Post a response to this discussion thread
1. Did you decide on your musical tastes by yourself, or did something influence you?
I'm quite sure both are true in every person's case. Interestingly, I grew up in a household with two parents that were born in the 30s and they didn't listen to music very much at all -- usually the only time they turned the radio on was for news. They were heavy churchgoers, though, so I got a huge dose of black gospel as a child. I got a radio when I was 6 or 7 and basically I could listen to whatever I wanted. The only local radio station was country, so I listened to it quite often. We were located halfway between Birmingham and Atlanta and could pick up stations in both markets equally as well, so I got to be quite a channel flipper. My brother is younger and I never really had any friends, so there wasn't a lot of peer pressure. So basically by the time I got to the age most kids start choosing their own music, I had a huge, diverse musical background, from country to blues to gospel to what would become classic rock to dance and disco to that newfangle New Wave stuff that would become the most influencing factor of my life. Funny you mention Blondie: that was my first favorite group, along with Kiss.
2. If you were influenced, what was the main influence? Peer pressure? Father figure?
Mmm, think I mostly just answered this. Definitely neither peer pressure nor father figure (I have never known my father to listen to music outside of church), although obviously my "peers" introduced me to new stuff I'd never heard of before, then and now. But you pretty much decide what sounds good yourself (you may go through a phase in which you claim you like something because everybody else does, but that doesn't mean you really like it), and much like what tastes good and what looks good, there's just too many environmental and genetic factors involved to say anything really leads the average person to liking some kind of music (unless you grow up in a highly musically inclined family, like your father is Steve Tyler or something).
3. Have you ever beenm persecuted for your musical choice?
God, yes. Black people don't listen to rock! (Never mind Jimi Hendrix...) I was consistently torn to pieces both by other blacks and whites for listening to the "wrong kind of music" while I was growing up. I mean, DAILY. But peer pressure has almost never had any effect on me, so I kept right on listening to what I like to listen to (which is usually something psychedelic, regardless of broad genre: psychedelic rap, psychedelic rock, psychedelic blues, psychedelic classical, psychedelic country... okay, so that last one probably doesn't exist...)
4. What's the one album/song that you bought that you want to now use as target shooting practice?
Except for my #2 song of 2002 "Second Time Trader" (which I bought it for), Archer Prewitt's last album was pretty weak. Interestingly, there are very few CDs from the 80s that I have that I don't any longer like (although from the 90s, there's a Queensryche album I could do without... except for "Empire" itself, of course).
Post a response to this discussion thread