This is meant to be a fun exercise in getting to know one another a little better through some music-related questions.
I’ll get the ball rolling, and then pass it along to whoever would like to participate.
1:
When I was around six or so, my little sister and I got a hold of my older brother’s 45s. We became obsessed with the song “Happy Jack” by The Who.
We played it constantly, and even arranged our stuffed animals to pretend they were singing it.
2:
And how was it?
I recently posted about this in one of Bill’s “Theoretically Speaking” columns.
When I was in high school, my brother Greg gave me a cassette of a local band called “Jump ‘N the Saddle Band” that played Texas swing.
I wore that cassette out. And not long after that, we went to see them live at a local town festival. It was the first concert I remember, and it was amazing. A year or so later they recorded a novelty song, “The Curly Shuffle:”
A Three Stooges tribute, which surprisingly reached #15 on The Hot 100. And then they basically disappeared.
3:
The Saddest Music in the World (2003).
A bizarre indie Canadian film that manages to be both witty… and incredibly dark.
A beer baroness (Isabella Rossellini) in Winnipeg during the Great Depression holds a competition to find the saddest music in the world. Director Guy Maddin meticulously recreates the feel of a movie from the 30s and unleashes something unlike anything that ever came before it or after.
4:
Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James & The Shondells.
Such a compelling story. Couldn’t put it down, and I’m not even a huge fan of his.
Now it’s your turn. What are your answers?
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Great questions
1. Going to my cousin’s house and they put on my uncle’s copy of Bat Out of Hell. I would have been around 6 and it inspired an outpouring of youthful exuberance. We listened to the title song and went outside running up and down the garden shouting the lyrics.
2. First show I went to: 1989, I was 13 and we were on holiday in the seaside town of Scarborough. My parents took us to a solid gold sixties show at the Futurist Theatre. It was a midweek matinee, the theatre was maybe a third full. There were The Mindbenders, The Tremoloes and Freddie & The Dreamers. Possibly a fourth act but I can’t remember who.
It was OK. Passed a couple of hours but even at the time I thought it might be soul destroying for the acts playing an afternoon show to a mostly empty theatre. They were all professional enough not to show it though.
3. Good Vibrations – no not a Beach Boys biopic. Its a feelgood comedy drama from 2013 based on the life of Terri Hooley who was a champion of the Northern Irish punk scene and opened the Good Vibrations record store and started a label of the same name in 1970s Belfast. The name and Terri’s outlook as an idealist championing the power of music is a reaction against the hell of sectarian violence going on around him.
On a connected point, Terri crops up in a documentary I watched last month; Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland which covers the 30 year period from the 60s to 90s known as ‘The Troubles’. Its a social history based around the experiences of people from all sides and all sorts of involvement; from those perpetrating the violence to those impacted. There’s 5 hours of it, it’s incredibly powerful, harrowing and moving. It was produced for BBC and PBS so I guess it’s available in the US. I wouldn’t recommend it as an easy watch but it’s brutally compelling.
Terri sums up his contribution as; “If my kids ask me, ‘What did you do in The Troubles, Daddy?’ I would say, ‘I partied a lot, I did a lot of drink and some drugs, I had a good time and I didn’t kill anybody”
That about sums up the spirit of the film as well.
4. Julian Cope – Head On. Autobiography covering his experiences in the late 70s Liverpool punk scene and his band The Teardrop Explodes. The cliched phrase ‘warts and all’ sums it up. Hugely entertaining, comes across as a complete madman due in no small part to the excessive amounts of LSD featured. The description of his first appearance on Top of The Pops while on an acid trip is quite something.
1989 was a good year for a first concert.
“Good Vibrations” is going on my watchlist. Sounds fascinating.
This is great. I love your Meatloaf childhood experience. I will join ltc in putting Good Vibrations on my watch list.
I have performed for a near empty room more than once, and it is tough, but you just treat it like a dress rehearsal and rock out and you’re fine.
I played a gig like that yesterday. 😉
my father, brother and I went to live with the cult leader.
I happen to know the context for this, but it’s still jarring to read. Not surprised that music helped get you through.
I have not seen 24 Hour Party People, but I’ve heard it mentioned a number of times over the years. Need to check it out. The punk rock bio sounds frightening and books don’t normally frighten me.
Great premise! As for my answers…
Classical music can evoke bigger than life feelings for kids. I can attest to that. I remember a Tubby the Tuba album that really fascinated me and got me excited about the orchestra.
