Earliest musical influences

As long as it's not kenny G! Jk I'm just pulling your leg! Yeah whenever that stuff changes its difficult for me too. Key changes especially. I bet rhythm changes are really tricky. I have not played anything that does that!
 
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fig said:
I was in a "Jazz band" JH / HS (as well as all the other band venues offered). We played a lot of the "progressive" stuff. The time changes, key changes, and rhythm changes were sometimes impossible. Now when we played the smooth jazz (heavily R&B flavored) you could really sway (says the band geek).
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I was a band geek too and also played in the high school “Jazz Band”. We played mostly swing type of stuff. There were a few times were we played some banquet halls and the old folks would come out and dance their asses off. That was probably the coolest we ever did. It was a fun experience but I definitely didn’t appreciate it enough back then.
 
I can’t remember how old I was but the back to the future film was a massive wow moment for me. I think I was about 8 or 9. My parents didn’t have a lot of music on around the house
when we were young and hearing Johnny B Goode just struck a chord with me. I wanted a guitar shortly after but my parents got me a plastic toy one which I wasn’t interested in. It definitely wasn’t a 335 or 345. Then my brother had a super cheap strat copy that he didn’t want and it all started from there, aged 16/17.
 
Earliest memories are my Dad playing stride piano "Has Anybody Seen My Gal" "Spanish Eyes" etc, and a lot of Dixieland on the ukulele, sometimes guitar.

Mom's all about classical...
Dad's all about the '20s & Dixie as mentioned.
So both parental units were listening to music not of their time.

The monophonic "portable" record-player that had a permanent place on a wire-rack designed to hold it and a few records.
In that record rack, apart from the classical records which I won't bother finding the covers for (any will do), there was also the following ...

Elvis-Presley.jpg


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TheKingstonTrioFirst.jpg


220px-The_Two_Sides_of_the_Smothers_Brothers.gif


From there, I continued in the tradition, getting into music that was at least a decade or more before my time, Buddy Holly was a big one, Jerry Lee Lewis... That lead to Surf... and then '70s radio rock was unavoidable...

Lots of stuff that you get exposed to without a choice, where the only thing you can decide is whether you like it or not.


MANY different influences after that, but those were the earliest.
 
I suspect that there are a lot of influences that I am not completely aware of. I have a thing for that early to mid-'70s boxy Strat or Les Paul through a Marshall - that sort of violin sound that people talk about. Bands like The Sweet or Gary Glitter's band used to get this sound and while I was never a fan or record buyer of these bands that sound seems to have stuck. Even the solo in the Walker Bros No Regrets has that sort of sound, and I love it! There are sounds which you hear as a kid and subconsciously store in the back of your mind... Even Mick Tuckey (Suzi Quattro's husband/guitarist) got some cool sounds back in the day. There are probably loads of guitarists whose names I don't know who have had some influence on me. And to them I can only apologise. :)
 
That’s a tough one.... my earliest musical influences? What I was exposed too? And what I gravitated towards? Of course like most of us who was born in the late 70’s The soundtrack of my earliest years were that of looney toons, the muppets, not sure that had much of an influence on me musically as it did my comedic deranged behavior as a child (perhaps that still shines through today). Some of my earliest memories of listing to music with my parents consisted of their collection of rock(; Neil young, Fleetwood Mac, Dire Straits, Peter Frampton,Van Halen...etc ) classsical ( Mozart, Beethoven, Bach) and my mother’s affinity for show tunes that was occasionally inflicted upon me.... as I got a little older I devolved into a victim of 80s metal then once I Bought Guns and Roses Appetite for destruction along with Metallica And justice for All... ( I’m not ashamed to admit it, those albums changed my life) I was a lost cause.
 
It's not difficult to see that we are kindred spirits though our common musical associations and influences.
We come to appreciate the connection the previous generation had with their music, while crafting our own. The following generation does the same (and we are also forward-biased in theirs). Each carrying just enough of those influences to show through in their own groove.
It's musical DNA, and we're all related!
 
My parents were more in to drugs than music when I was a kid. There was lots of classic rock and I do specifically remember loving Talking Heads, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, and Michael Jackson.

Aside from my love of Phil Collins at a young age which stands out because it's just so weird to me now as a 40 year old, Talking Heads probably occupy most of my head space from when I was a small kid.

When I was 10 moved in to a Franciscan monastery to live with my dad and he was listening to a lot of Jackson Browne, Traveling Wilburys, Los Lobos, that kind of thing.

I wanted to play bass since I was a kid but didn't have any support to do so, so when I started college in 1999 and moved out, I went to GC and bought an Ibanez bass kit with a little practice amp with my first student loan.

I'll probably be paying that bass off till I'm in my 50's 🤣
 
Don't stop at 50s, Peccary, just keep playing it 'til you drop.


I forgot to mention the Saturday morning cartoons. Spiderman especially ... I watched that as much for the music (if not moreso) than the story-lines. The animation itself was unimpressive, even as a kid — but given the constraints of the day, adequate.


I've posted Spidey links before elsewhere on the forum, I'll likely do so again...
 
Feral Feline said:
Don't stop at 50s, Peccary, just keep playing it 'til you drop.


I forgot to mention the Saturday morning cartoons. Spiderman especially ... I watched that as much for the music (if not moreso) than the story-lines. The animation itself was unimpressive, even as a kid — but given the constraints of the day, adequate.


I've posted Spidey links before elsewhere on the forum, I'll likely do so again...
Click to expand...

That was "paying" and not "pLaying" @feralfeline 🤣
 
My dad played a nylon string guitar and my parents both listened to a lot of folk music, Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, the Carpenters, and the like. Add to that a heavy dose of classical music, musicals, and Andre Segovia. My older sisters were in love with Chicago. I didn’t really have my true personal guitar epiphany until I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time in high school. It was that sort of hair-standing-on-your-neck-mind-blown sort of moment.
 
My parents met while getting master's degrees in music, piano and trumpet. Most of my earliest memories are playing with my brother under grand pianos, behind church organ pipes, hearing lessons every weekday night until 9pm. Guess how many times I've heard fur elise played terribly. It was a great privilege to encounter such a wealth of "classical" music, though I likely did not appreciate it at the time. I remember wanting nothing to do with any of that but I eventually ended up majoring in music in college too. Couldn't shake the curse, I guess.
 
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It's cool how many of you guys come from very musical backgrounds. My dad can play a g, a minor, e, e minor and d chord, and that's about it lol. He does have a strong appreciation for music, and I'm thankful I got that!
 
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