My Musical Evolution – Page 14 – Mapping Influences Over Time

My Musical Evolution – Part 283 Roach Days Revisited Entering The Digital Domain

It is hard to assess the true impact of the Compact Disc on My Musical Evolution. This was a significant change in technology. Remember My Musical Evolution – Part 92? It was then that I had decided to switch from vinyl LP’s to factory cassettes. I then switched back to vinyl after three years of accumulating cassettes. The I spent the next three years regretting the decision to switch to cassette. Do you remember all that? Well that regret became pointless on the day that I bought my first Compact Disc player. I would be on a mission to replace all of my music with Compact Discs. It would take 10 years to get most of it done. Another 15 to fill in the gaps, and I may never be able to find CD versions of some things.

I love the Compact Disc format. It was compact and it was a disc. No, actually, it was the crystal clear sound and potential longevity that was the initial draw. There is currently a movement that suggests vinyl is actually superior in a purist’s sense. I understand the concept of why they say that. Sampling rates and slicign and dicing. Digital music uses the same basic concept for your ears that movies use for your eyes. What you are really hearing is a bunch of static snapshots in rapidfire succession that give the illusion of continuous sound. I’ll concede the warm of tube driven amplifiers and all that. The problem I have with vinyl is the overhead. My copy of Dark Side Of The Moon is 26 years old and it sounds exactly the same today as it did the day I bought it. The nature of vinyl, a stylus coming in physical contact with the groove, depends on friction to create the sound. That means that every time you play that record, you are changing it as the stylus minutely erodes the groove. Add to that, environmental issues like dust and handling. I’m not saying that Compact Discs are impervious to abuse, just that day to day use is not as hard on them. I’ve heard the stories of CD Rot but fortunately I have not experienced it firsthand. I have always treated my CD’s as Master Tapes. That is, I never carried them in a cd wallet or played them in the car. Basically, I treated them like I treated my vinyl LP’s. I’d play them in the house but when it came time to go beyond casually listening, I’d copy them to cassette and let the cassette do all the stunt work.

The Compact Disc also added a dimension to making mix tapes, with the ability to switch the elapsed time display to countdown mode, I new how long I had before a song was going to end. A small thing maybe but I appreciated it. In 1999, I found a whole new reason to love Compact Discs, remind me to tell you.

In the early days of Compact Discs, we were all paying attenition to the type of Compact Disc it was. They came in DDD, ADD, and AAD. The DDD meant that the content on the disc was digitially record all the way through the process. AAD meant that the recording was converted from analog source material. Did it really make a difference? To some perhaps but we all paid attention to it for a short while.

My friend Scott got his first Compact Disc player shortly thereafter. His first Compact Disc was Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here. That is how I first heard it. He also bought a Compact Disc called The Digital Domain. This was a recording design to demonstrate the capabilities of this new digital optical format. It was a collection of wierd stuff, some of it musical some of it sound effects like a racquetball game or helicopters taking off and landing. There was also a scientific section where they would play Square waves and such to help audiophiles calibrate their sound reproducing instruments.

As I feared, there do not appear to be many examples from The Digital Domain on YouTube. This could pose an even bigger problem near the end of the year when a good deal ofMy Musical Evolution goes off road.

Lions Are Growing

My Musical Evolution – Part 282 Roach Days Revisited Enter The Compact Disc

Technics Stereo — Not my actual stereo but very similar

Commercially available Compact Disc players were still a fairly new concept in 1986 when I bought my first one. They had been around for 2 or 3 years but they were ridiculously expensive. That idea seems so silly given how affordable they are today.It is not impossible but very difficult to imagine life before the Compact Disc. Especially for me. I have over a thousand Compact discs that I have collect from today going back to the night that you are going to hear about.

I had no intention to buy a Compact Disc player on the evening in question. I can’t tell you why I went to Glenbrook Mall that night but it had nothing to do with stereo equipment. I parked at Hudson’s on the lower level. I wasn’t interested in anything at Hudson’s. I was just passing through. Back then Hudson’s had an Electronics department. It was sandwiched in the space next to the escalator not far from the throughway to the mall entrance.

As I walked by, I heard somebody call my name. I stopped and looked and saw that it was my friend Jay. I didn’t know that Jay worked at Hudson’s but I found out that night that he was the manager of the soon to be discontinued Electronics Department. He tells me that he wants to show me something. As we walk back to his department he tells me that they are closing electronics and that he has been taksed with moving all the remaining inventory. Let’s say that I was curious but not quite interested.

