Friday, April 04, 2008

Friday Question

(a weekly feature, at least until I start forgetting to post it or lose interest)

Let's stay with music for a little while. A two-parter:
What was your first favorite band or solo artist? Talking about the musical entity that first made you aware of artist identity. The one that lifted you beyond having a favorite song to having a favorite singer/guitarist/drummer/electric flautist.

Second part: How's that holding up for you? Are they still beloved? Scorned? Little of both? Can you listen to them at leisure or only in a setting of nostalgia?

I'll go first. Fleetwood Mac. I don't know how the Rumours album happened to come into my life but man I wore that dang thing out on my little turntable. Memorized lyrics, stared at the hirsute males in the band and their spangly multi-frocked female counterparts/companions/lovers/ex-lovers/who could even keep track. There's all this stuff in there about sex and cocaine and betrayal and it all flew FAR above my head but all those voices, all that emotion, and it sounded so adult! Nothing like the Candy Man can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good (wait, what the hell kind of song is that anyway?).

Plus, obviously, hot for Stevie. Who wasn't? Turns out that originally the rest of the band wanted Lindsey Buckingham to join and NOT Stevie but he said either my girlfriend gets to be in or I won't go. Because, yeah, that's going to be a band headed for a smooth working relationship. Later, of course, she started sleeping with Mick Fleetwood, which is like hooking up with Sasquatch as opposed to Lindsey Buckingham who was more of a, I don't know, genteel Sasquatch.

But today? Can't really stay with them. I'm told Tusk is amazing but, yeah, well, can't do it. It would be like trying to rediscover one's love for Fonzie.


Are we seething with turmoil or just so completely massively 12 different kinds of stoned?

So again. Two part question:
What was your first favorite band or solo artist? How's that holding up for you?


Have at it!

17 comments:

KikiRiki said...

First Favorite - Hands down Elvis Costello. I remember the day we met. I was riding in the back of my brother's girlfriend's car. They were home from college. They were 18 or 19 so I must have been 11 or 12. We were driving down the road from our lake cabin to the town of Chelan and they put in My Aim is True. I asked if I could PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE have a copy of that tape (yes cassette tape). My brother made me a copy and I wore it out listening to it over and over again. He started bringing me other music on his trips home from Whitman and started me on the road to music appreciation.

How's that holding up? I still adore Elvis and his music. And I am so very thankful to my brother for taking the time to introduce me to so much in the way of music.

Scott Chicken said...

Oh, man, that's a tough one. I'll have to go with the Beatles, since both my sisters were huge fans so I grew up listening to their stuff, and it's still working fine for me, far better than pretty much anything Paul McCartney did as a solo artist...

First band I found on my own, without sisterly intervention, would probably be Supertramp and/or KISS. I think Breakfast in America and/or Rock 'N' Roll Over were/was the first album I ever asked for for Christmas/birthday. But I have to say, while I still listen to BIA without shame, KISS is pretty much relegated to guilty pleasure / occasional song on shuffle.

jon deal said...

My first truly favorite band was The Kinks.

I know this dates me, but really, I'm not *that* old, I just somehow got introduced to them when I was a lad in the early 80s.

I heard the album "Give the People What They Want" and then explored their *really* old stuff.

How does it hold up? Pretty well, surprisingly. They are in my iTunes, so they come up on Shuffle every now and then. Makes me smile.

Anonymous said...

Yep, Elvis Costello. Yep, still holding up like nobody's business. I mean, he's come out with some material I didn't really dig, but there are songs from early, late and in the middle that are quite timeless.

Jennifer said...

It was the BeeGees. It's true. I loved the falsetto, the groovy songs with lyrics I could rarely decipher. Andy Gibb went hand in hand. It was all great in my eyes.

Now? I have Shadow Dancing from iTunes, but no BeeGees. But if they come on the radio, I don't change the station. They have a bit of staying power with me.

nancymcjensen said...

Hi John how you doing? OMG for me it was Elton John. I was at an exchange concert in Montpelier, VT and had a romance with a guy named Dean Flanders. "Philadephia Freedom" seemed to play whenever we were together that weekend and the following weekend concert in Massachusetts. I started listening to other Elton John songs and am happy to have discovered him. And I still get a little thrill whenever I hear Phila.Free. too.

J said...

