people who shaped your life with their enthusiasm and stupidly huge record collections and willingness to make tapes

First: the dude who drove me to the Clash concert on the Combat Rock tour, I no longer remember his name but he liked Siouxsie and had this awesome Bush Tetras poster.

Second: Donnie who did the Pop Tones radio show on WTJU in Charlottesville Virginia back in 1982-83, this was the first place I heard The Fall, The Cocteau Twins, and Throbbing Gristle.

Third: my friend Spud in college, whose older brother later started Feel Good All Over Records and who had one of the most comprehensive post-punk collctions I have seen to this day. At age 20! I taped probably two to three hundred of his albums over the years we knew each other.

oh that quote is from the SPK thread, sorry.

Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv - C/D

Peter Lee, WMUA (UMass Amherst) DJ. In the fall of 84 he opened my eyes to a world of music I never knew existed. The few tapes of his radio show in 85 & 86 I've got still inspire me in terms of breadth and depth of selection. Without a doubt he changed my life for the better.

An ex of mine, before we ever went out - we used to be penpals. His vinyl collection was massive and included a lot of now rare Sarah/Creation/Factor y stuff. He'd make mix tapes with collage covers and send them to me every couple weeks. Everything I know about indie I owe to Max.

Sleeve, was that Donnie who later moved to Richmond and became "Donnie from Plan 9"?

First high school:

- Tim, whose sister sent mixtapes back from college: Thanks for sharing them with me, even after I accidentally hit "record" and wiped out that Psychowelders song.
- Eric, who spent summers with his dad in LA and came back ahead of the curve: Thank you for buying that Blur tape just because I was bugging you about copying it.
- Steve, from my soccer team, who sold me all his Smiths, Cure, and Bauhaus CDs: Thank you for deciding you'd get more chicks if got rid of that stuff and listened to Van Halen instead; you were probably right.

Second high school:

- Ruby and Shane, northern-Michigan slackers and brilliant bandmates: You were defiantly not good about making tapes. So I'd wait until you went downstairs for coffee ("I'm just gonna hang out up here and finish this overdub, okay?"), steal things from your shelves, and sneak them back after I'd made copies. You knew, didn't you, Ruby? I'm sorry: I had the record collection of a broke teenager, and you were in your late 20s and had a complete Cocteaus discography. Thanks for not laughing too hard when I said I couldn't tell Robin's voice apart from Liz's.
- John, bandmate and record-store clerk: Thank you for not being too avant and anti-pop to let me know I'd really like Pavement and Stereolab. I'm sorry about that time I tried to convince you the Cranberries could kinda rock.
- Louis, who kept going nuts for new, obscure alternative acts exactly two months before they broke huge (Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day, Weezer): You should have worked A&R for Geffen. But you have cred in my book, because you were right about the Swirlies being better than Ride. P.S.: Not that we weren't way better, but you guys were way underrated at the college Battle of the Bands.

i've never known anyone like this - so i sought to be this person to others, with occasional "success" (as in i turned them onto a bunch of stuff they ended up really loving)

D@ve T0ddar3llo - Did Sound Sensations Imports in the 80s and brought good music to Oberlin's radio station WOBC. Later ran the Co-Op Record Dept., and impacted pretty much every music nerd who came through town, and there were a lot of them, some of us even post on this board. The big impact came when he pulled out Thomas Leer's Contradictions and This Heat's Deceit CDs for me to listen to. Not to mention Metal Urbain's L'age D'or.

L1z - friend from summer camp who made me dozens of mixtapes between 1989 and 1995 or so. In the beginning I was the Factory Records guy and she was the 4ad girl, by the end we were both really into Skullflower. Things I first heard from her include: Big Black, Butthole Surfers, Throwing Muses, Swans, Cocteau Twins, My Dad is Dead, Crawling With Tarts, Pearls Before Swine, Leonard Cohen, Incredible String Band and others.

ned raggett

An ex of mine, before we ever went out - we used to be penpals. His vinyl collection was massive and included a lot of now rare Sarah/Creation/Factor y stuff. He'd make mix tapes with collage covers and send them to me every couple weeks. Everything I know about indie I owe to Max.