It is about 20 minutes before the mall is scheduled to close and he shows me this nice wooden cabinet that contained their best stereo. A Technics component system that featured a Turntable, AM/FM Tuner, 12 Band graphic equalizer, dual Cassette deck, and of course a Compact Disc Player. Along side the cabinet were two large speakers sporting 15″ woofers 4″ mids and 3″ tweeters. The price tag on it was $1,599. It looked impressive and while all the little lights and dials were cool, it was the sound that made me go wow.

Jay put the Dire Straits Brothers In Arms CD in the CD player. In a few seconds I could hear Sting singing I want my MTV. Jay took the remote [yeah a remote] and pressed on the gas sending the volume up. Soon the entire store was filled to capacity with the opening drum solo follwed by that guitar part. Up to that point, I’d never been to impressed with Dire Straits or that song. You have to hear that song turned up to 11! Instant fan and a remote control! He took the cover off one of the speakers and showed me how it was so loud that the blow hole could blow out a lighter. You don’t get that kind of demo from just anybody.

The best part, Jay cut me a deal that let me take one of those bad boys home for about 1/3 of the price. I think he was angry about losing his job there a little. He even gave me two certificates good for a free Compact Disc each at the music shop that was a few doors down in the mall. I think it was Camelot or Coconuts. Somthing with a “C”.

He told me to go pick out my CD’s and he’d meet me at the loading dock in 15 minutes. So here I was with 15 minutes to pick out my first two Compact Discs. What should they be? I had no time to think too much about it. I was trying to figure out what music would realy benefit from the clarity of the digital recording. Of course back in 1986 every music store was 75% vinyl, 20% cassette and 5% Compact Disc. All the Compact Discs were in this little tiny area near the register. Record stores were so afraid of theft because CD’s were tiny compare to the albums of old. They used to wrap them in long cardboard boxes that were about 2.5 times taller than the CD. Do you remember those days?

I’m going to give you the opportunity to guess what I picked. Give up? I selected Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd and Boston by Boston. I had Don’t Look Back on vinyl at it seemed like to a good time to get the other one. It would take me over 10 years to finally buy Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits.

The Dark Side Demo

Back then, most people decided that going to CD was too expensive. Compact Disc players were still $300 to $500 and the discs were usually in the upper teens like $18.99. I knew plenty of people that felt vinyl was good enough. To demonstrate the difference, I would put on my vinyl Dark Side and my Compact Disc Dark Side and then use my nifty remote to click back and forth between the two as they played simultaneously. I took very good care of my records and even had that cool record cleaner thing with that special fluid and stuff. Even so, the difference between the two was dramatic. The Compact Disc was sharp, clear and precise while the vinyl was dull and muddy and sounded like somebody was frying bacon in the distance. I ran into my friend Seven [his name Steven was mispelled once by omitting the “T” and he has been known as Seven to us since then] just a couple years back and he said “Remember that day when you made me buy a CD player?”

So there I was with a new stereo. My first true compnent system with a remote control. I know it sounds silly but it was a very ig deal back then. I don’t recall what the actual Wattage on it was but I know that even without the CD player it was a great system and those speakers were loud!

Dire Straits – Money For Nothin’ – be sure to turn it up as loud as you can

Pink Floyd – Breathe

Boston -Foreplay / Long Time

My Musical Evolution – Part 281 Roach Days Revisited Return To Styx

I’m grouping these four albums together because that is how they were packaged for me. Way back in The Academy Days when I was still very much into Styx. I was able to receive these four albums recorded on two cassettes from my cousin who was an even bigger Styx fan back then. They were a pair of cheapo K-Mart cassettes and she put on album on each side. Well, for one reason or another, I never really listened to them then. Once I got back to Indiana and started down the Heavy Metal path, these tapes were filed in my little cassette suitcase. Now that The Metal Years were over, I found myself returning to some of my old favorites from days gone by.

I finally dusted off these old Styx gems and really enjoyed them. I was especially enamored with their first album. It wasn’t anything like The Grand Illusionor Cornerstone that I loved but it was still very interesting and good to listen to. Each of the others had tracks that I was already familiar with and were closer in sound and design to my favorite Styx albums. Maybe that difference is what had me going back to that first album so much. There is something about Movement For The Common Man that appeals to me. Maybe it is the recorded conversations that sprinkle through it. Maybe it is the track length and composition. Maybe it is that the sound has a tone that is so 1970’s.

I spent a good block of time flipping these two cassettes and eventually would get them all on CD along with other Styx albums.