Modulations sounds cool. I am not well-versed at all in Lester Bangs. I will need to dip my toes in the water with some of those titles.
Ooh, I see that the doc is on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icpDt6aQDww
rollerboogie, I neglected to say that “Happy Jack” is a terrific kids song. It never really occurred to me before but it’s crazy and happy and better than it needs to be. How lucky you were to be exposed to something so sophisticated and nutty at such a young age.
I just want to say that “Billy Jack” is a terrific movie.
That is all.
Right on!
I absolutely love your Fanny story and the interaction with the guitarist.
I have not heard of Supermensch and will need to check that out.
The Beatles on Ed Sullivan is a great earliest memory. Very jealous.
I have been thinking of doing an article on the experiences of people that were around that time and remember it and their reaction.
Good idea!
More Fanny (so to speak) coming in the next few weeks….
Dear Lord JJ must be laughing his ass off at all of these “fanny” comments…
Must resist the temptation to add a juvenile comment about all the fanny…….
A friend of mine from the U.K. told me he was rather shocked when he came to the U.S. and an older gentleman mentioned something about wearing a fanny pack.
Again, jealous of your Beatles on Ed Sullivan memory. I was born 2 years later and missed all of it. I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to be around for it, especially if I was a teenager. According to an older sibling, the Beatles wig was actually a thing.
Oof, the Osmonds as your first concert as a 12 year old boy. Hopefully you had a chance to rectify that when you were old enough to choose for yourself.
I think it’s hard for young folks today (Those under 30, that is. Maybe even under 40.) to understand just how all-consuming Beatlemania was. For one thing, there were many fewer outlets for popular culture.
My concert-going experience is pretty limited. Lot’s of bands in clubs, but very few concerts. May biggest regret was skipping the Police on their first US tour. They were in town a couple of weeks before “Roxanne” hit big. I knew about them, but decided to skip the show (and I know it wasn’t because I decided to study). The best concert I saw was Elvis Costello and the Attraction in London in 1984, and that was almost more of a club gig than a concert. I did see R.E.M. tons BITD, both in clubs and concerts, and they were always great. (I should add that seeing the LSO perform the 1812 Overture in Albert Hall was a pretty amazing experience.)
I never saw The Police either and I was obsessed with them in high school.
I missed them growing up, but saw their reunion tour in 2007 – bucket list event.
The first song I remember being my “favorite” was when I was in pre-school in Clarksville, TN. The teachers would play various songs, but “Sneaky Snake” by Tom T. Hall always got my attention.A buddy and I went to see AC/DC with White Lion opening in 1988, literally the night of the first day of our freshman year in high school. I was 14. We were on the floor, surrounded in a haze of pot smoke (not ours), maybe 15 feet from the stage. After my parents smelled us after the concert, we didn’t get to go to any other concerts throughout high school. It was worth it!While it’s not a movie about music, if by any chance you haven’t seen Donnie Darko, you have to see it. Not only does it hold up as a great movie, it has the best needle drops ever!Definitely Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad. Every chapter is essential learning about great bands from the 80’s, but my favorite chapters were the ones on Minutemen, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, and Beat Happening.
Wow. I remember Sneaky Snake! Haven’t thought about that song in years.
Never seen Donnie Darko. People younger than me swore by it at the time, but I was concerned I may have aged out of appreciating it so I passed. Maybe I should revisit. I have heard of the book you mentioned, but have not read it. It sounds awesome.
1.) A sing along with my sister of Ocean’s Jesus-freak hit “Put Your Hand in the Hand.” I was four, most likely.
2.) Virtually no one I was interested in visited my (very) humble Midwestern burg to play in our sports arena. Sad to say, I was likely in college before I saw my first show.
3.) History of Western Civilization, Pt. III – The Metal Years. I was flirting with metal before seeing it. The music and the musicians were scuzzy and suspect as hell, but it was a community. I wanted in.
4.) Dream Boogie by Peter Guralnick
Decline Pt II was the metal years. Pt III was the gutter punks. Is that what you meant by scuzzy?
(I almost listed Decline Pt 1 as my music movie)
Dream Boogie intrigued me by title alone. I looked it up and it appears it’s about Sam Cooke. From what I know of him, I would imagine that to be a very compelling read.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XV7mxfIIr0
If you like that one, here is a list.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/33vtGmpnxlS1jKB3GdrOm3
A playlist of Appalachian murder ballads is not something I could have predicted would surface here, and yet exactly the kind of results I was hoping for in posting these questions.
