"What year did you realize music is the best thing? Does every song from that year sound good to you? How old were you?"

above questions posed on Whiney's twitter, thought it would make a good thread (his answer was "1988, age 8").

it was probably age 4 or 5 but all i remember hearing then is oldies.

Who is Whiney?

who are you?

Whiney G. Weingarten is the screen name of Chris Weingarten, who is taking a break from ILX right now but usually posts here frequently.

I definitely liked music a lot as a little kid but I don't feel like, as far as what this question's asking, that I really felt like that until 1992, when I was 10 and started buying CDs and having favorite bands and stuff. I was gonna say that a lot of that music has dated too much to still sound good, but looking at stuff from that year now, I still do enjoy most of it.

Then again, I bought Def Leppard's Adrenalize that year, so not everything has aged well.

i guess the first cds i bought were like "the sign" and "dookie" and i don't really fuck w/those anymore.

Aged 11/12 - 2000. Listened to Trevor Nelson/Tim Westwood/Chris Goldfinger/The Dreem Team (Teem?) religiously and love turn of the century rap and r&b and 2step/garage pretty much more than any other music. Coincided with my sister travelling halfway around the world for 6 months and inheriting her CDs (most notably Life After Death and CrazySexyCool).

who are you?

it's all good, i was just checkin

welcome!

it was probably age 4 or 5 but all i remember hearing then is oldies.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, September 1, 2009 8:53 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Thanks, I quite like it here. Actually I already introduced myself a few weeks ago on one of the "introduce yourself" threads.

In answer to the thread header, the time for me was 1978 when I was 11. At that time I started listening to Kraftwerk and Genesis (I bought The Man Machine and And Then There Were Three at age 11 when they first came out) and never looked back.

it was probably age 4 or 5 but all i remember hearing then is oldies.

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, September 1, 2009 8:53 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― fo shza my tza (Curt1s Stephens), Tuesday, September 1, 2009 2:02 PM (44 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the year from which every song sounds good, for me, is 1995 (age eleven).

1978 had its moments for me as regards the charts, but it was 1979 when the charts just exploded in all directions with talent and creativity.

A related thread:

The music from your teen years will remain the best music ever for the rest of your life. Right or wrong?

1990, aged 9 - before that I found the concept of music (limited to school choir stuff) really quite tedious and had no interest in pop. Christmas 1989 I received a record of children's radio music recorded between 1920-1960 and as such learnt how to use the turntable. I also received a small radio on which I soon discovered local pop broadcasts and later Radio 1.

I believe the first record I bought for myself was Now!17, around the following Easter.

I remember being amazed by TOTP, my Dad poitning out that that Maria McKee Days Of Thunder song was "the biggest selling song in Britain. After that, I followed the chart countdown like a hawk and by the summer had developed an almost autistic ability to reel off the top ten or twenty records of the week.

Being 9-years old I was drawn in by a lot of the novelty hits on the radio - "Thunderbirds Are Go!", "Move It Up and Wear It Out", "Charly", "Spin That Wheel (Turtles Get Real)". I also loved dance and rave - "Dub Be Good To Me" was probably the first song I ever got truly obsessed with and I remember getting very upset when it became dislodged by Snap's "The Power".

The "ITV Chart Show" and hip children's serial programmes like "The 8:15 From Manchester" were important in my musical upbringing. I remember Clint Boon showing kids how he played "This Is How It Feels" on a two-tier Hammond. Great stuff.

Is it still the best music ever? No way! But while I guess older people will look back on that time as being a bit rubbish for pop, for a kid like me it was brilliant - the charts were awash with Trips to Trumpton, LFOs and Tricky Discos and I even reserved Smash Hits every fortnight from the newsagents ("Woooo! Yeah! Repeat 16 times" etc). I was conscious of things like the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays being around but they were way too drab and po-faced for me back then. The SAW stuff I wasn't too keen on either, but I happily listened to anything on the radio, as back then my ear was a lot less discerning.

