In The Beginning...

I never had a chance.  I was raised by musicians.

  

You name it, I’ve done it.  Took piano lessons, played the french horn, played in school band, marching band, accompanied a church group, sung in choirs, gone Christmas caroling, even been carted around town with my siblings to sing at community and or church functions like a low-rent version of the Von Trapp kids but with less lederhosen.  

Much less lederhosen.

My earliest musical memories involve gatherings of my dad’s side of the family as they’d sit around playing and singing folk tunes, ragtime, and even John Philip Sousa.  When my mom’s side of the family got their music on there were folk songs too, but as soon as the holidays rolled around we would pack into a room and sing traditional Christmas carols from the old countries which translates to “songs most people I know aren’t familiar with.”

It would be fair to say that evenings with my dad’s family were raucous and silly, laughter occasionally interrupted by Under The Double eagle or the Maple Leaf Rag where getting off a great joke held the same esteem as being able to sing all the words to Fum Fum Fum in Spanish with my mom’s side of the family.  Now that I think about it I can’t remember if they were singing in Spanish or Catalan, I should call someone and find out since anyone not singing that song in Catalan would be a massive poser.

Music has been an inescapable part of my life from the moment it started.  And from a very young age I was aware of the different ways it affects and touches us.  And not just on days when I’m at my parents house loading sacred baroque selections onto my mom’s ipod while my dad is blasting his Spike Jones CD from the other room.

What’s the point of all that?

The point, I suppose, is that even I have to wonder how I got from this

to this...

Who could say?  

-J Sargent (the other guy)

Oh how influential, those formative years ...

I remember I was 16 years old when a friend of mine chided me for the music I listened to: numerous bands of 4 white guys with guitars.

This much was true, I had recently began my musical journey and this was an apt description of the music I was listening to; The Beatles, Blur, Smashing Pumpkins and very little else. My friend's statement stuck with me through all of these years.

I would be 19 before I finally did something about it. I used to go into a shop in Liverpool to buy Smashing Pumpkins bootlegs (religiously), and one day I decided to see what else they had. It was then. That I stumbled across a track that I hadn't heard for a couple of years, a track that actually predated my love of music. This track:

It was that track, and it's b-side (Sister Janet), which turned me on to her music, and I remember at the time, I was playing that, Radiohead's My Iron Lung EP and 13 by Blur constantly. At the time, though, I didn't buy any of her albums ... Not for another six months.

Come September, I remember buying the NME (which was common, when I had been paid), on a Friday afternoon in Manchester. On the way home, there was a full page spread for her new album To Venus and Back. I still have the magazine in storage. I shall hunt it out sometime. That was the first album that I bought of Tori Amos, and over the next couple of weeks, I bought them all. They've been with me ever since, wherever I have been.

There was a guy called Mike who worked in said shop, and he was my supplier. Such treasures he found me, unable to resist a young man with a new cash flow every weekend. It was he who suggested to me that I try Kate Bush, if I liked Tori Amos. So I did. Where to start? Why, at the beginning.

Immediately, I was hooked. I went and bought the Bush back catalogue even faster than i had purchased the Amos discs. That was the start of a long and interesting journey; the discovery of a multitude of powerful female singer-songwriters, so that one day, I would run into my old school friend and tell him to EAT CROW!

-Joe