Movement For The Common Man

What Has Come Between US

Best Thing

Light Up

Lorelei

Suite Madame Blue

Blue Collar Man

Renegade

Too Much Time On My Hands

The Best Of Times

My Musical Evolution – Part 280 Roach Days Revisited

The Roach Days were probably the time in my life when music was the biggest thing going on. Sure we did other things but generally, we listened to music most of the time. We had MTV on, or played stuff from our rather large music collection, had parties or played our guitars. It seemed that the tunes were a big part of our daily bread. I suppose I still have music on all day in my office. It is different though. I usually don’t listen to the kinds of things we’ve been talking about here. In the office, music is a good buffer to combat the distractions of office sounds but it has to be a certain kind of music. We’ll discuss that in detail pretty soon.

What I’m talking about here is a seemingly constant dose of pop music and the like. In album form, mix tape or over the air waves and cable. The Roach Days never seemed to be without a kicking soundtrack.

Wham! – Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go – As a Metal Head, I was compelled to not like Wham! but you have to admit there is something frolicish about this that you can’t hate.

Mötley Crüe – Girls, Girls, Girls – By the time this album came out, I was more or less done with my metal phase. However I did actually go to Thee Dolllhouse In Fort Lauderdale.

Phil Collins – Sussudio

Prince and The Revolution – Raspberry Beret

David Lee Roth – California Girls

Bruce Springsteen – Born In the U.S.A.

Tina Turner – Private Dancer – I don’t know how it happened but Tina Turner seemed to be the biggest thing around at this time. She was everywhere

Phil Collins – Take Me Home – I don’t know how it happened but Phil Collins seemed to be the biggest thing around at this time. She was everywhere

Run-D.M.C. – Walk This Way

My Musical Evolution – Part 279 Roach Days Revisited KISS

I almost forgot that KISS entered the scene again during The Roach Days. If you recall back in Part 84 The KISS Age was officially coming to a close. Aric bought Lick It Up and Animalize so I got to sample KISS again. Since Aric was a big KISS fan back in the 70’s too, we had plenty to talk about regarding KISS. While I was all about Ace Frehley, Aric was into Gene Simmons. He had the Gene Simmons solo LP and while I didn’t listen to it much the opening of the album provided excellent background for more than one answering machine message.

I remember seeing the MTV segment where KISS in unveiled to the audience for the first time. I remember in that segment and the first few videos and even on stage that Gene Simmons seemed the most uncomfortable without the makeup. Sure the music was still good KISS stuff but something was missing without the makeup.

I saw KISS live two or three times during this era and while it was a good show, it did not compare to KISS back in 1977. I’d have to wait until 1996 to get back to that level again. I wonder if that was the plan all along. Gene Simmons is a crafty business man. I would not be at all surprised if he said, “Let’s take of the makeup. It will generate som buzz, people will be interested and we’ll make a few millions dollars. Then after 10 years, the buzz will dire down and we’ll put the makeup back on. People will go crazy to see that again and we’ll generate even more buzz for doing the same thing we did in 1977 and we’ll nake a few billion dollars.”

Radioactive – From the Gene Simmons Solo

Lick It Up – We played this song for a while. It is a good song and I played most of it with just one hand. It was just endless thumping on the open A string for most of it.

All Hell’s Breakin’ Loose

Heaven’s On Fire

Tears Are Fallin’ – These last two were from Asylum

Uh! All Night

I still liked KISS but never enough to pick these albums up. I would eventually get a few KISS Compact Discs, mostly compilations and of course replacing almost all of my old vinyls. I’d even eventually name our dog Domino after a KISS song. Listening to them today, I still like them and feel fortunate to have access to so much fun music.

My Musical Evolution – Part 278 Roach Days Revisited

Wow, as I write this, we are just a couple of days away from the end of September. I have been doing this Musical Evolution project for nearly nine full months. The post number tells me that I’m statistically ahead of one post per day. Here again I find myself wondering if I should have spent some more time trying to map everything out a little better before I started. Would it have been more comprehensive? More entertaining? Easier to follow?

Of course the other side of that equation is less scientific and more emotional. Since a large component of this project deals with influence and importance it only makes sense that the stuff that comes to mind when I sit down to write the next piece must be the most significant to me.

I’m feeling the urge to recap a little bit here. Most likely this is because the vinyl album era has just ended and that is a pretty significant change, technologically. So far, the major musical influences are fairly typical, parents, siblings, peers, radio, magazines, MTV. I find it fascinating how those same components influence just about everybody but the subtle changes in the composition can have such a dramatic impact. Siblings, for example. In my case, my siblings are all younger. Sure they had some influence but is was a much different kind of influence compared to my friend Scott who is the youngest of four. By the time he was in high school he had older borthers-in-law to add to the influence. His musical evolution was artificially mature because he was introduced to the stuff that people 10 years older were listening to.