My idol was Adamski and I wanted to play keyboards in a band. For about three years I think that's all I wanted to do. Then I got some keyboards and only really ever learnt to play a couple of things (including "Cubik/Olympic" by 808 State).

i got excited about it pretty young. when Bruce & Prince & MJ & Madonna & Culture Club & Van Halen etc. (82-84) were making big moves i really started paying attention.

but even before that i remember the Eagles, Sylvia, Kenny Rogers, Christopher Cross, etc. on my parents AOR & pop country stations and thinking all that stuff was pretty cool, too. i don't think i was even in kindergarten yet.

1991

specifically, the minute i first heard this, the first song i HAD to hear again and again and again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGXxcSdsXJ4

1984, the Annus Mirabilis.

I was around 9 or 10, so 1978/79. My parents got my sister and I each a boombox that year, and I used to get up every Sunday morning and record "American Top 40" on cassette, then listen to the songs I liked over and over. Definitely not everything from those years still sounds good to me, but I still do listen to some of it.

i think until 1995 i'd sort of separated 'music as a social activity' (e.g. liking Take That as a necessary condition of membership for my group of friends in primary school, listening to Capital Radio and knowing what songs people would dance to at birthday parties) and 'music as a personal joy' (mostly listening to records i found at home, first my parents' record collection but also a box of cds left over from a school jumble sale, which contained like two 808 state albums i couldn't quite get over). 1995 was the year when i managed to understand that 'new music' and 'music i love' and 'music i can talk about with other people' could all be the same thing.

I always liked music as a kid but it didn't get real until I was maybe 11 or so, round '91. The Dre/Snoop era.

Nah more like '92.

1982 was my awakening to pop music, and I loved much of what happened in 1983-1986 but I don't think I realized it was "the best thing" until 1987 with Document, The Joshua Tree, and Sign O' The Times, when I'd turned 13.

I was around 9 or 10, so 1978/79. My parents got my sister and I each a boombox that year, and I used to get up every Sunday morning and record "American Top 40" on cassette, then listen to the songs I liked over and over. Definitely not everything from those years still sounds good to me, but I still do listen to some of it.

So OTM

I found some old cassette tapes recently where I recorded myself listening to the Top 40 with Casey Kasem and recorded my 6 year old self singing along with the 1980 countdown. Hilarious, but also the appropriate answer to this question. 1980. was me growing up on the likes of late era disco, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, Diana Ross, etc. Additionally, I recall riding around in my dad's truck listening to his 8 tracks of Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Crystal Gayle, Captain and Tenille, and Hank Williams.

In answer to the second question posed by the thread title, clearly not everything I've found from 1980 sounds good to me. But a lot of it does hold a special place in my heart. Even stuff like Anne Murray, John Denver, and that ilk that I recall from Mom's (ch)easy listening station in the car holds some sway with my emotions given the right situation.

Something something about childhood memories follows here, but not sure what else to say.

I was vaguely aware of various pop songs in the 1980s and even had a handful of cassettes (Michael Jackson, Milli Vanilli, Tiffany, etc.), but it wasn't until the summer of 1990 (I was 11) that I got really into "keeping up with" music -- listening to it on the radio, watching music-video programs, following the Billboard charts, buying sheet music of songs so I could play them on the piano, etc. Everything kind of followed from there.

1971/2 aged 11 T.Rex (and Chicory Tip)

1975 circa A Night at The Opera by Queen.

'77. pretty much. 13. KISS.

1982, Men At Work's Business As Usual. I was 9, and that was the first step from my parent's and sister's music to my own.

1979

I was 13

'80, i was 5. and yes.

not sure about this at all. i think i had an interest in music even as a kid, but that revelatory moment probably came when i first heard Nevermind, which was probably as late as 1995, which would make me nine years old. and yes, Nevermind and mid 90's pop chart top hits still sounds pretty good to me. not great.

My parents were vivid record buyers. Music was always around, like furniture. Maybe because of that, i didn't deem it special. When my parents gave me my own record player, family members donated all their singles. I soon had my favorites, but listening to music was still just an activity, something you could decide to do, just like making a drawing or a puzzle or playing with toys. This is middle seventies. Later I started to watch music programs on the telly, because the charts were a topic often discussed in the schoolyard. When Kate Bush debuted with Wuthering Heights, it was the buzz of the day. Did you see that wacky woman? She was scary! Again I had my favorites, which I bought on single, or not. It was still just something to do, a means to past time. That all changed in 1980 when I saw Adam and the Ants perform Ant Music. I really came to an upward position in my chair. The music, the images, it excited me greatly. I scribbled down the name and begged my parents to buy me the album. I wasn't interested in getting a single anymore. I had to know what the other songs sounded like. I just had to. I was nine.

