My parents gave me a transistor radio with one ear-piece when I was 8 years old that I used to tune in to whatever radio station suited my fancy. This was usually Utah's KBER that played "hard rock" in the early 1980s. That genre used to be comprised mostly of the likes of the Steve Miller Band, Led Zeppelin, and whoever sang that masterpiece "Jukebox Hero" (with stars in his eyes!). Mostly it wasn't "hard" at all, although they did throw Kiss or Quiet Riot in the mix occasionally. By today's standards it was pretty benign but I still got into trouble whenever my parents overheard it. (Now that I'm a father I can understand their concern that their 8-year-old liked such raucous and debauched tunes.)
When I was 11 years old my 7th-grade music teacher gave us the assignment of listening to a full piece created by each of the classical composers we covered. It would have been easy to fake completion of this task, but my parents had a large LP set that covered all of the classical composers and I liked that assignment. That entire winter I listened to Mozart's Symphony No. 40 at least once every day. This opened my mind to various things:
- That I didn't care whether my peers regarded classical music as cool or not (and, consequently, that I would not let my peer groups determine my taste in music);
- That musical pieces longer than the three-minute format demanded by commercial radio were not only tolerable but could be emminently more rewarding;
- That music could create in me new ideas and dramatically affect my perception of my surroundings and "inner space".
It was also in my 8th grade year that I discovered the practice of trading and copying cassettes with peers. I was totally unacquainted with music stores and had previously relied entirely upon the radio for music acquisition, by taping the weekly countdowns, for example. It was through tape-trading that I got my hands on Run DMC's "Raising Hell" (I wrote "Raising Hello" on the tape to keep it kosher in a really clever way) and The Beastie Boys' "Licence to Ill". These cracked the door open to the concept that there might be something more interesting out there than the pre-teen sugar being mass-manufactured by venal "musicians." (Unfortunately I was too young to perceive that I was "discovering" instead pre-teen angst being mass-manufactured by venal musicians.) It was also then that I really began to use music as an emotional salve or outlet. In fact, "License to Ill" was often confiscated by my mom because I tended to turn it up really loud when I was angry.
Finally, it was also in 8th grade that I learned the value of crossing the generation gap and exploring music my parents would have heard on their radios. This was a brief foray that I would not revisit until I was 17 years old but it seriously altered my musical palate. "Pet Sounds" by The Beach Boys introduced me to Southern California surfer culture which created my interest in skateboarding that would last through to my mission, give me an alternative identity to escape into socially, and introduce me to "alternative" music in high school. More importantly, in the long run, was the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack by The Beatles. "Hey Bulldog" and especially "It's All Too Much" allowed me to peer momentarily into the altered states of reality to which music could lead me. I can still see the visual imagery created in my mind by "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", and I can still remember my delighted confusion about what exactly it was these British guys were getting at.
