I have not heard that in a while.
I love this thread! Doc Martens…I almost forgot about those.
Indie rock - Pavement, Sonic Youth, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and so on. If it was released on Sub Pop, Matador, or Merge, I bought it. The fashion was pure thrift store - ugly cardigans over faded t-shirts, corduroys, and baggy jeans. Messy hair, glasses with thick frames. Chucks on the feet. Hanging out with friends and recording onto 4-track machines after school.
Time for someone to fight some ignorance.
What is a 4-track machine?
Mr Bus Guy, thanks for the confirmation, at least now I know if I am crazy, I will have some great company. 
Jim
I’m assuming he is referring to a specific type of tape recorder - either reel-to-real or cassette, that is useful for home recording. We had both kinds at various times when I was in a band. You can dub different inputs onto the various tracks. IIRC, Springsteen recorded much of Nebraska on a cassette version. Use of a mixer increases your options.
I guess you could record different songs to the different tracks, but I never heard of that as a main benefit of such machines.
My teen years were marked by phases:
Southern Rock: Skynyrd, Outlaws, Marshall Tucker Band
Funk/Soul: Parliament, O’Jays, Earth Wind and Fire, Ohio Players
Bluegrass: Flatt and Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, J.D. Crowe, Stanley Bros., Kentucky Colonels
Rock/Pop: Beatles, Dylan, The Band, The Byrds, Led Zeppelin
Forgot to mention that this would have been in the mid to late 70’s.
My formative music years (13-18) were '83-'88, and I was mostly into indie/underground/“college” acts. Husker Du, The Replacements and R.E.M. were my holy trinity. I also tried to get everyone I knew into Robyn Hitchcock (& The Egyptians) (and The Soft Boys). Others: U2, The Go-Betweens, New Order, Beastie Boys, Meat Puppets, Minutemen, The Smiths, The Cure, The Feelies, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Talking Heads, Prince, Hoodoo Gurus, Elvis Costello, The Church, The dB’s, The Pogues, Midnight Oil, Marshall Crenshaw, Dumptruck, Psychedelic Furs…and those were just the ones that were still around during that time. I also listened to tons of late 70s-early 80s punk and postpunk, as well as 60s rock, pop and soul. I got most of my music info at the time from Creem magazine, and luckily there were plenty of independent record stores where I lived that had all the latest imports/indies/obscure stuff.
At the time, I dressed the part - dyed mohawk, leather jacket (or denim jacket with a peace symbol painted on the back, or long black trenchcoat), ripped jeans, Converse high-tops.
In my case, it’s a special tape recorder that allows you to record 4 seperate tracks onto a standard cassette tape. They usually have a built-in mixer so that you can set different levels for the different tracks, and more advanced models had EQ’s and effects built in as well. The idea was that you could put drums or a drum machine on one track, guitar on another, bass on the third, and vocals on the fourth, and voila - you’ve recorded a song.
Though they were primarily intended for making demos, lo-fi 4-track recordings became their own aesthetic and subgenre of music in the eighties and nineties. Bands like Ween, Sebadoh, the Tall Dwarves, and others actually used home 4-track machines to record their records instead of going into a legitimate studio.
I started high school in 1981, and everyone loved Ozzy Osbourne – many repeated high-volume performances of “Crazy Train.” Someone painted OZZY on The Bridges of Ross County, and it stayed there for years.
Later in high school New Wave became popular, and Michael Jackson and Madonna. But my clique was a bit retrograde and listened to Kansas, Yes, and Supertramp. And, as dedicated band geeks, Maynard Ferguson.
Do I still get all nostalgic? Well, of course.
I grew up in the 1980s when heavy metal was big-- Dokken, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motley Crue, Ratt, the Scorpions and Whitesnake, among many others. On the flip side was all the pop/new wave/dance crap that I hated- Culture Club, Duran Duran, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Michael Jackson, Thompson Twins, and Wham!
I get nostalgic when I hear some of my heavy metal favorites on the classic rock station and from my MP3 collection. The radio station also plays a syndicated show called “House of Hair” every Saturday night, hosted by Dee Snyder.
As for dressing the part, other than wearing a black concert T-shirt or some other heavy metal band logo shirt, I didn’t wear leather and chains or spiked collars/wristbands, spandex, etc. I probably looked more like Stuart on Beavis and Butthead wearing his Winger shirt.
When Elvis’ Blue Suede Shoes came out I got some, which I absolutely loved. Bought a few pairs in succession. I was crushed when they could no longer be replaced.
Then Pat Boone made white bucks famous and I was ready for them too.
The music of The Who (and, almost by definition, Pete Townshend) has touched me more than any other performer or group. In conversations with other fans, it’s clear that we all had a sense that the songs are talking to US. Somehow, Pete had felt just like we did at some point, and he bared his soul to anyone who would listen. We looked past the smashed guitars and made a deeper connection.