As for the music itself, as you’ve seen, the core is pop music. By that I mean stuff traditionally found on the radio and MTV. Sure there were some sides streets into Heavy Metal, Showtunes, Soiundtracks, and progressive album oriented rock. Looking back from this point, I think that Agony by Ilhan Mimaroglu would be the most dramatically off the beaten path piece of music that I owned. My Half-Speed Master recording of Walter Carlos’ Switched On Bach would probably be the most unexpected record in my collection.

With just three months to go, and being not even half way through my life, I wonder if one year is long enough to complete this project. I guess though that my most prolific years of collecting music were up to this point. I would amass hundreds of Compact Discs in the coming decade but a large part of them were replacing the old vinyls . This kind of poses a time line problem of sorts. How do I handle the rediscovery of some those old albums as I get them on Compact Disc.

Another problem is what to do about the ambient stuff? By ambient, I mean how should I present the music that was all around me in clubs, on the radio and on MTV that I never felt compelled to buy at the time but still feel somewhat attached to. Really, there were plenty of songs that when I hear them remind me of those glory days at The Roach Motel. Did they contribute in some way to my musical evolution? I think that they had to hold some influence or I wouldn’t be remembering them almost 30 years later.

Here are a few of what I’m talking about

Dream Academy – Life In A Northern Town

The Fixx – Red Sky

Godley And Creme – Cry

Debarge – Rhythm of the Night

Julian Lennon – Valotte

Billy Idol – To Be A lover

The Eurythmics – Would I Lie to You?

Bruce Springsteen – Glory Days

Mr. Mister – Kyrie

Bruce Hornsby and the Range – The Way It Is

My Musical Evolution – Part 277 Roach Days Revisited The Final Vinyl

Fire Of Unknown Origin gets the distinction of being my last vinyl album due to lack of official records and the alphabet. I’ve spent considerable thought and time trying to plumb the depths of my mind trying to remember the last vinyl album. There is no way to be certain but the process of elimination raised the odds to such a degree that I’m going with it.

My Blue Öyster Cult oddyssey began on the Heavy Metal soundtrack with Veteran Of The Psychic Wars. It continues with Don’t Fear The Reaper and the Agents Of Fortune album. Which brings us to a cool and sunny September day when I went to the Wooden Nickel and bought my last two vinyl albums. Hunting High And Low by a-Ha, we talked about in the last post.

Fire Of Unknown Origin, I felt, was a safe bet. It had Veteran Of The Psychic Wars which I already knew that I liked very much. It turned out to be a good, easy to listen to, rock album. I think that had I not bought Hunting High And Low on the same day and then really liking that album, I would have listened to this one more.

Still, Fire Of Unknown Origin is a good rock album and my favorite Blue Öyster Cult album. Don’t Fear The Reaper is an excellent song but this album seemed to connect to me more. Perhaps it was because I bought it and first listened on a cool sunny September day. I don’t want to go as far as saying that the transition to fall is an emotionally vulnerable time for me. What it is is a mixed bag of conflicting emotions. Autumn is my favorite time of year with the fall colors, crisp frosty evenings, Halloween, harvest Thanksgiving. I love it. Yet, I hate the notion of letting go of summer. Maybe it’s a leftover feeling from childhood and the longing for a real summer vacation.

Fire Of Unknown Origin

Burnin’ For You

Veteran Of The Psychic Wars

After Dark

Joan Crawford

My Musical Evolution – Part 276 Roach Days Revisited Living A Boy’s Adventure Tale

Why do we remember the things that we remember? Why are some memories so crystal clear while some are completely false? I have been thinking about the last vinyl album that I ever bought. Through the process of elimination, I think that I have it figured out. Well, sort of. I do remember that I bought a-Ha’s Hunting High And Low and Blue Öyster Cult’s Fire Of Unknown Origin on the same day. I even remember what I was wearing. It was a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans and my Vermont Academy Wrestling sweatshirt. It was one of those cool temperatured transition days between summer and autumn in September. This could even be the anniversary for all I know.

So with that being said, Hunting High And Low is at least tied for being the last vinyl album I ever bought unless I completely overlooked soemthing which is entirely possible.

I remember puttting the album on and turning it up loud enough to hear outside. I stood in our driveway atThe Roach Moteland enjoyed the afternoon sun filtered through the trees while I listened to the whole thing.