A lot of my favorites from those days don't mean a thing to me anymore. But I still consider Adam Ant to be great. Even more so know - now that I can compare it to contemporaries and give it context - then back in the day. The same applies to Kate Bush.

1991, when I was 6 and my parents got a copy of Out of Time. I made them play "Shiny Happy People" over and over and over and over and over again.

Listening to early 70s AM radio at summer camp. I was 10.

1975, when I was 17. Except for a handful (Roxy Music, Steely Dan, Springsteen, Patti Smith, a few others), almost everything I remember from 1975 sucked. I spent most of the next two years, until punk hit, catching up with the fifties and sixties.

there are various possible answers -- the year my dad gave me his castoff copy of meet the beatles would be one -- but music really came alive for me as something outside the bounds of my parents' records in 1979, when i was 9. it was when we moved to england for about 6 months and i started watching top of the pops every week. i didn't love everything, but i loved a lot of it: "are friends electric," "heart of glass," "sunday girl," "i will survive," "roxanne," "i can't stand losing you," "i don't like mondays," the flying lizards' version of "money," "cracking up" by nick lowe, "ring my bell," "we are family," "pop muzik," "bright eyes" by art garfunkel (also loved the watership down movie). and this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJkrA6DtDgQ

anyway, when we came back to the states my sister and i pretty quickly discovered casey kasem and started listening to the show every week and arguing about which songs should go to #1. and 1979 does still seem like a pretty great year to me, yesh.

I think I was three, so 1978. LOL @ "every song."

when I was a kid i carried a transistor radio with me everywhere, loved "Satisfaction", "Sunshine Superman", "Surfin' USA", etc

wait a minute, a lot of you guys realized that "music is the BEST thing" before turning 10??? that just seems really wow to me. i mean, i was nuts about comics and tv and kung fu and biking and skateboarding and s-f as a pre-teen, but music was just kinda something that i'd occasionally have to put up with via my older sister's addiction to Soul Train and American Bandstand. far out.

Age 8 or 9: I'm at my friend's house, his older sister is doing homework and listening to the radio, she's got this sheaf of papers with her and every time a song comes on she looks it up and puts a tally mark next to it. I now realize this was horrible aspie's/ocd behavior but I thought it was cool. I was already a dedicated American Top 40 listener so I started to make my own tally mark sheets. Soon graduated to making my own Top 100 list of favorite songs, revising it periodically and having huge arguments with myself about relative placements of various tunes even during the school day. "December 1963 (Oh What a Night)" was pretty much always #1 as soon as I heard it but "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Have You Seen Her" and "Ballroom Blitz" and "Magic Man" and "Love Rollercoaster" all threatened it periodically. Kept this up for longer than I would admit to most people.

I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't think music was the best thing. But I guess I didn't start obsessing about it until '87 or '88.

With only the occasional backburner interruption, music's largely been my thing since I was a toddler, apparently, altho I can't recall much before the age of four. 1971 was a pretty fuggin' great year, so yeah, pretty much everything from around that time still sounds great to me. Much of it I didn't hear until years later, of course; but of the stuff I distinctly recall hearing while still on the charts, "Family Affair", "Theme from 'Shaft'", "Rock and Roll" and "Troglodyte" particularly made an impression. Plus I owned about a dozen then-contemporary singles by the time I was five.

Moment of ecstasy: Visiting the older (7 or 8) girl next door, dancing rocking out to "Yo-Yo" (Osmonds) while she and her girl friends raved about David Cassidy.

haha, that's awesome. i didn't own a single record til i was 12 or so (hi, Olivia!). man, i feel deprived.

It would have been late 81/early 82. Aged about 11 I think. I remember watching Solid Gold and Dance Fever obsessively, keeping up with the charts. I can remember my first radio, this little orange thing from Radio Shack - and taking control of the radio in the car with a proprietal air. We had crappy Connecticut radio stations, but at night I could pick up NYC radio stations and they were AMAZING.

