My Soundtrack So Far
“Other Kim” asks us this (read: last) week “How (insert band name / artist) changed my life”. This one kinda stumped me. As I can’t, per say, say that any band, group of bands or particular artist caused a significant change in my life. As our good mysterious friend “Sirj” could verify. I love music but pay very little attention to the band itself. I suppose it’s like enjoying a painting and really not giving a damn who painted it. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not, it’s just how I am, really. To add further smoke to the mirrors, I don’t really have a genre that I’m solely devoted to. I like music from Green Day and Coldplay. I like music from The Beatles and Oingo Boingo. I like musicals and showtunes (yeah, insert your own joke here…. and there) I like music from Pink and Pink Floyd. But I can probably only name a few of the artists themselves. So I can’t contribute any significant change in my life to a particular band.However If I may borrow some from the movie “High Fidelity” I do look back on my life and can catelogue large portions by the music I was obsessed with at the time. Perhaps the music I was listening did have a influence on me, or maybe I just recall it in the same way I would recall the soundtrack to a movie. Here are some of the highlights:
Meatloaf - (Album) Bat out of Hell 2 - This is the soundtrack of the summer of my first “real girlfriend” and the lovely experiences and awkwardness which went along with my adventures with “Nadia”. <sigh>
Oingo Boingo - (Song) Pedestrian Wolves - This song was on the radio when my friend (Justin) and I were jumped by wanna-be gang bangers outside a Movie Theater. Ironically enough.
Green Day - (Album) American Idiot - Soundtrack to the summer before we moved away from “home”. Filled with uncertainty about my future. Angry at a world I was powerless to change.
Rocky Horror Picture Show (soundtrack) - Countless long fishing trips with my friend Justin. Just picture me and my buddy, driving up to the Unitahs, singing RHPS at the top of our lungs, in a rusted-to-hell 1979 Chevy “luv”over and over again. Yes, I’m serious. To this day I marvel that we didn’t end up… well… anyhow. We didnt!
Candlebox - (album) You - DCI Tour w/ the Casper Troopers, 1994.
Pink Floyd - (album) Division Bell - DCI tour w/ Casper Troopers, 1995. Torrent, on the road, love affair w/ the love of my life, Amber.
Pink Floyd - (album) Final Cut - The album I wallowed in after breaking up with Amber in 1995. That album still depresses the shit out of me.
Moby - (song) Everloving - The song which was playing when both of my children were born.
The list goes on.. but it should give you the idea. I think I’ve got a pretty good soundtrack, but I can’t contribute any one change to one song, album or band.
I think you did the best answering this question, as you often do. I think the “soundtrack” idea is really what the question drives at and, I think, it is hard to separate where the music changes you and where your experiences influence the music. Though for me there is no doubt that I am a musician because of a Beatles 45 I found in my sister’s record box in 1969 (a Capitol original release, you know the orange one. Did you know that…).
I didn’t know that The Final Cut was so influential for you. My friend, Blaine, had a similar relationship with that album due to a breakup.