Thirdmango's Musical Journey

[Thirdmango]

(I am doing this on both my google plus but I thought I should do it here too.)

My musical journey:

I have always thought a good way of understanding someone's musical tastes is to experience it in the same order that they did. Talking with people I understand their tastes a lot more when I see what they listened to in elementary school through high school and up through college. So I've been wanting for a while to write my own musical journey and how I ended up where I have. So here we begin the journey.

Part 1: O' Caritas -- Cat Stevens

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This is the first song I remember, this is the first song I could sing all the way through. My father learned how to play the guitar and so he would play the guitar for me as I would go to sleep as a very young child, and this was my favorite song he would sing for me. One of my first words as a kid was "O' Caritas". Most of my musical tastes can be traced back to this one song and every time I listen to it, it takes me back to my earliest memories as a child.

[Thirdmango]

Part 2: Mega Man

When I was six years old my parents bought me a Nintendo Entertainment System. Up until high school I owned 8 games, and those 8 games I played so much that I learned every little trick on how to beat those games. But there was one game which had the most beautiful music. That game was Mega Man 3.

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This is the theme song to Mega Man 3 and I remember busting out my first air guitar as I danced around my room listening to this song on repeat. It had everything a little boy could want in a song. I even remember at one point inviting a friend over not to play the game but to listen to the music in the game. There's a reason why this music is so celebrated.

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There was one stage in the game which I even created my own lyrics to the song and that was Shadow Man's stage. I don't remember all of the lyrics since I never wrote them down but I do remember that in the chorus section there's a part where I did sing "The world's most famous hero". See if you can find the spot where that would fit best.

Pure NES chip tune was probably the first genre I was ever into, but I didn't grow my collection of chip tune until much much later in my musical journey.

[Lucky]

The biggest memory I have of Shadow Man's level is that at the beginning you had the option of going left or right down a free fall lined with spikes. If you went left, there was an E-Tank (or was it a 1-Up?), but it was a tighter squeeze.

Also, Shadow Man was freaking hard. Even if you had his weakness from Top Man (arguably the worst Mega Man power in the history of the series), it still required a bit of luck to wipe his power out. Although there was some glitch in the game where you could drain his power in one hit it you Top Spinned him just right.

[Thirdmango]

My Musical Journey Part 3: Classical Music and Puff The Magic Dragon.

This part should probably be part 2 but having part 2 be a negative isn't the best way to start off a story like this. Now you're all reading this and you're saying, wait, this guy doesn't like Classical Music? Short answer: No, I don't like Classical Music. But here's the reason why and why it's so early on. My mother is a classical trained violinist. She went to The Eastman School of Music and has soloed in many symphonies across the world. She's done some amazing things in world of violin.

I was a very hyper kid, I loved playing outside, I hated being stuck inside. All throughout my childhood my mother practiced all the time and anytime I couldn't play outside I would be stuck inside as my mother practiced the violin. The sweet sounds of the violin reminded me of not being able to have fun and over the years it ruined me for classical music. It also ruined me for amateur symphonies since I was used to really good symphonies.

So many people know me now to have an extensive array of music and yet when it comes to the core of classical music I still have a hard time getting into it. I like many of the instruments now used in different ways but classical still gives me feelings of dread.

So as we're on the subject I should mention the following song:

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When I was five years old my parents had me in a preschool called Kindercare. I have very few memories of this place but my strongest memory is this song, Puff the Magic Dragon. Many of you are reading this and you have a smile on your face because of this song, but remember I talked about disliking Classical music. I loathe Puff The Magic Dragon. Every time I hear this song it fills me with rage. Why? Because at Kindercare, even though the whole system was actually really good and my parents say I liked the class, the one thing I hated was nap time. Every day for 10 minutes they would lie everyone down, turn off the lights and play Puff The Magic Dragon on repeat. I hated nap time, I never slept through nap time and I would just lie there staring at the ceiling wishing and waiting for nap time to be over as this song continually reminded me that I was powerless against the oppressive regime of nap time. Every time I hear this song that ceiling is poured back into my head and I think I want to be outside playing right now. Why won't you let me play?

