One of my earliest memories is being quite small and by the hi-fi; my parents? I think? had one of those cabinet record player/radio things with speakers with lights in em; the lights would go on and off randomly and looked like Xs throught the cloth of the speaker front. I'm pretty sure the Beatles' "Hey Jude" was playing, and considering my age it could very well have been just released and newly on the radio. I kinda remember doing one of those bounce things toddlers do and going "nanaNAA!" in an attempt to sing along.
I liked a lot of the music of the seventies. I was too young to really grasp all what artists and who did what, but thanks to a lot of movie directors liking this stuff when they were kids too, much of it is making comebacks; having an adult's mind for processing information and sleuthing things out, I now know a lot of the songs and artists I enjoyed at that time. But then? It was just what was on the radio. & so I liked the radi, because it made cool sounds.
Because there was a Saturday morning cartoon of them, I'd have to say the first records I bought (read:had my mom buy me!) were the Jackson Five. I was a big Michael Jackson fan as a kid. He'd had that love song for a rat from that movie, "Ben", and he had all those cool songs he did with his brothers.
I also liked Paul McCartney and Wings, altho I did not know they were in fact Paul McCartney and Wings at the time. Wasn't til my early teens that I actually knew of the Beatles -who they were, what their names were. etc...
The Tv show Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries caught my attention as it had countless other little preteeny girlies of the time. Shaun Cassidy made a brief go of a music career when he covered the old 50s song "DaDooRunRun", & I had this 45 as well.
I seem to remember seeing that pinnacle moment in the lives of many; the time the B-52s were on Saturday Night Live. All I do know is when I got the little 45 of "Rock Lobster' I played it over & over and over, & I would 'sing' along with the high squeaky bits that were supposed to be the sounds the fishes made.
After my parents broke up, I was left with my dad for a time. This was a pretty bleak time period of my life except for one thing- The Beatles. My dad had a hobby of talking on CB radios, and I often talked with this guy who was a bit older than me who called himself Taxman. He turned me on to this crucial piece of musical knowledge that had been lacking in my life ("what do you MEAN you've never heard of the Beatles?!"). My dad, as a treat for Taxman and myself, took us to see the Broadway musical Beatlemania, and from there on in I pretty much never looked back; I have and probably always will be a Beatles fan.
Junior high saw me in a new place (back with my mom) and beginning my little life as an outsider; I never fit in in school. Altho by now I was paying attention moreso to the things on the radio (I remember KISS, and the onset of disco, as well as some of the 'new wave' stuff) I also was just starting to delve back into what music was; there was a theater in my town that showed rock movies. I'm not sure if they were a little old at that time, or if they were just released...time is a bit hazy to me, as my life at that time wasn't all so happy. But I saw "The Kids Are Alright". I saw "Let There Be Rock". I saw "Song Remains the Same". Zeppelin didn't have that big an effect on me then, but I would sort of 're-discover' them later on in life. I did, however, go thru a long phase of fondness for The Who.
Just before high school,I read "Up and Down with the Rolling Stones". There'd been sections of it in the paper, as it was some sort of pivotal anniversary since the death of Brian Jones.
Brian Jones fasinated me. I guess it was his style; the clothes, the decadence...I wasn't doing drugs YET, but the idea this guy was so wasted most of his life had that kinda 'cool' factor for me. I entered high school obsessed with him and still big on The Who; having got a crush on a Who fan boy got me in with the delinquent crowd. I began doing drugs and cutting classes. I remember I had a bit of a ritual wherein I would buy Quaaludes with my lunch money; I couldn't swallow pills so I would chew the big nasty horsepills, and then head outside. I had it almost timed to a science when they would hit my bloodstream, and I would have my walkman on, tunes to "2000 Light Years From Home" so I could lie about on cars and get giddy to the maddening mellotron sounds.