I think Hunting High And Low is a great album. I’m sure that some of the purists out there might disagree. Maybe it is another case of timing. This sound was just what I needed at the time and I can steel feel connected to it in that same old nostalgic way I do with so many other albums of the time. It is easy to visualize The Roach Motel as I listen to these tracks. Living A Boy’s Adventure Tale really takes me back there. It even makes me recall the texture of those tapestries we had hanging on the walls.

Their is a solemn emotion attached to this album. The vocals and style aren’t too far away from the old lounge singers like Andy Williams [who died today] Maybe that is something that I like about a-Ha. It was one that didn’t see much time on the mix tapes, it was one that I listented to alone mostly. I can’t put my finger on why I like it so much, I just did then and still do today. I don’t know if a-Ha did anyhting else. This was all I needed from them.

Take On Me

Train Of Thought

Hunting High And Low

Living A Boy’s Adventure Tale

The Sun Always Shines On TV

I’m throwing this here because I think it is clever and funny.

My Musical Evolution – Part 275 The Metal Years Somewhere In Time

Being the Iron Maiden fan that I was, I had to buy Somewhere In Time when it came out. Guess what, they had adopted some of that MIDI technology too. Iron Maidenalways had great sounding guitars, adding the MIDI stuff just seemed to make them a little more ethereal or something. They didn’t go over the top with it but the influence is definately noticable mostly on the guiar intros. Purists may scoff but I think it sounds OK when used in this manner.

Somewhere In Time carries the distinction of being the last metal album that I purchased during The Metal Years. Don’t think that I abandoned Heavy Metal. In the decades to come, I’d pick up some more. Rammstein comes to mind. I still like Heavy Metal music, it is just that shortly after this point Somewhere In Time, The Metal Years would come to an official close.

On March 19th or 1987, I’d finally see Maiden live. We went down to Market Square Arena to see them. It was a pure pre-Nirvana spectacle. The stage was constructed to resemble the inside of a space craft of some sort with ramps and such all over the place. The show was energetic. At one point the Terminator Eddie appeared and engaged Bruce Dickinson in a laser gun battle. They ran around the stage firing lasers at each other with sparks fire and smoke erupting all around.

During the song Heaven Can Wait, they had the entire road crew on stage to help sing the chorus. Iron Maiden seemed to be very proud and appreciative of their road crew. Even then I thought that sentiment was cool. On thePowerslave tour Eddie came back at the end as an even larger, larger than life mummy. This tour continued that tradition. Near the end of the show, a gigantic Terminator Eddie head appeared behind the stage and enormous skeletal hands rose from underneath the band raising them up in his grasp. Now that is entertainment! Great music and energry combined with all manner of visual effects. I feel fortunate that I was able to see Iron Maiden at what I feel was their best.

Caught Somewhere In Time

Wasted Years

Heaven Can Wait

Stranger In A Strange Land

My Musical Evolution – Part 274 The Metal Years Turbo

Something that I didn’t realize until now is that The Metal Years more or less officially ended at the same time as the Vinyl record era. I’ve been trying to recall the music I was buying at the time when I bought my first Compact Disc Player. Although I can’t be certain, I have a pretty good idea what my last vinyl records were. I am absolutley certain of my first 2 Compact Discs. That story is coming up soon. I still have a handful of old vinyls to get through yet.

When Aric and I were shopping for our first real non-pawn shop guitars, the sales technician musician was telling us about this new thing in musical instruments. It was called MIDI which I think he said stood for Musical Instrument Device Interface. It was supposed to be the next big thing in music. He showed us how he could hook up a guitar to this thing and instead of regular guitar sounds, you could have it spit out any manner of digitally created sounds. It was interesting but expensive and at the time we were still deep in our Metal Phase and that didn’t need fancy digital enhancements, just good old fashion Distortion.

Judas Priest didn’t feel that way and on their next album Turbo they used some of that MIDI stuff and the results were rather interesting. I can’t say for certain if MIDI is the reason but Turbo is my favorite Judas Priest album. I suspect that it was the shift towards a more mainstream sound that makes it so easy to listen to.

I’m sure that there are diehard Priest fans that probably hate this album compared to their older more raw and screechy stuff. Yeah I agree, Turbo is Judas Priest that has been washed and pressed and prepped for MTV but I like it. You know, listening to it right now, I think it might be the MIDI stuff. I have always been a fan of electronic music as you know by previous posts. The MIDI element gives it a little electronic flavor that sits quite well with me.

Turbo Lover

Locked In

Private Property

Parental Guidance

Hot For Love