A lot of that music sounds *terrible* to me now. The production is just awful, that tinny over-compressed sound that sounds good on an AM radio but sounds just awful on anything else.

But it's just weird how, even today, I still know the words to things like, Juice Newton and Air Supply and I don't really know why.

Age 4 I was differentiating between songs I did and didn't like on the TV and radio. Age 6 I was thinking "hey wouldn't it be cool to be in a band". Age 8/9 was the tipping point where music became absolutely the centre of my life, obsessively recording songs off the radio, etc..

but I've had subsequent mini-musical epiphanies tied to specific years

1972 -- philly soul, mellow radio pop, hard rock and glam

1977 -- p-u-n-k

1981 -- post-disco & early rap = boombox music

1984 -- new pop & mtv

way overdue for a new year of miracle music. ah I guess it's a youthful phenom. as it should be.

I used to listen to Wolfman Jack under the covers, small transistor radio, etc.

I think I have a very poor quality recording of one of those shows on cassette.

1982, i think -- age 11

top 40, taping songs off the radio

I reached my peak for recording stuff off the radio in 1986, age, 12, when I made a mix tape that was just (apart Bruno Brookes being cut off in mid sentence) the PSB's "It's A Sin", over and over, because I was obsessed with the song.

1972, yes - pretty much all of it, age 7

Key moments: "Virginia Plain" on the radio, Nilsson's "Without You" on Top of the Pops

I think Nilsson's "Without You" and Middle of the Road's "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" were the first songs to have an emotional impact on me - about the same in each case, actually. I was obsessed with Abba from age 8 but 1979 (when I turned 11) seems to be The Year. Someone posted a UK Top 40 from that year on here recently and it was about as evocative a list of records as I can imagine - Roxy, Dave Edmunds, Chic, Blondie, er, Patrick Hernandez... The first LP I loved from beginning to end was probably The Human League's Travelogue in 1980.

Damn - xp!

Kate, not really. I did hang out with Tom Barman, snorting copious amounts of coke and giggling at the losers, after their debut show. He named dEUS' record, "Worst Case Scenario", after yours truly. Yep. When I was in my early teens, this was of course way before the dEUS thing, I hosted a pirate show on rubber boat floating on the North Sea. Peel took his lessons from my mistakes. I do not regret doing'em. Heck, Peel wouldn't be as perfect as he was thanks to me.

Then I had a brief spell following Bros around. This was purely to blend in, to hang out with my peers. I quickly realized the errors of my ways and converted to my father's gang, The Northern Soul snobs.

(Forgive the chronological errors, I was on Fanta Lemon most of the time.)

1984, aged 6. the year seemingly every song on the radio was so good that you didn't mind hearing them 400 times per day.

Before I turned about seven, most of the music would sound otherworldly because I did not comprehend the English language. I turned on the television, noticed subtitling, connected the dots (or rather words) and realized that Abba was not doing this freakout glossolalia blabla letsalltrip on Swedish designer drugs but were talking about HEARTACHE. Seemed even more confusing so I turned to John Cage.

lolz at stevienixed's one-upmanship

I can't remember the exact year, I saw the video for Rapper's Delight and Rapture. After I saw them I said up late every friday night to watch music videos. I think this was before mtv.

^^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-9xVwF5RCo

Late 78/79. Rat Trap by the Boomtown Rats (which I now dislike) and that sax break on Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick by Ian Dury (which I still adore) on Top of the Pops blew my tiny mind. I don't think I missed one episode of TOTP or one Radio 1 Top 40 countdown through the whole of 79 (apart from when my family went on holiday). I was 8/9.

PiL's "Public Image" fucking terrified me.

When I was a kid (early seventies) we traveled a LOT, usually in a station wagon loaded with 8-track tapes. My earliest musical memory is being about three years old, we stayed at a little red cottage on a river in Tennessee. I remember hearing "Walk Away Renee" by the Left Banke and I knew I wanted to collect 45s when I was old enough to get an allowance.

January 1990

Great question, but I don't really know, to be honest.

lol I was just listening to a bunch of Madonna songs that were on heavy rotation on MTV when I was just starting to watch that channel compulsively (Express Yourself, Cherish, Oh Father). I was 8 or 9 at that time, and they all sounded fantastic.