I sent this playlist to my daughter, and she was as excited to receive it as I was to find it. Definitely a niche genre, but a fascinating one. Many of these are based on older English songs, but some are original to the Appalachian region.
Here is a pretty good article if you’re interested in the history.
https://expatalachians.com/rotten-romance-the-roots-and-re-examination-of-murder-ballads#:~:text=While%20the%20majority%20of%20Appalachian,of%20Stagger%20Lee%2C%20a%20St.
This is great. Listening now. Always glad to see Avett Bros. on any list. I know lots of their songs but wasn’t familiar with that one. I would add one- “Caleb Meyer” by Gillian Welch, an original of hers. It involves rape and murder, so not for the faint of heart, as of course none of songs on the playlists likely are.
1) The very easy answer to question one is Elvis Presley music. I was a huge fan before I have memory. I remember one of my babysitters decades later confirming that as a toddler one night I was inconsolable until they started playing Elvis records. It’s what I generally went to sleep with at night at a very young age.
Also, younger than I can remember, my mom told me that I became obsessed with the Herb Alpert’s “Casino Royale” single, which I had access to at my grandmother and grandfather’s house.
2) Related to #1, I saw Elvis in concert in June 1974, just before my 4th birthday. I have the faintest of memories of that night, both of how far away Elvis was and of the big stadium (Assembly Hall, Bloomington, Indiana). My parents said that I complained that he was singing the songs out of order and that I fell asleep about halfway through the concert.
My first fun concert for myself was seeing Donna Summer’s The Wanderer tour in 1980. Good show in my memory!
3) I have seen shockingly few movies about music.
4) I have read shockingly few books about music.
Listening to Casino Royale now. This sounds like the perfect song for a young Link to obsess over and start his musical journey. Laughing at your parents’ Elvis complaint. How does one sing the songs “out of order” at a concert?
1) “Playground In My Mind” by Clint Holmes. Not a song I can stand to listen to now, but I remember loving to hear it come on the radio, because it featured little kids like me. I was 4 or 5.
2) I’m really not sure, and I don’t think I went to any concerts in High School, so I’m going to say James Brown at the old Durham Athletic Park (where the Durham Bulls played when they made the movie. They were Single-A at the time.) Very late in JB’s career, he still was giving his all at every show.
3) Grace of My Heart – a fictionalized version of Carole King’s life, starring Ileana Douglas, with John Turturro, Eric Stoltz, Matt Dillon and others. With pseudo-60s songs that rival those in “That Thing You Do,” including the title song by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach.
4) “Finishing the Hat” and “Look, I Made a Hat” by Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim annotates and discusses his own lyrics, exposing his creative process, his rules for writing, and the way his incomparable mind worked.
I was a little older than you and hated “Playground in My Mind” with the burning heat of a thousand suns when it was all over the radio. I think even a couple of years in age gap makes all the difference in the world.
Fricking James Brown? I am am fully consumed with envy right now.
Grace of My Heart sounds like it would be right up my alley. Can’t believe it missed it.
Not streaming anywhere, but can be rented from all the usual suspects.
https://youtu.be/nOhOiFpZJ78?si=YruxfOqwe05aEx8z
My brother saw James Brown (the HWMISB) at the Macon (GA) City Auditorium in the mid 60s. The venue was segregated, with the white kids being made to stay in the balcony. By my brother’s description, shots rang out in the middle of the show and a large circle opened around a man and a woman on the floor, the woman trying to shoot the man and he holding her hands aloft to keep the gun away. The cops came in and hauled them off and the circle closed. James and his band never stopped playing.
His TAMI Show performance has to be one of the greatest moments in the history of American popular culture.
That sounds like an amazing and terrifying experience.
My sister got robbed at gunpoint at a concert but I can’t remember which one.
At the risk of repeating myself … that one’s coming up again, too.
You want the world to know?
It came out the same time as That Thing You Do (like they might have hit theaters the same week) and there just wasn’t enough audience for two 60s-set films about the music biz at once. Naturally the one with Tom Hanks was going to get the bulk of the viewers.
I plan on watching it soon. It sounds great.
Eric-J, I just watched Grace of My Heart with my wife. Both you and @Zeusaphone recommended it. It is an amazing film and shocking that it’s not more well-known and that I’ve never run across it before. The story line was so compelling and the music was so good, it made me cry. Definitely now on my “All-time movies about music” list.
Just wanted to say that if you happen to come across this article long after it’s been posted and miss the initial conversation, I would still love to hear your responses.