Don't worry, part 4 will come soon and it'll be happier.

[Thirdmango]

My Musical Journey Part 4: Saxophone

Like many parents with their first child my parents got me going with piano lessons from a young age but after six months I was showing no improvement nor any will to play the piano. In the fifth grade my mom tried again and asked if there were any musical instruments I was interested in playing. I quickly said The Drums, and my mom quickly vetoed that choice. She asked if there was a second choice and I said Saxophone. My parents got me an Alto Saxophone and I started having private lessons. My teacher at the time suggested that I listen to some jazz music, and since neither of my parents knew much about Jazz they asked the teacher what to get, so they purchased the first album I would ever own. Cannonball Adderley -- Cannonball in Japan. I couldn't find the song I wanted directly from that album but here it is on another album: Money In The Pocket.

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Cannonball in Japan has six tracks and those six tracks I have basically memorized. Jazz was such interesting music, the rushing groove, the people just playing their instruments for the fun and freedom of it. My intro to Jazz was very short as pretty soon after I started listening to the radio...

[Thirdmango]

My Music Journey Part 5.1 The Big Three and Awful Two

So in the seventh grade I started listening to the radio and two particular stations which will be somewhat familiar to Utah folk, and that is X96 and Q99. X96 still exists, the other does not. But they mostly played alternative, now also remember this was 94 so Nirvana had already come and gone so I was a little late to the game.

I remember the first 5 albums I bought with my own money. At the time I wasn't very discerning since I was at the beginning of listening to music and of my first 5 cds, 3 of them are still influential upon me, 2 however were awful albums and I sold them pretty quickly after buying them. The first cd I ever bought with my own money was: 311 - 311.

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It was mostly based on this song All Mixed Up. I had heard Down and thought it was pretty good but this song had such a good groove going. 311 I still love to this day and have most if not all of their albums, but this album is actually my 2nd to the bottom. Besides the two radio hits it has one or two other decent songs and that's it.

The second cd I bought was one of the bad 2, and that was Chumbawumba's Tubthumper. I could post Tubthumping but who wants to go through that again. I actually liked that one song at the time but the moment I hit track two I had realized my purchase was probably not a good one. Here is track 2 Amnesia.

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This shows that the singer really isn't very good and even as a kid I could tell that she was just not very good. The rest of the album was just as bad and I had my first buyers remorse.

[Thirdmango]

MMJ: Part 5.2: Everclear

Looking at dates much of these albums came out in 1997 which is around the end of my 8th grade year and through the summer into high school. Which does make sense, when you're that young, no car, no money, and no older siblings you don't really accumulate music very fast. The 3rd CD I bought gets special mention and that is Everclear's So Much For The Afterglow. 4 years ago when I did a top 100 albums it came in at number 18. The funny thing is, I never really liked any of Everclear's other albums, Sparkle and Fade is good stuff but for the most part this was just a great album by a band that got something right in 1997. I'm posting 3 songs from this album but if you only listen to one, listen to this one:

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El Distorto De Melodica is the one instrumental track on the album and when I first heard it I was blown away. The band has sort of a poppy sound but this one song has a good amount of rage. The metal side of me started to show in this song. The yell at the two minute mark still fills me with energy. I listened to this song on repeat over and over on my portable cd player.

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I got into the cd specifically because of the first hit of the album "Everything to Everyone". I clearly didn't know much about music at the time because I went to my saxophone teacher at the time and had him listen to the song cause I wanted to play it. He looked at me weird and said it's two notes going back and forth. He played it and boy did I feel stupid.

El Distorto is my favorite song on the album but coming in a quick second is this final track I'll put on here. It's the title track of the album. This album may not be a technical masterpiece, but as one of my first cds it was bliss for my 13-14 year old ears.

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