First song I remember loving was "We Didn't Start the Fire" which hit #1 in US in Dec 89, so at the risk of sounding like I'm trying to one up dog latin, that's when I'll date the start of my fixation

they all still sound fantastic, those Madonna songs

i can pinpoint it quite precisely. i had no interest in pop music as a kid outside of what my parents played in the car. i got a radio for xmas '89, started listening to R4 for some reason but quickly switched to local radio. by easter i was pretty much obsessed with the charts, recording them every week and watching totp.

also, now reading through the whole of the thread, I def used to listen to the top 40 radio programs on Sunday morning during a large part of my childhood. I didn't tape them too often but I often would write them down in a notebook somewhere

lol xp

late 80s MTV kid here, too. my favorites were talking heads - once in a life time, rem, madonna, grove is in the heart, we didn't start the fire, and love shack. i would've been 6 around then. i became obsessed with the talking heads after seeing that video but never got to hear that song again until the internet came around.

around then i became obsessed with listening to music on the radio. as i got a little older i'd explore the dial and one day ended up on wfmu. it was all over by then.

yazz, the only way is up, which was produced by.. coldcut??? wtf

i wasn't born when it came out though, can't quite work out what year it was, i remember hearing that song while playing with one of those kids chemistry sets

the first song I remember loving unequivocally was dub be good to me by beats international

1966. I was 8. Monkees TV series led me to the radio. I don't have a whole lot of affection for, say, "Ballad of the Green Berets" but overall just about any single from then still sounds amazing to me. Fantastic year for pop music.

My mom tells me that I used to flip out in the car when I heard the guitar solo in "Sultans of Swing" on the radio when I was a little kid, so I'm going with 1979 or so? I was 4. After that I started saving up to buy my own records around 1980 or so? Honestly I don't remember. I was a little kid. Does every song from that year sound good to me? Not really, no.

believe it or not I was about 6 and I heard Brain Salad Surgery for the first time, thanks Dad (year was '92, i suppose)

There were two moments really. The first was in 1977 when I was 8, and I heard "Oxygene 4" and "Magic fly". Everything before that had been guitar based, I'd never heard anything completely electronic and I knew that was MY music and I wanted more of it. (I'm pretty sure both songs were on the same episode of TOTP, fans of the reruns may be able to confirm this). The second point was hearing "Genetic engineering" by OMD, which would be 30 years ago this month. I'd been listening to the charts avidly for two or three years but something about that song just clicked in my head and made me want to buy it. I'd got my first record player a few months before, so I waited until HMV opened a store in Cardiff (my nearest city) in late April 83 and bought "Dazzle ships" as my first album. It was a magical time in my mind - a lot of good songs in the top 40, discovering Radio Luxembourg around the same time and that expanded my musical outlook, and of course being 13 there was my first (unrequited) love. Throw all that together, add in ASD which would go undiagnosed for another 25 years, and you've got me obsessed with music and girls and remembering far too much detail. It only took the discovery of the music press and John Peel later in the year to complete the picture.

Great question, but I don't really know, to be honest.

― they all are afflicted with a sickness of existence (Scik Mouthy), Friday, February 8, 2013 4:29 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ What he said! I honestly couldn't pinpoint an exact moment. Music has always had a big role in my life for pretty much as long as I can remember. The fact that I had music-loving parents helped.

I started having 'favorite records' when I was about 7 - before that it was just The Beatles and Sesame Street records - that all changed with a yard sale copy of lol Songs from the Wood. And I had this instinctive desire from a young age to hear medieval instruments like shawms and sackbuts, and things like Moog synthesizers. I remember asking for records of those when i was idk 8 or 9.

But for the thread question there were two eureka years: first 1981 (I was 11), which was when I started listening to FM radio every second I could and v specifically having favorite songs which changed every week, and then early 1985 when I got four SST albums (specif My War, New Day Rising, Double Nickels, Up on the Sun) which I would listen to on my paper route every day, and at the same time got my first bunch of UK haircut things like Porcupine, Low-Life, The Top while still being intensely into Thomas Dolby and Prince.