The Saddest Music in the World is a crazy hodgepodge of highbrow and lowbrow elements. It’s Strange Brew directed by Fritz Lang. What an inspired movie pick. Our local film festival showed The Heart of the World. I was hooked.
I was hoping you would chime in on this one, cappie.
1- “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”
I will die on the hill for Billy Joel. Didn’t The Safdie Brothers
make Joel cool? But, then again, they broke up. Now we know
why. Oh, wait. Dean Ween is a fan. Somebody posted an
entire tribute to Billy Joel concert online. I was absolutely
gobsmacked. Ween is not exactly an easy listen. You wouldn’t
think.
2- The Go-Gos. Mom smelled pot and got me out of there after
the first song: “Lust to Love”. They were dressed in their
Rolling Stone cover garb. Oh, wait. I just realized. Maybe that
attributed to the early exit. But then again, she didn’t take me
to see Devo.
3- As aforementioned on the mothership: Gillian Armstrong’s
Starstruck. It features new wave music, authentic-sounding
genre music. This is why Once works so well. Not that
there is anything wrong with Rent. Jonathan Larson’s story
is so tragic. A more interesting film could’ve been made if
it was a music biography about him. Agnes Varda would know
how to make that film.
4- John Darnielle wrote an amazing novel called Devil House. I
wrongly predicted that it would win the Pulitzer. The only
plaudit it received was an Edgar nomination. The Edgar is for
Best Mystery Novel, which doesn’t make a lick of sense,
because Devil House deconstructs the True Crime genre.
John Darnielle fronts The Mountain Goats. The overarching
topic of the book is objective reality. Truly, it’s the zeitgeist.
1) Elvis “Blue Christmas.” Was my #1 Christmas song since the age of three.
2) went to see the Allman Brothers with my roommate and the cute blonde girl across the hall. My roommate had an old Chevy S10 with a single bench seat so the cute blonde girl had to sit partially on my lap. I did not object to this arrangement. We ran into another group of folks from our school at the show and fun amd merriment was had by all. This wasn’t my first concert, per se, but my first unsupervised concert and I was 21 and flush with cash from my summer job and my roommate had a side hustle selling weed that I didn’t know about until then.
As we were filing out one of our friends asked me what I thought and I replied that it was more or less a religious experience for me.
Some years later the cute blonde across the hall became Sra Dinero.
3) Not really . . . I like plenty of movies about music but pretty standard ones.
4) The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie. It’s fiction, but a cool novel about the mystical powers music can hold.
Nice ending to that concert story!
I will have to check out that Rushdie novel.
Good welcome to tnocs.com, @Joaquin Dinero !
I checked out The Ground Beneath Her Feet from the library. Looking forward to reading it.
1) I remember as a 4- or 5-year-old the Association’s “Windy” and the WIND kite fly in Grant Park. Great times. I also being freaked the hell out by “A Day in the Life” being played on overnight radio either on Eddie Schwartz’s show on WIND or on WDHF-FM. Can’t remember which. I just remember being utterly terrified — I think I was in 8th grade.
2) First concert experience in which I had no choice: Helen Reddy at the Mill Run Theatre in Niles, Ill. (not bad, really — she was very talented). First concert experience in which I had a choice: Billy Joel on tour between “The Stranger” and “52nd Street.” An awesome show.
3) “Mr. Holland’s Opus” may not be specifically about music, but it gets me every time. I am so grateful to have had a Mr. Holland in my life, but he was an English teacher, not a music teacher.
4) In the kinda-autobiography department, I thought Ingrid Croce’s account of her late husband’s life, “I Got a Name,” was quite well done.
Mr Holland’s Opus is one of my all time favorite movies period.
A Day in the Life is a scary song for a child.
My first memory of attending a musical was You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown at the Mill Run. I was around 6 or 7. I was thrown off that Snoopy was being played by a human.
1 When I was four or five years old my parents got me a record player and a box of 45s with children’s songs at a yard sale. The turntable had settings for four speeds 16/33/45/78 and I played those 45s over and over at every setting.
2 The first concert I went to was Mother’s Finest in 1977. An older sibling of one of my friends was a big fan and took us little kids. My mind was blown. It was so different from the music I heard on the radio and completely alien to the easy listening stuff my parents favored.
3 Grace of My Heart from 1996, starring Ileana Douglas. Loosely based on the life of Carole King, it’s a very behind-the-scenes look at the music biz.
4 “This Is Your Brain On Music” by Daniel J Levitin. Makes the science of how music affects the brain understandable to people who aren’t neuroscientists. A must for anyone who wants to understand how people hear music.
