Great topic, and one that we've all experienced to some extent. I'm looking forward to reading all of our member's stories! My influences below are in chronological order:
My Dad - My Mom enjoyed listening to music, watching performances on TV, and attending the occasional concert. She listened to the local radio stations and she had favorite artists, but I don't think music was overly important to her. Yes, she made time for it but she had other interests that she was more passionate about. Music was much more important to my Dad. He grew up in the Big Band Era, and he was a fan of the great crooners including Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, The Mills Brothers, Mario Lanza, Tony Bennett, and others. He would tell me stories about listening to old radio shows and riding the train to Philadelphia to catch one-hour concerts. My Dad had good musical taste. If he said that something was "good", it was usually good. I realized that as I got older. Due to financial reasons (four kids and a stay-at-home Mom), my Dad did not buy albums; he bought 45s. I can remember an eclectic collection of 45s being played on the family record player including "Hello Dolly" by Louis Armstrong, "Cotton Candy" by Al Hirt, "Everybody Loves Somebody" by Dean Martin, "You Don't Have To Say Yo Love Me" by Dusty Springfield, "That's Life" by Frank Sinatra, and a few of the early Beatles' singles. When my sisters and I got a little older, we were occasionally allowed to pick out a record. I distinctly remember when we bought "I'm A Believer" by The Monkees. We were dancing around the living room to that great organ and Mickey's vocals. We had a handful of Christmas albums that we played every year. My Dad picked 'em out and they were all good. I didn't realize until years later how enjoyable and important those Christmas albums were to me.
My Dad always had a transistor radio. If he was washing the car, cutting the grass, sitting in the sun reading the newspaper, giving himself a haircut in the bathroom, polishing shoes, or just lounging around the house, he had the transistor radio on. Same thing with the car radio and the radio on the kitchen counter...always on (except during dinner). Yes, I frequently talk about listening to AM radio in the 1960s and early 1970s, and now you know why. Can you imagine how great it was to be a kid growing up during those years and listening to all of THAT great music, every day, on the radio. It didn't get any better than that. And my Dad's influence? As soon as I could scrape together $5.00, I made my way to the local department store and bought a transistor radio.
My sister - I have a sister who is two years older than me. She played the clarinet. She had the best musical taste of anyone I've ever known. It was varied, sometimes eclectic, and often timeless. In 1970, my sister started high school and bought her first record player. Unlike my Dad, my sister did purchase albums. She was a mellow and sensitive person, and her music tastes reflected that. Her favorite artists included Bread, John Denver, Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, and the early Moody Blues. Honestly, I hated that stuff - I was rocker! - but now, many years later, I love all that music. It appeals to a certain side of my personality that the hard rock I was listening to at that time didn't. Oh, but my sister could also rock out. My ears are still ringing with echoes of Uriah Heep's Demons And Wizzards, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, and Paul McCartney's Band On The Run.
My sister's influence? Immense. Here are a few examples:
Late 1970 - I came home from football practice, heard the needle drop on my sister's record player, and out comes "Well they'll stone you when you're trying to be so good...". What in the hell was this? Who in the hell was this? Bob Dylan she told me. Who was Bob Dylan? Well, it didn't take long until I found out. Yep, my sister bought Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. But, what prompted her to buy that album? He wasn't on the radio, on TV, or in the news. I still don't know but I thank her for it.
Early July 1971 - My sister approached me and said, "I just heard that Jim Morrison died." My response was, "Who is Jim Morrison?" The next day, The Doors' first comp, 13, was on her record player. And the rest is history.
Fall 1974 - I'm hearing "Surfin' Safari", "Surfin' U.S.A.", and "Catch A Wave" coming from my sister's bedroom. So, I knock on the door, pull a Mackenzie Phillips, and demand to know, "What's up with this surfing sh---?" And her answer was, "It's a new album by The Beach Boys called Endless Summer, and it's great!". I scoffed and walked away. Ha ha ha...it wasn't long before that album ended up on my record player.
Late 1974 - My sister and I are watching The Midnight Special and Sparks comes on. I'm laughing and raving about the appearance and funny faces being made by the keyboard player (Ron Mael). But, my sister says, "Hey, these songs are pretty good." About a week later, she purchased Kimono My House, and upon hearing that, I proceeded to buy about 15 subsequent Sparks' albums through the years.
My grade school/high school friend, Dan - My buddy, Dan, and I played football, baseball, and basketball together. But, it was only after he found out I liked The Doors and I found out he liked Led Zeppelin that we really bonded. I used to go to the local magazine store and purchase the magazines, Circus and Creem. Then I would go over to Dan's house and we would scour those magazines for new groups/music. We would read the articles, check out the pictures, and scrutinize the album reviews. If any of those moved us enough, we'd pursue it. I remember Dan pointing out a review of Blue Oyster Cult's Tyranny And Mutation that mentioned "Alan Lanier's keyboards sounding Doors-ish." Well, that was all it took. I went out and bought the album. One time Dan was all excited about this photo of a young Freddie Mercury with the long hair, the flashy clothes, and holding the mic stand in the air. Queen 1 was the next purchase! This trend continued through high school. We "discovered" groups like Slade, early Montrose (with Sammy Hagar), Mott The Hoople, The Dictators, the New York Dolls, and KISS mostly by reading rock & roll magazines. There was also The Midnight Special, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and to a lesser extent, American Bandstand. But, that kind of music wasn't being played on the radio, at least not on the stations that I could pull in. You had to track it down.