I tell this story to people now, and it sounds farfetched to them, like something out of a bad 70s movie, but it was true- in my part of Brooklyn, the disco kids were a bit of a formidable gang. Many of them Italian, they called themselves 'cusines'. You have to remember, Saturday Night Fever was filmed near here; they wore their disco fan-ness like some kind of badge of cool, and they liked to gang up on anyone who wasn't like them. So all the rock fan kids all banded together, and there we were- punks, metalheads, hippies and retrorockers, all kinda staying in one clump to avoid the disco people. As a result, i got into all kinds of rock music at the same time; this was the real broadening of my tastes period. My friend Red was into metal, and would occasionally sneak us into L'Amours- from him I got into Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, & Venom. a few of the other kids were into punk, and we'd skip school, hop on the B train and go into Greenwich Village and catch matinee shows at CBGBs. I tell you, there I was, still too young to be this hip, seeing bands that are legends to kids I talk to today- Agent Orange, Ramones, Dead Boys, Artless, TSOL.
The radio stations out of Manhattan were really cool and ran great specials- we listened to the stories about The Doors the way you hear ghost stories round a campfirre.
My biggest friend of that time was a girl named Denise- she was hugely into Pink Floyd. I
had borrowed my friend Lisa's copy of "The Wall" the moment it came out, but Denise had the
good stuff- bootlegs with rare recordings by former Floyd leader Syd Barrett. I
eventually bought my own copy of "the Wall", but followed it up with "The Madcap Laughs".
By now I was getting hardcore. Doing acid, going to shows, walking in cemeteries at night and playing around with witchy stuff with some of my more esoterically inclined friends. I had a bit of an allowance, and I'd buy records with covers that caught my attention to see if I liked the music that was inside of them. Thus, all on my own I discovered stuff like David Bowie,Roxy Music & Frank Zappa.
High school was almost over. I was still big on the Beatles,Stones,Doors, Floyd and Sabbath; another Doors fan friend had also turned me on to Iggy and the Stooges. and my next best friend, Aileen.
I'd met Aileen before when I was clubbing; she was the kinda girl who'd get too drunk and actually have sex with some of these older guys. We went on wild adventures where we'd stay out all night in weird little Alphabet City squats, while she humped some punk she'd just met; I was still virginal and only experimenting with that and only in it for the drugs. Altho we liked punk shows at CBs and metal at L'Amours, we also sat around her hi-fi listening to Todd Rundgren, and going to these little garage revival shows at a club called The Dive. I saw a LOT of classic bad movies there on bad movie nights. I saw a lot of classic retro bands too- Raunch Hands, Fuzztones, Swamp Zombies, Mad Violets, U Suck... the big attraction there tho and one of my favourite bands of all was a garage band called The Vipers.
As said, Aileen and I had met thru my Doors fan friend Teresa; I also befriended her then-boyfriend Jeff. Jeff could actually PLAY GUITAR. I couldn't; at that time I just sang. In spite of this, we'd kinda jam sometimes. One day,I was at a show at a club waaay down in Alphabet City called the Neither/Nor. I forget whoall was playing, but some Coltrane-wannabe guy named Zane was hitting on me when I realised- this band had sucked! I could make better music than those guys.... on a whim, I asked the club owner for a gig.
He gave me one.
fauwk! what now?
Aileen and I weren't hanging so much anymore; she was on some weird trip at the time, and I was going to college now anyway. I was spending more time with my first girlfriend, a dyke called Tank, and some fellow I'd met at one of Emily Glenn's poetry groups (he called himself Jim Benton, and he wrote letters for porn mags). I asked Jeff, who I still saw sporadically, if he was into playing onstage someday. He sounded enthused so I said 'great, how about June?" Slowly, we began ideas for this impromptu band. I had had a friend in college who played guitar, this guy Mark. I asked him if he wanted in, and he asked if he could bring this bass player he knew, and so I met Max. We began practicing in between Jeff's laundry room and Max's room in his 'uncle''s basement. Around this same time I had gone to my first Rainbow Family event; an annual picnic at Central Park. Here I would meet Anni Paisley and her then friend Kahlil, a tall dandy who claimed to be the bastard son of comic book artist Vaughn Bode. Anni had had a brief if unlauded musical career doing faux Yoko yells for David Peel; she also had attended Vipers shows at The Dive. They, like me, were into Brian Jones and Syd Barrett. It seemed only fair they should become a part of this musical extravanganza my little never-should-have-had gig was becoming.
June 18,1984 saw the first show of the band Octopus Ride and our orbital poetry 'happening', Syd's House of Donuts.