I’ve seen The Who referred to as a cult band, and that’s not far from the truth. Some people have made the connection, to everyone else it’s just rock and roll.
My teen years were filled with various music.
I would say that as a musician, the things I listened to most were Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Marley, and light alternative/pop bands like REM, Matchbox 20, and Goo Goo Dolls. I say that because I was in a band that played a lof of the alternative/pop style music, so I listened to it.
As a person in general, I would say a lot of the music I loved consisted of everything from Pearl Jam to Slipknot. My two favorites were Incubus and System of A Down. Me and my friends were rocker/stoners…hah…
of course, we played in a band that played those softer songs that young ladies often love…
Brendon
Beatles and Rolling Stones.
Everything else is just follow-on.
Ok, here we go.
[Leans back in huge leather armchair in wood-paneled library with warm yellow light, puffs on pipe, and clears throat.]
First, some background: When I was in 6th grade, I listened to the radio a lot and liked the pop music of the late 90s - The Wallflowers, Weezer, Fiona Apple, Third Eye Blind, Spin Doctors, Better Than Ezra- and all the one-hit wonders like Duncan Shiek (Barely Breathing,) White Town (I Could Never Be Your Woman,) and all those songs that came and went. I also had the whole album Tubthumping by Chumbawamba and actually liked it a lot. Although I knew little about music in any kind of focused way, I thought that particular album was put together very well.
The music that is now acknowledged by music people to be the real “classic” rock of the 90s, like The Smashing Pumpkins, Beck, or The Red Hot Chili Peppers, I didn’t know anything about. I really only liked the poppy radio music.
When pop radio turned away from rock and towards rap, rap-rock and pop-punk, that’s when I stopped listening. I think it was 8th grade when I stopped listening to the radio and just listened to older music like The Beatles, although I did sort of enjoy the “swing” craze that briefly occurred, and I liked the Ben Folds Five, mostly because they were
Until I was 19 or so, I preferred older stuff. The Beatles, Chicago, Todd Rundgren, Led Zeppelin - mostly classic music from far before my time. I didn’t care about hip-hop or contemporary rock at all, and I firmly held the belief that “everything new sucks.” One of the groups I really got into was Steely Dan. I first started with them when I was about 14. I listened to Aja, Gaucho, and Katie Lied over and over, musically dissecting their complex chord changes and cryptic lyrics in my mind. Their songs were the most evocative stuff I’d ever heard, introducing me to a mysterious and bizarre world. I also liked their newer album, Two Against Nature, but the sound had a different effect on me. It sounded more slick, cocky, and classy, with all the flashy jazz instrumentals and references to high-rolling life, but it wasn’t as mysterious as their older music. (Incidentally, I wouldn’t hear their first album, Can’t Buy A Thrill, until college.) Steely Dan was my first musical epiphany of my teens.
I stuck with older music like this until I was a senior in high school. Around this time, there were a few people around me who were starting to listen to bands that I had never heard of called “Modest Mouse” and “Built to Spill.” On the recommendation of one of these guys, who I didn’t really even know very well, I downloaded some songs by these bands. The Modest Mouse, I didn’t really care for much (I would enjoy it more some time later, but at the time I thought it was too depressing.) But when I heard Built To Spill, that’s when something sort of clicked for me musically. The hard-driving, distorted sound of songs like Sidewalk and the poppy feel of more upbeat ones like Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss seemed so new to me, even though they had come out a few years earlier than when I was listening to them. So this was second main musical breakthrough of my teen years.
In college, indie rock had just started to get huge. Garden State and its soundtrack went a long way in popularizing stuff like The Shins and Iron and Wine. As a freshman, my roommate was deeply into indie rock, and he constantly played stuff that I had never heard before like The Red House Painters, Songs:Ohia, Of Montreal, Phoenix, The Decemberists, Kings of Convenience, Grandaddy, and Calexico. I was exposed to bands like Pavement and The Silver Jews, stuff that was older but sounded completely new to me. He also played older music I’d never heard much of before, like The Band, Neil Young, and The Rolling Stones. In addition, he was into alt-country and folk like Sarah Harmer, Kathleen Edwards and Otis Gibbs, and modern Southern rock like The Drive By Truckers. In short, he had the most extensive musical taste of anyone I’d known up to that point, and he shared it with me every day.
Oh yeah, and this was also when I discovered the powers of marijuana.
[cue definitive 60s song of your choice. Right now I’m thinking Time Of The Season, although White Rabbit might also work.]
I’d done it in high school, but didn’t enjoy it then. I had a scary experience with it once and avoided it for a while. But once I started doing it in college, with all this interesting new music around me, it definitely opened up some doors.
