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i just (year 2000?) napstered downtown by petula clark.
this is literally my first favorite song that i
can remember. i recall running to our yellow clock table
radio every time it came on. i can see why i liked it, it has good bounce and movement. tight smooth
lyrics. i may have been 1-3 years old.
my first access to popular music was my mother's LPs (albums)
and 45s (those spindles and all). she worked
nights so me and my sister could play the jc penney console stereo stereo (low)
a good part of the day. the music she purchased such as aretha
franklin's gospel stuff, flack, hathaway, al green, marvin gaye, jackson five, the parliaments, lettermen, 5th
dimension etc was my first exposure to music that i could browse and select according to my preference.
psychadelic shack was one of my early early personal faves.
i would dance to it all the time and my cub scout group even did a choreographed
dance routine to it.
in my mother's 45 collection was the parliament's
"testify." i remember and liked that song, but psychadelic shack was
my fave. my mother also took me and my sister
(actually the whole town was there) to concerts. i saw james brown and smokey
robinson live at a very early age. south high school, youngstown, oh.
but ultimately we all wanted to be michael jackson. i remember me and
my sister singing jackson 5 where she would sing
the "girl" part and i would do the "boy" parts. big surprise finally seeing michael on tv.
the ohio player's fire was my first fave
funk. i can't
remember how i came in contact with that song. could have been one of the bootleg 8-tracks my father bought from a guy he bowled with.
the first music i ever bought was the commodores and slave bootleg 8-tracks for $3 each from
georges party shop on hillman ave in youngstown,
oh. this was during the summer of my first exposure to people from other streets
and introduction to a whole world of popular music and the "system" of
finding out about it and buying it. floaters, heatwave, emotions, earth wind
& fire, etc.
another cool event i remember in my life was when i was 13-14 years old
(1975-76?) chillin for the first time solo in a major
city, philadelphia. saw the movie alien and bought bootsy's album this boot is made for
fonkin'. (all by myself!!) high school, 1976 to 1980
was knee deep into parliament funkadelic. 1981
a bunch of my college buddies (kendall crew) were from dc so i was introduced to
trouble funk and go-go music. also introduced to mixing and rap. i
got deep into the talking heads around 1984 due to the lack of funk music that
was available.
nwa, getto boys; the rap years. the geto boys "the
assassin" was my first exposure to gangsta rap. it literally would give me
chills to hear someone talk about killing another person so easily.
i first heard sarah mclachlan playing in a record store and i bought fumbling towards
exctasy. this started a white girl music revolution that
went on to alanis morrissette and others
also note artists not on list:stevie wonder, marvin gaye, miles davis-no jazz, no r&b etc
i do not like or listen to r&b. i find most traditional black music dysfunctional.
it focuses way too much on love, some to the
point of stating that love of another human being is more important than life. also a lot of black
music has a depressed movement and tone.
i love the spirit, energy and movement of black gospel music regardless of the subject
matter. in 2003, some of the modern black gospel music being made is the
funkiest music out. |