In many ways, most ways, my friend Dan and I were just normal guys. We were small-town, Catholic jocks who liked rock & roll. The harder the rock the better. We didn't really party, drink, or take drugs. We couldn't anyway; we were always on a sports team and couldn't risk it. But in that one way - our music tastes - we were different from our friends and classmates. Believe me, nobody we knew was listening to that music. We kind of wore it as a badge of honor. In high school, I would be carrying my chemistry textbook, my psychology textbook, my social studies textbook, and a copy of Creem with Rock & Roll Animal-era Lou Reed on the cover. I was smuggling Doors' cassettes into the library where I would listen to them using school headphones. Dan and I could also be arrogant and opinionated. We were very vocal about the state of music, especially the burgeoning disco scene. Yes, there were...debates...with others.
The music was very important to us. We were either reading about it, talking about it, or listening to it. If we didn't have a practice or a game, we would schedule what we called "sessions". I would ride my bike over to Dan's house (he had the better stereo) carrying a bag full of albums. Dan's mom would make a pitcher of Kool Aid and open a bag of chips and we would literally lock ourselves in Dan's bedroom while we listened to one album after another. We would intently listen to and comment on each song, picking apart the lowlights and praising the highlights. Dan would play one his albums and then I would play one of mine. Those were such great and innocent times. One time Dan purchased The Ramones' first album on cassette, and we had to literally smuggle it into his house because Dan was afraid if his mom saw the album cover or some of the song titles, she would make him return it. So, I put the cassette under my T-shirt as we quietly went in the back door. Dan's influence? He, like I, was driven. We were like a tag team. It was the pursuit, the hunt, and then the ultimate joy of finding new, great rock and roll music. We thought the music was not only fun, but important. Again, we took a certain pride in getting into these "out-there" groups. And, you know what? Most of that music still holds up quite well today!
TV - I always enjoyed watching music on TV. Going back to my Dad, he was a big Frank Sinatra fan. Each year, Sinatra would have a nationally-broadcast TV special. This was a big deal for my Dad. He would buy a bag of peanuts, a hunk of swiss cheese, and a couple bottles of Schlitz beer. We were allowed to watch the show with my Dad, but we had to be quiet. And, I just remember my Dad smiling broadly and really getting into it, and saying how great Sinatra was. I didn't get it back then. I do now.
As I got older, many of the TV music shows became "must see". If I/we were home on a Saturday afternoon, American Bandstand was watched. You gotta hand it to Dick Clark, he had quite the variety of artists appear on his show. I vaguely remember Shindig, but there were other shows I remember like Where The Action Is, and a show broadcast out of Atlantic City called The Steel Pier Show With Ed Hurst. If the rabbit ears were working on our TV, we could pull in The Jerry Blavett Show out of Philadelphia. Of course, The Monkees was huge, and we used to watch The Beatles' cartoons on Saturday mornings. I loved The Monkees (we had several of their records and, obviously the music segments were the highlights of the shows), but I didn't enjoy The Beatles' cartoons nearly as much as their records.
Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and The Midnight Special were an entirely different era for both the music and my age/life. We were no longer in Kansas (ha-ha). It was so out-there and exciting and great and, at the same time...middle-of-the road - meaning it featured regular, safe, and currently popular singers/groups. I do think the time it was broadcast (late PM/early AM) had a lot to do with its appeal and mystique.
Talk shows were also very important. Don't underestimate the power and importance of those daytime and nighttime talk shows. You know them all - Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno, and others. While it wasn't a talk show, Saturday Night Live had some of the all-time, legendary performances from their music guests. There was also the short-lived Fridays which had its moments, too. Entertainment Tonight was great at keeping you up-to-date on many artists. Like Entertainment Tonight, there were the local Evening Magazine shows that occasionally featured some quality artists. All of the above shows were essential. After American Bandstand, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and The Midnight Special went off the air, you had to do some creative programming, VCR-setting, and selective viewing to catch your favorite groups. You would go months and years without even SEEING your favorites. At times it was a lot of work, but it was worth it. The TV Guide became my friend.
No discussion of viewing music on TV would be complete without mentioning MTV. When MTV first came on the air, I was already in my mid-twenties and, believe it or not, my record-buying years were winding down. I wasn't able to connect with a lot of the new music on the radio, and I was basically stuck with a set core of albums that wasn't growing. MTV provided a spark, an outlet, something that appealed to me. As I mentioned above, I always enjoyed watching music performances on TV, and this was not only that, but much more. It was definitely different. MTV absolutely prompted me to explore more new - and old - music. It both exposed me to new artists and uncovered some of the older ones that escaped me through the years. I don't want to exaggerate and say that I was reborn musically, but for a few years, I was really into MTV and TODAY I have - and play - a lot of music that I discovered by watching MTV.
I think music performances on TV are much more influential than they are given credit for. Or maybe they are indeed valued, as the popularity of YouTube shows.
Message Boards/Forums - Obviously I go way back (yes, I'm old), and I never imagined that something would come along like online message boards and forums. So many times I wished there were message boards when I was growing up. This is a fun exercise to try: Look at or scroll through your music collection, and just count how many songs/albums/videos/articles/whatever you've accumulated directly or indirectly through your association with message boards. It's mind-boggling! I think about - and just wrote about - all of the ways and things I had to go through to discover music, listen to music, and talk about music. At times it was a lot of work. Fun, but a lot of work. And then came message boards/forums. What a long, strange trip it has been...