Jesus Christ this is so embarrassing, but it was The Bee Gees....
Saturday Night Fever was popular and my mother would play the shit out of that double LP piece of shit.
I have absolutely no interest in that pablem anymore and only wish I could erase it from my memory bank.

Tina Rowley said...

That'd be Olivia Newton John. The turning point was her album Totally Hot, which came hot on the heels of Grease and multiplied the chills I already had going. I never got to listen to her at home, since my folks weren't yet letting me listen to rock or pop, so the fact that I had to wait and hear her at Tina Mulvhill's house just enhanced her rare and precious value. I thought she could do no wrong, and that she was the epitome of womanliness. Xanadu confirmed this for me. "Let's Get Physical" and "Make a Move on Me" only deepened my support. I was dismissive of her pre-1978 work, though, on the grounds that I hadn't heard it (ergo, irrelevant). It was the ascent of New Wave that finally pushed her off of my radar.

How's it going now? I still love "A Little More Love" with a non-ironic love. The rest I love with the love that gently mocks.

Everything pre-1978 remains irrelevant.

usedUNIVERSE said...

billy joel. since I was quite young- however it was embarassing to admit through my teens, had to keep it underground then- but that reversed itself in college, and now in my late 20s I can admit it (proudly): I really like billy joel

john said...

wife signed in here as husband...Go Go's Beauty and the Beat with their towels and Noxema. Hands down! So much so that I can't understand how there could be any other options.

Anonymous said...

Interesting . . . .

Jennifer said...

While we are on the topic of music...I would be grateful if you would let Kate and Charlie know how glad I am to have been properly introduced to SexyBack and the Hannah Montana song. The other stuff isn't bad, either. But Justin and Hannah kick it!

Matthew said...

Depeche Mode. Still quite like them, actually.

becky said...

First favorite was also because of my best friend and her incredibly cool older sisters... Yaz, Upstairs at Eric's! As for how it is holding up, I think that the sign of longevity is how many mediums in which you have the same "album"- I have the record (no record player anymore), cassette tape, CD and have downloaded some songs onto my ipod as well. Great question!

Cara said...

It's a tie. Around the age of 8, I heard Abba's "Take a Chance" and was captivated. A friend's sister taught me to hustle to this song. About the same time I became addicted to "Love Me Like A rock" by Simon and Garfunkel. My parents had the 45 and I played it over and over. Not long after I heard "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and, to my 8-year-old self, it was some deep stuff. Of course I found out many years later that BOTW is about heroin (thanks, older brother). Nowadays? I have Abba Gold in my car. I don't play it often, and I don't play it unless I'm alone, but oh yes, I play it. And I am still an S&G fan. Paul Simon was big when I was in college, and I danced many a night away to "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes," but now I've come back to the old S&G stuff. "The Boxer" is a classic.

Anonymous said...

Cher. And that's 1972 Cher. Dark Lady. Gypsies Tramps and Thieves. Half Breed. How I love that hateful word. The LP of her Greatest Hits is still somewhere in a cupboard in my basement. She lost me when she left Sonny and married that Allman Brother and had Elijah Blue. When she and Sonny had that CBS show, I was so jealous of Chastity! I wanted to run willy nilly through that mansion and get to wave goodbye at the end of my parents' tv show! Man. The 1972 Cher still holds up for me. I champion her costume changes, and Silkwood and Mask and Moonstruck and her crying at Sonny's funeral, but I can't say the same for anything she's sung since 1975.

Heather said...

I was a little worried here, when I started reading these comments. All these COOL people, with their Elvis Costello... the Beatles, the Kinks... then, ah! Here's someone I know! Jen, with the BeeGees, thank you, that's more like it. I only learned to love Feist after listening to her cover of Inside & Out.

But for me, this whole thing didn't really pick up speed until Tina's comment. Olivia Newton-John! YEEEEEAH!!! Though I did go in for the pre-Grease stuff. Who else would record a song called "Have You Never Been Mellow"? That's what I"m talkin about! Not to mention Please Mr. Please, which now has eternal alt.country cred thanks to the Scud Mountain Boys cover.

And Jill! With the Go-Gos! Hell to the YES!

Though I am a little disappointed that Tony Orlando & Dawn have not been mentioned yet. Say, Has Anyone Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose?