

My music (mid to late 80s)
Michael Jackson (required listening when it came out and “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” still hold up really well)
Styx (“Kilroy Was Here”, my first album)
Rush (“Tom Sawyer” was the theme song of my favorite professional wrestler at the time. At the time I had heard them but not give them much consideration. This led me to buy “Exit…Stage Left” and buy a used “Grace Under Pressure” from a junior high friend, and, the rest is history)
Boston
Journey
Dokken
Van Halen
Ratt
Def Leppard
Europe
Bon Jovi
Cinderella
Whitesnake
Tesla
Joe Satriani
Pink Floyd
Metallica
Living Colour
Midnight Oil
The Smithereens

Early to mid 90s (College years)
The Police
The Steve Miller Band
R.E.M.
The Cult
U2
Pearl Jam
Eagles
Foreigner
INXS
Eric Clapton (Solo)
Black Crowes
John Mellencamp
Stevie Ray Vaughn
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Smashing Pumpkins

Mid-late 90s
Led Zeppelin
Foo Fighters
Weezer
Nirvana
Bruce Cockburn
At this point I gave up on radio stations and have yet to find many new bands or sounds that I can rally around.

What is your musical timeline? Have you looped back to the old stuff? Have you never looked back at those early influences? Please share!

The “WTF” album

Thanks for all of the comments on my previous post about your perfect albums. I will have to give a first listen to some of them!

Now, on the same theme of the bemoaning the death of the album, I want to talk about a type of album that’s not necessarily the opposite of the perfection but close.

First, I want to think of artists/bands that you like and have followed throughout their career. Their career should be long enough that they have a few (more than 3) albums under their belt.

Axis of Justice Tour 2009 in Seattle

I just came back from Tom Morello’s Justice Tour show at the Croc in Seattle. Guests included Wayne Kramer from MC5, Steve Earle, and 3/4 of Soundgarden: Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepard.

I wouldn’t say that Rage is my cup of tea but love Audioslave. Tom has some great charisma on stage! He is also a big fan of the musicians that played with him tonight. So fun to see him enjoying himself on stage off stage standing in the crowd.

Kramer and the local Blue Scholars seemed out of their element at the show. Us bunch of young to middle-age white guys didn’t seem to get it. BUT, that is part of the beauty of a jam session-oriented show like the Justice tour, eh? You can get exposed to music you wouldn’t otherwise. Maybe the Seattle crowds act a little too cool for their own room. Possibly a topic for another day.

Glad I got a chance to see Earle again. Last time was at the Woodland Park Zoo with a thousand kids in attendance. A dark club seemed more fitting to his music.

I suppose an almost Soundgarden reunion that includes a run-through of “Spoonman” in a Seattle club is all anyone should hope for and it was fun to see them together. How often does Thayil come out of hiding, anyways? Definitely surreal to see Tom, Kim, Ben and Matt on stage together.

Thanks C-flo for the invite. I always love to see live music especially when it’s played those obviously love their art. Glad I came and glad to know it benefitted a great cause. Even more poignat for me that I used to work in the homeless community in Seattle. I do get THAT!

The Perfect Album

Perfection is a state of being so hard to come by in any form. But, with music you can find it especially if you make your own rules about what musical perfection is.

Since the record album’s demise as a legitimate unit of music has been long talked about or simply declared dead because of the rise of iTunes and digital music,  I thought it would be a good time to reflect. In other words, since we’ll not likely see another surge in album popularity, it’s time to take stock in what we had.

Facebook after 4 years

“You don’t know about Facebook?”

This was the refrain from my classmates in my first graduate level communications class in the fall of 2005. It’s true, I had heard of MySpace but Facebook had yet to make its way to to me. At the time it was a social networking site for only students or those with an” .edu” address. I joined immediately and found only my cousin in Texas was on Facebook from my address book. Four years and 150 friends later, it’s an everyday event for me. Besides the normal crowd of local friends I have found a bunch of high school classmates that I haven’t talked to in 15-20 years. Most of these people I barely knew then and I’ve exchanged FB messages with only a few of them who I actually want to stay in touch with. The others just seem interested in increasing their friend numbers. I’m guilty of it, too. I just wanted to get “inside” some of their facebook pages to find out if they still lived in the hometown or got divorced or some other gossipy detail. Recently, I dumped about 20 of them. Only a coupole actually figured it out and requested to become friends again but I ignored them. I feel pretty good aobut it. I only so much time and energy.

Bacon Explosion

I give you Bacon Explosion.

Bacon is the man’s chocolate.

I wouldn’t let Ken Jacobsen WALK my dog

I live in the 46th legislative district in the state of Washington and we have a total crackpot for a senator. Senator Ken Jacobsen just announced a bill that would allow humans to be buried with their animals. Check the Seattle Times article here.

For the record, I have an 11 year old Black lab mutt named R.I.C.O. and I will miss him dearly when he dies. I’ve joked with friends that I’ll likely have to be on suicide watch because he’s been with me through thick and thin since 1997. With that said, I will give him a proper sendoff when the inevitable happens. I don’t want to be interned with him.

Also, in this year of economic downturn, Senator Jacobsen says this bill will not cost any money since it is a law that will affect private behavior. Except, of course, for all of the hours wasted in committees and so forth to consider such a dumb bill.

How about in this year of economic challenges, why don’t you not introduce bills that make you look like a jackass and make your constituents like me cringe.

My wife is encouraging me to run for the senate in my district to get this kook out of Olympia. My slogan could be “The Ken Who Isn’t a Krackpot” or something else appropriately stupid.

My sis on the blogosphere

Hey kids-

Just thought I would direct y’all to a blog created by my sister and her masters program classmates. My sister is getting her Masters in Marketing Communications from the University of Kansas.  I’m awful proud of her.

“Beerack Obama” born in Seattle

“Beerack Obama” born in Seattle

SEATTLE – In a stunning twist, bubbles starting to form on the top of a large glass container in the dining area of a North Seattle resident this morning. The process, know by names such as “fermentation” or “alcholinization”, started without the knowledge of said resident, Ken LeBlond. In fact, the process started while he, his wife and small child slept in the next room.