It was a funny show, really. We HAD an audience, mostly our own friends from Brooklyn. Mark had been redubbed "Mark Lloyd", Max was "Mike 'Plonk' Baldwin", and Jeff took on the esoteric moniker "Q'esim". Our songs were messy little jam-punk-blues fusion, with one Syd Barrett cover thrown in for good measure. Syd's House was more than a little Pattis Smith inspired; Anni read poetry while "Q'esim" backed her making experimental noise.
We kept this up for a good two or three years after this; whereas Mark and eventually Jeff lost interest, Max, Anni & I became fast friends.
Inevitably when I
left home I moved to Queens with Anni, where we continued to have LSD fueled musical
adventures throughout Manhattan, and inevitably, elsewhere. 
Some of the soundtrack of our lives in
Queens included but was not limited to The Dukes of Stratosphear,Gong,early Genesis,Robyn
Hitchcock & even The Grateful Dead. One can only look at a however-many-yards tall statue of the world (Corona Park's Unisphere) for so long before wanting it, and it was the Rainbow Family that made us bold enough to go after it. We went to our first Gathering in '87? I think? in West Virginia. Met a big Yes fan named Steve. Like Zepp, it'd be awhile before I rediscovered Yes tho.
Went to one in Vermont. and one in Pennsylvania. At the one in Pennsylvania we met some guy who was from Vermont, and inevitably wound up living there. He knew the band Phish, so before long we did too.
My early days in Vermont were long and at times kinda boring, so this was when I had time to renotice Yes and Zeppelin. The guy we were hanging with was big into Zappa, so much so I pretty much lost my taste for him with the repetition. He had some other cool things in his record collection tho, stuff I'd noticed before but never really had time to check out fully- King Crimson,Monster Magnet,Oingo Boingo...this is a hard part to write about, because I can't in good conscience write the guy out of my life completely- we were 'friends'-that is to say I thought he was my friend!- for many years before he turned around and laid this complete betrayal on myself and some of the other people we knew. However...yes, he introduced me to Phish, and there were a few bands he was partially responsible for my having discovered. Can I say he turned me on to them? In most cases no; as said, he's mostly into Zappa and stubborn as can be about trying anything new. But he was in my life at the times I learned of some music, and extricating yourself from a relationship and deciding what of it was you and what of it was 'us' can be messy. Anyway. Long story short, he had been a DJ at WGDR, and this was the stepping stone by which I ended up doing this as well. Because I am more adventurous I made more use of the resources and actually played things they had there instead've just bringing music from home. At the time Goddard had a vasty old vinyl collection and were also getting new promotional materials to play on the air all the time, so my DJ phase was a BIG help in expanding my musical horizons. I discovered stuff like Kyuss,The Strawbs,Purple Outside,Church of Betty, and any number of other punk and prog things while I was hitchhiking out to Goddard and doing my show.
One of the promotional things to come through at that time was a SubPop sampler, where I first heard and aired Nirvana, but they weren't to become relevant to me for another year or two.
There were some cool bands would play at the club below this guy's house too. Notably, one of my favourites was a band called D'Moja. Several bands from Burlington would play there from time to time, and inevitably one called Outer Mongolia wandered thru...when I would move to Burlington they would become relevant, as they were part of the social scene I would become part of.
But that's jumping the gun.
I can't remember all the
events surrounding the situation, but I wound up moving to Olympia Washington for awhile. I
know I was having hassles with some people around the girl I was with at the time? and I
think the stoners circle I'd been part of was breaking up. Someone else I'd known had been
there and said it was cool, so off I went.
I wound up over a club myself, the now defunct Alamo club. Got to see some very cool bands at this time as well, Gangula Stretch, Two Ton Boa, The Melvins..
The nineties saw me back and forth between coasts mostly. It was neat, because pivotal things were happening in both places, both in my personal life, and in the music scene. I was playing open mikes at Smithfield Cafe and Java Flow, and one of the neighbors in my building happened to be Diane Novoselic, sister of Nirvana's bass player. I remember being dirt poor and often just listening to bands through the floor boards or music from other people's hifis through the walls...I also met Gregg Schneeman, the bowed psaltery player at this time. So. There I was. Grunge and jam bands all around, trying to learn this traditional old instrument...