You are the second person to mention Grace of My Heart. It was already on my list but now I definitely have to watch it.
That book sounds really interesting. Have noted it.
I have not heard of Mother’s Finest. Will check out on Spotify.
Listening to Baby Love by Mother’s Finest. Totally slaps. I can only imagine a live set by this group and the effect it had on you. I would have been completely knocked out.
one: i was mesmerized by janet jackson’s “miss you much” video, and at 6 years old, it became my first instance of learning choreography from a video. 7 years later, i joined my first dance studio and now it’s one of my favorite hobbies.
two: fourth row at mariah carey’s rainbow tour! i previously posted this pic on sg, but in case you missed it, i unknowingly took a picture of me on the concert screen!
three: “singing does not put food on the table, singing does not pay the bills!” –sister act 2: back in the habit
four: i unfortunately do not like reading books, so the only one i can say is the meaning of mariah carey or confessions of a video vixen. i’ll choose the former.
My daughter has been dancing since she was 4 and is now in high school, so I really love hearing how a video ignited your love of dance as a child and that you are still doing it.
Confessions of a video vixen sounds juicy.
I don’t know if I saw that specific pic, but I have seen many of your photo posts and it’s always fun to see which celebs you got to meet.
love that your daughter dances! janet jackson’s “if” and aaliyah’s “are you that somebody” would ignite it even further!
Dance is awesome. It thrills me to this day that my daughter is doing something where she can express herself artistically and I just continue to have a greater awe and appreciate watching it as the years have gone by.
Hey, @bradinfluence ! Great to see you!!
Yep, what I was going to say — hey brad!
Let’s see, for 1, earliest I can remember is age 4 in 1969, so that would likely have been “Sugar Sugar” by the Archies (the cartoon was on Saturday mornings at that time as well) and probably “Ma-Nah-Ma-Nah” from Sesame Street.
For 2, ugh, I was a late bloomer to concerts, as they always struck me as overpriced back then (I’ve changed my tune as an adult, but my penny pinching thoughts have allowed me to get a nice home of my own, so it wasn’t a total loss!). It actually might not have been until Prince in the 1980s, which is a hell of a performer to see alive, I will admit.
A movie about music that I love that some folks may have missed – can’t think of one off the top of my head. But the first great book about music/musicians that I’d recommend is The Book of Golden Discs: The Record That Sold a Million, first compiled by Joseph Murrells in 1974. It’s an incredible resource of the history of recorded music’s biggest hits worldwide going back to the early 1900s, and it’s served as a resource for many historians since then. I have the 1978 update and highly recommend it.
That book sounds awesome. I was thinking you would have a good one.
Prince is a hell of a jumping off point for a concert experience.
Love those early memories. I’ve got a lot of musical memories tied in with Sesame Street, as I actually remember its debut as a 4 year old.
I too remember the start of Sesame Street. I was 6, which might seem old now for it but wasn’t then. (Electric Company didn’t join until a few years later, and Zoom after that.)
Hmmmm……
My Grandmother was not what you would call a warm person, but I was her son’s son, and the first born of my generation, so I got all the love from her. She used to sing (only to me, apparently) “Mairzy Doats”, and for years (decades?) I didn’t catch that it meant “Mares Eat Oats” – like: WTF is “mairzy doats”, or “dozy doats”? I got there, but long after Grandma passed; buried wearing her pearls.First concert I remember was the first proper one I attended – The Beach Boys in 1978 (maybe ’79) at the Hollywood Bowl. I was either seven or eight. My aunt & uncle took me, and probably got way more stoned & drunk than I ever noticed, but I got home unharmed and remembered one or two songs.I always liked “Immortal Beloved”, which tried to provide a thematic origin story to Beethoven’s 9th. I also really enjoyed “Impromptu”.I enjoyed “Daisy Jones & The Six” for what it was, but David Mitchell’s “Utopia Avenue” was a cooler, trippier book that covered similar ground. Also: “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby” (I purposely skipped non-fiction here to mix it up a bit).
Mairzy Doats is just great. I’ve heard it before but I can’t remember where.
I didn’t read Daisy Jones & The Six, but I did watch the series on Prime. It was the sort of thing that should have been right up my alley, but it was so obviously inspired by Fleetwood Mac and far less compelling than the real thing that I couldn’t love it. Only two of the characters were developed beyond the surface, and the big hit song felt very manufactured and not real. The book is probably a lot better.