-- Trayce, Saturday, September 8, 2007 4:10 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

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sorry, to be surprised by this. . . we really are on similar frequencies. had no idea you were als into this junk, in addition to, ya know.

yeah for me it was totally radio guys, as opposed to people i knew.

Electrifyingmojo was the first, and best, the King, in terms of getting me into hip-hop and electro.

all those Canadian bastards on the CBC were next. David Wisdom on Nightlines -- my partner in the night -- on Nightlines, all those weekends when I would stay up til 4 AM listening to his show in high school. also, the whole Brave New Waves crew during the week, which was sort of catch-as-catch-can for me in those days...

Mike Halloran on WLLZ ... the first person I heard that spun Guns N Roses ("Mr. Brownstone" was the cut he played, before they really had any name at all.) also he turned me onto Talk Talk's 'Spirit of Eden'. I was already a big fan of the "Life's What You Make It" single, but when Mike played 'Spirit Of Eden' right after it came out, it totally blew me away, I'll always vividly remember the chills

Steve Cushing on Blues Before Sunrise which the Eastern Michigan University used to syndicate back in the day when i wuz all fresh-eared... man, Steve changed my life starting with his first Scrapper Blackwell interview...

but yeah, all radio for me in High School in terms of mentors. A lot of stoners who also turned me onto some 70s stuff I still cherish, like Montrose and so forth.. the rest was on my own, stealing old Deep Purple cassettes from Meijer's Thrifty Acres etc

Sleeve, was that Donnie who later moved to Richmond and became "Donnie from Plan 9"?

Yes!!! He seemed untouchably cool when I was 17, and the Plan 9 in C-ville didn't open up until I was in college. It's still there!

oh yeah , 'spud' ... Spud Henderson? hehe, his big bro still owes me a lil something, but whatever. that guy -- it's been years. I heard he got married, moved to northern MI and started a restaurant?? anyway, sweet guy and I miss him..

you are correct stormy, small world indeed. the Sugarcubes played at his wedding! (John's, not Spud's, Spud lives in Baltimore now).

can't believe ILM knows 2 out of my 3 people, if I could remember Clash dude's name somebody would probably know him also.

yeah ... sounds about right! Ziggy used to come jam on drums in the basement I shared with a good buddy of John's..

Well, thank you Andi, but personally I find it hard to believe that I've fulfilled that kind of role for anyone (as I'm sure Stormy will agree). Then again I am my own worst critic. Anyway, thank you again.

I don't know who mine are, honestly. Really nobody in high school per se, I pursued a fairly isolated path on that front -- perhaps the staff at my favorite book/record store in Coronado, but that was more in the sense of general support and discussion. By senior year when I was starting to purchase and explore music more thoroughly than ever before I did so following random recommendations and impulses rather than through the focus of any one person, and once in college and starting to work at KLA, I had even more resources to play around with and learn from, and more people to draw recommendations from as a result, but no one key figure in particular who was directly in my life.

If I had to name anyone, it would be Ira Robbins, since the third edition of the Trouser Press guide was extremely important for me when it came out in 1989 in placing a lot of obscure bands in a larger context, as well as just mentioning them to me in the first place. No question about the enthusiasm and the huge record collection, at least! So I'll say him.

if i ever get around to industrial music in earnest i certainly have you to thank. quite a schooling!
had a girlfriend who made me a tape of all kinds of awesome stuff, i still play that despite the hearttugging nostalgia of it all. yoko ono, al green, junior mafia, billie holiday, otis redding, a really sweet, warm little mix. she was absolutely not an annoying hipster fuck. she got me to give ol dirty bastard's first album a try (he was my least favorite wu based on the debut for some reason, i was smoking the good shit obv.). cut and paste: a white girl from the valley got me into ol' dirty bastard.

