middle school is a bumpy affair as you break away from your parents music and are caught up in the questionable choices made by your peers. i, of course, am speaking of my time spent listening to bell biv devoe & vanilla ice. but hey, i loved biz markie too! (in fact, i still totally do.) about that same time i cemented my place as a "total weirdo" when i branched out towards acts like the divinyls, deee-lite, EMF and jesus jones.
it must have been the turbulent hormones of puberty but come 8th grade i gave it all up for megadeth, metallica & faith no more. oh and GN'R. i was obsessed with GN'R!! insanely so. in fact, ask me about my GN'R "tattoo" sometime. i was SO going to marry axl! and just in case that didn't work out, mike patton was my back-up fiance. i had no time for poison or warrant, or god help us, bon jovi. i did appreciate def leppard however.
but oh the tides change so quickly cos come the summer between 9th & 10th grade i could be found obsessing over black flag, the dead kennedys and uhm, the beastie boys? in an age bracket so obsessed with musical identity, i was dreadfully confused. i was fine with it though, i got fully on board with 'doggystyle' and 'blood sugar sex magik' before my most confusing musical phase....
disco. yeah whatever, i was obsessed with disco. while raiding my mom's vinyl collection one day i found all kinds of gems i can't even name anymore. for months it was all i listened to! serious. i guess it was my introduction to dance music. then an odd thing happened- i was watching MTV one day when i saw the "world premier" of bjork's first solo video. duh, it was for the song 'human behaviour'.
i was so intrigued! who was this weirdo and why did i instantly love her so?? i ran out immediately to buy 'debut', took a listen and instantly hated it. i threw it in the back of my closet, super ironically dismissing it as "lame-ass disco". i know, i know- here i am listening to kc & the sunshine band and harping on bjork for songs like 'there's more to life than this'. long story short, i was bored one day and cleaning my closet when i found 'debut'. i popped it in my tape player and a major love affair was born, culminating itself in nearly a decade of me trying to become bjork. i mean, i copied her every haircut for like, six years. yes, i even copied the orange hair with cow-licked bangs phase circa 'homogenic'.
and let's not even get into the goth/industrial phase which seemed to last for eons...
but you know, i just totally cleared up that whole chunk of timeline thanks to my current musical obsession, hercules & love affair. i found them on myspace early last year and instantly loved what i heard. at the time they hadn't released an album so i kept checking back. during one of those check-backs i took another listen and was appalled- it was just some crappy house crap! i was confused and wondered if it had been a different hercules and love affair i had heard. i shrugged it off until last week when itunes recommended it to me. at first i was like, ppfffttt! then i was like, whatevs! so i put it on my library list and it came in yesterday.
can i just say, it was like dusting off 'debut' oh so many decades ago (ok, one and a half) cos it's amazing! it's DISCO! i guess deep down under it all, i am totally into disco. and whatever cos i also currently love yodeling cowboys and french pop, old and new. when all is said and done now, if it's GOOD then i like it. how's that for subjective??
as for hercules and love affair, it's like gloria gaynor had a baby with the knife. of course, the two videos i found and added below are much more straight up disco, including the second video which is for my favoritest song on the album and is pure and total awesomeness as of 2:45. and yeah, that includes the dude who's job is solely to vogue along.
2 comments:
This was so much fun to read! It is certainly making me think about my phases life through music :)
musical taste is such an alive thing to me, always evolving but at the same time it is like friends 'make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold', i find a lot of music that i never initially gave a chance and then go back and relisten to it and find i love it, have done this with a lot of albums i have, and with me a lot of music i have listened to becomes an acquired taste, i dont like it at first but i force myself to listen to it over and over and then i find the appreciation for it, i know nato used to go into the record store and listen to an album once and decide whether he liked it or not, i could never do that, because of how many diamonds in the rough i have found over the years that i initially hated but then stormed up to number one on the 'bens top 100' for a time being, and its always nice to dust off some old classics and rediscover them, take soundgarden for example, for a period in my life i absolutely LOVED them, they were my fave band, but time moved on and i drifted away, then recently in my renewed love of rockin music i dusted off 'badmotorfinger' and gave it a listen and i was blown away at how badass it was, music never leaves us, its just sometimes i think we need a break........ love the post..... obviously considering my page long comment :)
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