Back to Burlington for awhile. Outer Mongolia were the shizz; there were some other bands who orbited around them trying to steal some of the shine, but those guys were one of the most rockin' outfits the town had to offer. They made the holidays in the last days of the coffeehouse Java Love shine... other good bands were playing in Burlington tho too- Cranial Perch, Barbacoa...and there was a good club, Club Toast, that saw a lot of out of town acts in-Pansy Division,The Jesus Lizard,Type O Negative,Frank Black & the Catholics... it could be a fun time, but there were also a lot of tensions in the artsy scene in Burlington. A lot of hipper-than-thou vibes going on... this began to alienate my longtime friend Anni a lot. After our mutual friend Jenn Khouri died, I think Anni was just getting sick of the rot at the core of the scene, so she decided to light out again, this time to check out down South. Having been down to New Orleans a couple of times myself, I thought going along on this little road trip might be fun.
We wound up first in Asheville NC and eventually in Athens Georgia, a place I would return to to stay in another year or so when my landlord in Burlington died.
align=left>My stay in Athens was relatively short compared to other places I've lived, but I got to see a lot of good music. Local legends the B-52s reappeared to play a 20th anniversary show, and I was there, front of the stage (well, to the left. right under Keith's feet, more or less) to see that. I saw Southern Bitch,and Jucifer,and Olivia Tremor Control, as well as various out of town acts that came through- Verbena,Last of the Juanitas,Brian Jonestown Massacre... one of my favourite Athens acts was The Late BP Helium. Bryan, also of Elf Power, Of Montreal, & god knows how many other Elephant 6 projects, was also the pizza delivery guy at the restraunt down the block from one of the places I used to live, so I'd see him around a lot. I still like to go see him play when one of the acts he's part of come through any town I'm in.
It's hard to GET gigs in Athens tho, if you're not a regular townie. I actually spent more time in karaoke when I was able to be onstage than I did open mikes. I would go to the karaoke nights at Fox's bar in Normaltown. Usually I'd arrive early and hang around in Allens, just round the alley; they had cheap beer and burgers. So I was there when this famous locale closed down...
2003 saw me back in Burlington again where, even before I got back on my feet in terms of finding a home and securing my finances, I was part of the pirate radio station Free Radio Burlington. Yay! I was a DJ again!
There's a lot of politics in Vermont, mostly of the leftwing slant. Because doing pirate radio was considered a radical act in this time of George W Bush being in office, most the DJs there were just into broadcasting news shows- Pacifica and suchlike. I don't want to say music shows were frowned on utterly, but I did get a frosty reception from some of the more politically inclined types... well hey! figured I, in these opressive times, what more radical thing can one do but play music and have a good time? The station had computers, and WINamp, and all those spiffy things we all find so commonplace now, but this was my first exposure to it. I DLed songs, and turned myself on to new music while simultaneously broadcasting it to anyone within our tiny range who would listen! At this time I discovered coolass tuneage such as Zeitmahl,Entrophy 5,The Frogs,Dresden Dolls,Old Time Relijun,dir en grey,Melt-Banana...I gave up doing the station a little while after the first FCC raid. The landlord of the building we had the equipment in was a cheapskate when it came to heat,& I was tired of coming back from doing my show with bronchitis.
But by then, I had discovered VCAM, and was ready to try my hand at a new media...television.
Burlington had its
next wave of cool bands- Black Sea Quartet had risen from the ashes of Outer Mongolia, and
they, along with the bluegrass-folk-punk of the Jugtown Pirates was the music of the next
summer. I decided to do my own music video show to give local bands a place to play, and to
play wacky videos I had amassed over years of collecting (well, what I had LEFT oif my
collection, as my former 'friend' had stolen some of my stuff while I was in Georgia!) My
first musical guest was the mad genius songwriter known as ManTits, and I've been hosting
bands on the show ever since.
Which leaves us at about now... I still haven't got a 'favourite' band; my tastes continue to change constantly, and I can listen to any number of genres- punk, prog rock, classical, jazz, worship music... I like to watch channels featuring international music, and love a lot of Hispanic and Asian videos that I see better than some of the MTV fare. Probably my favourite band to see live would be the Foo Fighters- they were the last big show I saw at the time of this writing. I've been doing music of my own again after a long period of silence; although I'm still not writing many new songs, I'm keeping busy. Occasionally I see my old friend from NY, Dan Cvejic around and we still jam, I also have been collaborating with a pianist, Colette Novak. I'm still doing the TV show, and hope to record a CD of my own songs quite soon.