I had a friend named n@ki@ who had a terrible sound system in his car that made everything from ice cube to squirrel nut zippers sound insanely raggedy and brilliant, god bless bad car tape decks, the only way to hear certain albums. he had ok taste on the whole, and learnt me some guitar also.
there was this other dude named dave in college whose house everyone went to cos he had a big music room where he played guitar and drums and other neato stuff and his collection wasn't big but he let me borrow the white album, which sent me off on the cliche beatle odyssey for the next couple years. shortly after he had a nervous breakdown or something and shut pretty much everyone out of his life, wouldn't return phone calls, so i got to keep the album too(don't mean to sound callous, he ws cool before but whatta ya gonna do?)
mostly I was this person for other people except for the shaping their life part(ok i've hit a few bullseyes). i get really haughty and sullen when people don't warm to my mixtapes and never do one for them again even if they ask me so i think there's some warped douchey ego thing going into them that's probably not healthy or cool.

I credit much of the joy of my teenage years to various college radio DJ's, some of whom it turned out in later years were far less passionate about music and/or liberal politics than I am. I can't really name any one of them to be necessarily more important than the other, either, I'm afraid. There were too many.

What sticks out in my mind, though, completely at random, is this one guy I barely knew who was at least ten years older than I and did a show I barely listened to who was the only one I found who could possibly help me investigate Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel in the way I was so desperately desiring circa '96. The cassette compilation he made me of their work was something I couldn't get from anyone else and had things I'd have to drive a few hours to find even just on vinyl, if I was lucky.

Anyway that post was supposed to follow Ned's, but a xpost happened. No offense tremendoid.

Eric Lumbleau and Matt Castille of Vas Deferens Organization and Mutant Sounds. Amazing musicians with awesome record collections -- and generous with their resources.

never had friends into music.
still dont. (present company excepted of course!)
my early education was all john peel based, who of course had a rather solid record collection.

my high school friend ferisa, she got me into the beatles when i was stuck on dylan. i remember her lending me the white album and writing down the names of the songs that she liked for me. it was like fifteen songs. i lost touch with her about a year after she switched high schools in eleventh grade, and she killed herself in late 2005. i loved her.

When I met my friend Patrick, I was listening to top 40 pop, mostly Madonna, Michael Jackson, and hair metal like Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, and Survivor. Patrick didn't have a stupidly huge record collection at first (who does in 8th grade?), but as his collection and interests grew he kept feeding me tapes and new suggestions---at first it was a steady diet of Beatles, then the Stones, Hendrix and Zeppelin, and later stuff like Tim Buckley, Donovan, Pink Floyd. I played the heck out of tapes he gave me of MBV and early 90s American indie---Superchunk, Eugenius, Unrest, as well as U2 b-sides and REM bootlegs. By 1993-4 it was Britpop: Suede, Blur, Oasis, SFA, and Pulp, in particular. Later still it was Elephant 6 stuff, Tropicalia, and "freak folk" (don't know what else to call that, stuff like No Neck Blues Band and Feathers). I found my own way into hip-hop, and then country and folk music, early in the 90s, and that led me into dancier realms (various breeds of techno and bluegrass) than he's ever seemed to be interested in. We both seem to have found our way into jazz on our own, and converged there. But I still get the CD equivalent of tapes from him that open my eyes, and for that I'm grateful.

also, an audio collage musique concrete show called "the outhouse" on wvum around 2002-2004. that was the first time i saw what radio could be.

jeff miller, my boss at the record shop i worked at in high school, who told me i'd like both syd barrett and the flaming lips, but also taped the clash and the sex pistols.

bernadette o'donnell, who's still one of my best friends, who turned me onto sonic youth, sleater-kinney and fugazi, after i was listening to rancid and green day.

april russell, pen pal who i've not heard from in years, who sent me a mix tape with the stooges, the replacements, tom waits, brian wilson and lou reed on it, which changed my life.

mark seiler, who has since passed away, who schooled me in techno and pop and hip hop and weirdness.

Oktay, you just moved across the Atlantic -and so will I shortly- but I can still thank you for asking me to make backup tapes of your crazy garage/punk/bubblegum 7inch collection and other would-kill-for rarities back in the day.

Ed Dread. White guy, a banker but the biggest roots fan I ever knew. Took me to Sunsplash in '84. Yellowman came out of a helicopter to headline. Bought 12" dub singles from SCIENTIST who was behind the counter at Jack Ruby's shop in Ocho Rios. Ed was the only person I ever knew who would possibly know what Scientist looks like.