I guess both explosion years were technology-driven? 1981 - my first decent sounding record player-radio in my room whoa FM radio sounds really amazing all of a sudden! 1985 - I has a walkman cassette.

Almost everything from 1981 has an aura of magic to my ears even now, yes. I think it's more than conditioning, that really was an awesome pop time. 1985 is more of a crap shoot for me today.

hint that I was ripe for takeover: ongoing Beatles obsession after seeing A Hard Day's Night in Sept 1975 (aged 12)

music becomes my fave thing: Sept 1980 (aged 17) listening over and over (thanks to Lou Stathis and Tuxedomoon) to Pink Floyd's Ummagumma, specifically "Astronomy Domine", before I'd heard Syd himself. soon after that I bought many Brian Eno albums, which sealed the deal. 1980 music is a peak for me, especially Eno that year.

music takes over life: Jan 1982 (aged 18) 3rd listen to a twice borrowed LP of Wire's 154 (took months to land my own copy). that Christmas break I'd bought Unknown Pleasures/Closer/Red Mecca in one go! and my next LPs found/bought after that 154 hearing were: Godbluff/Soon Over Babaluma/Correct Use Of Soap/Rock Bottom so I was either blessed or doomed, depending on how you look at it.

earliest memory of music is playing "Witch Doctor" over and over. which imprinted and informed my love of weird sounds forever.

but pop/rock was the late-70s/early-80s so many others in the thread.
American Top 40 ever Sat morning. Pop Muzik by M and Le Freak by Chic were favorite 45s.

the song that made me realise i loved music was shanice's "i love your smile" - the very first song i NEEDED to hear again and again and use like crack. at that age i wasn't actually aware that you could buy music in shops, and no one troubled to tell me, so i used to sit next to the radio frantically flicking through the stations in the hope of coming upon it. i think that's why i now hate the radio.

the first song i remember hating was queen's "bohemian rhapsody", not long afterwards. gave me the creeps. still does. repellent on a very fundamental level.

My earliest memory: bewitched by the bass and odd guitar-gremlin sounds on Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams."

First single bought with own money: Eurythmics' "Here Comes the Rain Again"

First album: Wham!'s Make It Big

Serious musicphilia: taping songs from Top 40 in '87 and '88.

I started buying albums around 1996, starting with the Smashing Pumpkins. My first musical love was Total Eclipse of the Heart, but when I was a kid I had a weird embarrassment about music. To confess to liking a song, much less buying an album, seemed way too personal and exposing.

I was obsessed with MTV, records and tapes from the time I was 3 or 4. I can't remember a time when things have been any different.

Maybe 2/3's of the songs I remember listening to then ('83/'84) still sound good to me.

'84. "Careless Whisper" and "Method of Modern Love" were on the radio a lot.

I think I was 10 years old when I really started listening to music, as opposed to just hearing music, if you know what I'm saying. The first proper band I liked was The Cure.

But since I was born, my father and uncle were big music fans. They listened to all the stuff hipsters and music lovers listened to and much more. So what I mean is I grew up listening to Bauhaus records one day, Madonna records another, and Rush records on another. Both had very eclectic taste and had a large collection of music that I would randomly pick ever since I can remember. I had always heard of The Cure, for example, but one day when I was 10, the music bug just bit me.

3 years old, listening to Vivaldi and Bach on repeat saying "listen! listen!", mystified by the big sigma logo on all the Erato records

6 years old, learning every word to every song on Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams"

9 years old, "It takes a nation of millions" dubbed on a tape by an older kid

Diminishing returns since then

There was also a day in my mid-20s when I realized music was the worst and I stopped listening to it

When I was very young, I happened upon my dad's vinyl collection. It wasn't much - maybe several dozen - but I started to play them. Dad was a pre-boomer but his collection was a mash of people playing the Peppermint Twist which I was not sure was about the song, a venue or both. As well as some folk stuff from The Brothers Four. I gravitated towards the stuff that I imagine a lot of really young (I'm talking 7-8 years old) kids liked - things that were especially catchy, repetitive and (at least this foretold my eventual musical taste) bombastic. I found it especially relevant at the time that my dad had the record which would become the Sesame Street theme song - not the actualy song but the "rockin'" version that the show would adopt. For this alone, I thought dad was the coolest guy in the world.