Suffice it to say, my musical universe had just experienced its Big Bang. Music was no longer just music, it was a lifestyle. I wanted to throw myself into it. I was no longer content to just listen, I wanted to create. I had been playing bass and guitar on and off since middle school, and also had a good deal of experience with saxophone from high school jazz band. But I had never had the experience of playing any kind of rock music in an organized group before. When you live in dorms and apartments, it’s kind of hard to do. I also didn’t really have enough confidence in my own ability to take the initiative and try to start a band. So at this point I couldn’t make my dream a reality.
My third musical epiphany was electronica and trip-hop. The next year, another friend of mine started to get deeply into stuff like Shpongle and Wagon Christ, which I enjoyed but found a little too crazy for regular listening. I did some poking around on my own and discovered The Sea and Cake and Medeski Martin and Wood. I became fascinated with the fusion of electronic sounds and conventional intstruments, and that summer joined my first band. It was all very ad-hoc - there was an outdoor music festival coming up, and we decided on short notice to throw a group together and try to get a gig playing there. We called ourselves The Workmen, later shortened to The Work, and we aimed for a Phillip Glass-influenced minimalist electronic style. I played bass, my friend Nate played keyboard, my stepbrother Elijah played drums, and our friend Zach played effects-laden guitar. We got the spot in the lineup, and we played a set of 5 or 6 songs. It turned out remarkably well, and reinforced my confidence as a musician.
The year after that was 2006/2007. In other words, now. I hadn’t played for a while since the summer, and I was getting a house with my friend Nate (the keyboardist) and the other friend who had introduced me to electronica. With a house, we were now free to play music at any time. That roommate who I mentioned above called me when he learned I had gotten a house, and asked me if he could bring his drum set and set it up in our house since he couldn’t play at his apartment. We enthusiastically agreed, and with the addition of this drum set, a second ad-hoc band formed. The aforementioned ex-roommate on drums, Nate on keyboards, myself doubling on guitar and bass, and a second guitarist. Our sound is sort of a fusion of all the sounds we’ve been influenced by. In one song, we might sound like Medeski, and in another song sound like The Smashing Pumpkins or Built to Spill.
OK, so I guess you’ve gotten my drift by now. Music kicks ass.
Look for the book in stores near you this March.
If it has to be only one: Dead Can Dance.
If I can keep adding, then Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Waterboys, early U2, And Also The Trees, Sisters of Mercy, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, David Sylvian, Nick Cave, Steve Roach.
And from Spain: El Ultimo de la Fila.
You get the general theme, I am sure. There was also all the campy 80’s pop, some Merengue thrown in the mix, and random New Age and Classic.
I was in HS and college in the late 60s-early 70s. Hendrix, Stones, Doors, Who, Grateful Dead, Led Zepplin, Jefferson Airplane, Aretha Franklin, Temptations.
I’m sure you won’t get fooled again as you drive on your magic bus, because you can see for miles. You’re talking about my generation!
I was the classic “alternateen” just like the others who posted about growing up in the 90’s.
My life took a huge turn when Kurt died. I cried when Shannon Hoon (Blind Melon) died, and Brad Nowell (Sublime).
I wore the combat boots, the below-the-knees cutoffs, the long sleeves and/or flannels for every occasion. I tried to be sXe then decided those kids sucked went back and forth.
Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and all those little bands inbetween. I am still soothed by Eddie Vedder even tho I didn’t dig any of the albums after “Vitalogy.”
I moved on to ska after that but once it became too popular (ie the crowds at shows got lame) I got out of it.
I listened to a lot of Blur. They changed the way I looked at music, because up until then, I was only listening to Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots… the usual. I loved Blur because, in my little world, they were something different. From obsessing over them, I looked into what influenced them, and got way too into the Smiths/Morrissey.
I still love Moz, but with Blur I mostly look back fondly, and keep a copy of Parklife handy - just in case. However, these days I love the Gorillaz… so there’s a bit of Blur still alive and well in me.
Oh, and I wore Docs, too - and just bought a new pair. Nya. But they hurt my heels, so mostly I wear my old-people slippers. Cough.
Anyway, in my later teens, I dredged up my Dad’s old punk records - I was always a fan of the Clash, since, like, before I was born. Then I was listening to a lot of NOFX, Vandals, Goldfinger, Buck O’ Nine, Dead Kennedys, the Living End, the Misfits, Operation Ivy… though I hated Tim Armstrong. Heh. I wore cargos and kept my wallet on the end of a long silver chain attached to my belt loop, worshipped Jamie Thomas, chain smoked, and rode a skateboard mediocre-ly.
My boobs no longer allow me to do ollies. They barely allowed it back then.
Man, I really mellowed out. Now all I listen to is Pig and KMFDM. Where is that wild teenager I once was?!
Twelve bar blues. In mono. Still prefer it but am willing to accept variations on the theme, even in stereo.
And British Art Rock, like Yes an ELP. And Renaissence, since there was this girl…