My freshman year of high school I had one of my first real crushes on this girl Allie who then started to burn me CDs by The Microphones and The Notwist and Four Tet, while my friend and bandmate Jim got me listening to Fugazi and Pavement. It was like all of a sudden a whole new world was opened up to me.

Two guys who I worked with at a comic book store when I was 15-16. One dude, Geoff, was a punker (looked exactly like Stinky from Hate) and I went with him to my first show Melvins/Beat Happening/Unwound @ the Great American Music Hall. Never actually saw his record collection, but he was a good friend for a time and got me excited about music in general. Other dude, Howard, was like a god to 15 year old me. Had like a thousand some odd records (which at the time seemed almost ridiculous and now seems quaint) and got me into everything from Sonic Youth to the Fall to Love to PIL. He was generous making tapes and allowed me to raid his cool record collection. I still see him around as he lives just down the block from my folks.

Bill Burton and the other DJs in the early 80s at WXYC, the UNC Chapel Hill student station. It was brillant no format radio. After that schooling my ears were open.

stealing old Deep Purple cassettes from Meijer's Thrifty Acres etc

-- Stormy Davis,

haha, "Meijer Thrifty A-Acres / Why pay more?" I don't think that slogan was intended as an invitation to steal, exactly!

Detroit nostalgia - can't get enough of it

nick for getting me into nirvana in 7th grade

joe for getting me into minor threat in 9th grade

ian for getting me into dr. dre in 11th grade

abe for getting me into the meters freshman year of college

this board for everything else

Alice, you was my pen-friend and best friend when I was 17. I'm sorry we lost touch. You were right about university.

This is a great thread, btw.

My oldest brother immediately comes to mind, responsible for exposing all kinds of great stuff to me during my early teens right up to the present: 80s Sonic Youth, Olivia Tremor Control, John Fahey, Neil Young, the Cure, Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh, the Grifters, Slint, loads of free jazz, Coltrane, Ornette, Julius Hemphill, hell even the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Hendrix when I was about 13. I also still have the Journey in Satchidananda tape he made me when I was in junior high. To this day, there are albums that I'm not familiar with in his collection that he'll pull out for me.

The roles are a little switched now, as I've got no kids and can thus spend more money on new records, more time researching new and old stuff, and I bounce back with him about 80% of the new stuff I acquire. I don't listen to much stuff without also wondering what he might think of it.

I have to mention one of my other brothers, too, who stopped collecting music years ago but was responsible for showing me a lot of my still-favorite albums and artists when we were both in high school: Endtroducing, Aphex Twin, Tom Waits, Brian Eno, Bob Dylan.

i wish i had had someone like this. i had to start all my music appreciation from scratch.

You kids are making me feel really old.

Oh well.

Lazaros – Who somehow managed the nigh impossible feat of getting this here once and former KISS fanatic to actually listen to something else—i.e., Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith—way back in 1978. He also took me to my first ever rock concerts: Beatlemania, back in ’78 or so; and Pink Floyd, on their The Wall tour, around 1980.

My cousin Ioannis – Who was responsible for introducing me to the ever so pretentious likes of the Doors, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Santana, Blackmore’s Rainbow, etc., circa 1979 - 80. Thanx a heap, cuz!

Marsh, Christgau, Bangs, Marcus, Reynolds and Eddy – For pretty much everything else I got into from 1981 – 91.

Meijer's Thrifty Acres

aka Meijer's Shifty Fakers...speaking of the detroit area my last roomate in ann arbor was my boss from the record store -- hey bob! -- who had the awesomest jazz collection, thousands and thousands of records lining every wall of his apt. only lived there my last semester in 1980 but what an education. every nite after finishing my homework hah I'd select 2-3 LPs to explore, sometimes running a tape more often just listening. he had tons of free jazz stuff on euro labels etc and dozens of Sun Ra LPs on Saturn. thanks dude!

couple months after that I moved to NYC and got schooled in contemporary R&B/disco/reggae/rap by the late great DJ Frankie Crocker on WBLS. making tapes of his shows never occured to me then, it was part of the atmorphere, but I'd love to hear one now. radio in new york was pretty great then, you also had hip-hop pioneer Mr. Magic and veteran reggae DJ Gil Bailey broadcasting every week. they formed my tastes.