[Interestingly, I have no recollections of dad actually playing his own records ever. Part of this was mom who abhorred all kinds of music. This sounds odd but I remember my best friend in HS asking her about this and she was very matter-of-fact about it: It was all noise. Even a movie with a soundtrack that was too audible would turn her off from an otherwise perfectly good flick.

Additionally apparently the first thing that I, as a dutiful child, destroyed - or at least the most expensive or had the most meaning to dad - was his HiFi (his words). Supposedly at the age of 3/4/5 I went about ripping out all of the wires out of his system, rendering it useless.

Though all that said, based on how he really let himself go nuts after the kids grew up and mom died, I think none of that mattered as much as being a "good" father meant he had to stop spending time or money on many things that ran counter to being daddy. I remember the last time we drove to a Giants game together I put The Monks CD in the car and he really enjoyed it.]

Of course, one can only get so much bombast out of the Brothers Four... My next musical memories were a little afterwards when I was in the early grades of school listening to the dreadful AOR of the time that WNEW at 660 AM played though that was set up by two particularly poignant moments which I have wrote about on this forum before and will therefore self-plagiarize:

As a very young child in Hollis, Queens, I was in the middle of the disco era. I decided that I, like all of my black classmates (I was the only white kid in my class at PS 35) liked disco music.

A next door friend, Clifford, whose mom worked in some capacity for ABKCO Records at the time (she used to show off signed Rolling Stones contracts to friends to impress them) heard that I was into disco and he was offended. He, four years older and far wiser, was a rock fan and he was going to make me one as well.

Cliff dragged me into his house and made me listen to the LPs that he and his older brother had. It was then that I heard stuff for the first time, stuff like Yes "Roundabout" and Led Zeppelin "Stairway To Heaven" and even the B-52's "Rock Lobster" which the 10-year old me adored (as does the 42 year old me) and made me walk away happy to say "Disco Sucks" before it was a cliche, ironic, or wrong.

Not long afterwards, I was prone to strange hobbies, such as listening to AM radio late at night and trying to see how far away the radio stations were (I was always thrilled when I heard a Canadian station).

I was also somewhat OCD and loved lists even at an early age. So listening to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem was something I got into the habit of doing at a young age. Naturally, I kept a book where I counted down along with Casey, keeping meticulous record of chart movement, debuts and weeks on the chart.

(I was ignorant that I could have bugged dad for a subscription to Billboard Magazine which would have had all I craved and even more.)

This was all taking place in the early '80s. I remember just about every song on this list and this list with alarming clarity and I had an unhealthy fascination with Stars On 45 (I was so psyched when it made it to #1, even though it was just for one week).

Well, two songs changed everything:

AC/DC's "Back In Black" spent only a couple of weeks on the countdown, peaking in the high 30s if memory serves. And around the same time, Billy Squier had a longer run with "The Stroke."

It was when those two songs entered the charts and my life that I made a profound discovery: Loud guitar shits all over "Bette Davis Eyes."

With that as my backbone, I was either going to be a metalhead or a stripper. I and everyone who knows me will agree I made the right choice.

So to answer the question after my tl,dr moment: I have always loved music. I just needed to be exposed to it. I was proud to make a meager livelihood being exposed to new music and I am happy that I still try to keep up with things at my advanced age. I went from being the youngest person at a Ramones show to the oldest at just about every show I go to now. Without music, my life would get boring. I know because I stopped paying attention for a while, even to the thousands of CDs I own.

I hope not to make that mistake again.

1987. Joshua Tree and Licensed to Ill

When I was about 6 or 7, my dad played me 21st Century Schizoid Man, Mozart's Sanctus in C Minor and Pink Floyd's Ummagumma Live more or less at once. Within a year or two, The Cure were my favourite band (chiefly on the strength of Pornography), followed by XTC (Nonsuch being the first). Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden came around about then too.

Doomed, I was.

NYCNative, great post!

Dads with cool records are cool

There was also a day in my mid-20s when I realized music was the worst and I stopped listening to it

When Uncle Cracker penetrated the top five?

Thanks, Dan!