1115.org

So I was checking out the snappy redesign of Coolfer’s blog, and I saw that he has 1115.org listed as a music blog. Well, it was supposed to be half music, but it turns out that there are more political outrages than good albums coming out these days.

So here is a music post looking at the changes in my musical taste over the years. How does someone make the trip from Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings to Run DMC and LTJ Bukem?
You’ll have to keep reading to find out.

My family traveled quite a bit when I was a kid. Road trips all up and down the east coast were quite common. The Family Truckster (we had several) always had an eight track deck, and Cohen Sr. was an avid collector of oldies, classic rock and even some country & western. My roots as a capitalist were planted on these trips when my parents would pay Jamie and me one penny per minute to keep quiet in the car. The upside was money to spend on vacation. The downside was trying to fight with Jamie without talking. Along the way, there was always music playing. The Oldies and Doo Wop I could always do without, and the Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Queen I really didn’t like. But I always loved the other stuff, and still do to this day.

Neil Young / Crosby Stills & Nash were singing about a turbulent time before I was born. Four Dead in Ohio was always a favorite and took on added significance when I was old enough for Cohen Sr. (who went to Kent State University) to tell me about speeding to pick up my aunt just before National Guard troops killed four student protesters there in 1970. Other frequent requests were Carry On, Heart of Gold, Old Man and Southern Cross. What makes this music great is its ability to be timeless yet so representative of a certain period of time. It never gets old, but it effortlessly communicates the essence of the late 60s and early 70s.

In a more superficial way, I couldn’t get enough Steely Dan. Certainly not as deep as CSNY but groovier and more accessible. Listening to them years later, I realized that this is straight up drug music which makes it odd that they would be a Cohen Sr. favorite. I do know that he was really excited when I decided to play football at the University of Alabama because the Crimson Tide gets namechecked in Deacon Blues.

I was lukewarm to The Doors at the time, but they certainly subconsciously influenced me, and I appreciate them much more now than I did then. The darkness in Jim Morrison’s lyrics and the antique-sounding keys formed a basis for how I would judge music for years to come.

Sometimes my Mom got to choose what we listened to, and let’s just say she has come a long way since those days. Hey journey from Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow to Miles Davis and John Coltrane has been dramatic. But for the hours spent listening to Diamond and Manilow, the only thing to look forward to was the clicks between the programs on the 8-track.

By the time I was old enough to start buying my own music, my tastes had already come under the influence of MTV. The first album I bought for myself was Duran Duran’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger. It is entirely possible that I listened to that cassette every day for a year. During that year, I also went to Van Halen, Twisted Sister and ZZ Top concerts while I searched for what I really liked.

Thanks to WRCT and WPTS (two college radio stations in Pittsburgh), I was exposed to some truly great music. During junior high and high school I was into Chris & Cosey, Joy Division, New Order, The Cure, The Smiths,Depeche Mode, The Cult, X, Yaz, and Violent Femmes. At first, I was into these bands because I was 13 years old and trying to imitate the college kids I knew, but I quickly began to appreciate the cool techno of Chris and Cosey, the despair of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, the fusion of electronic and rock developed by New Order and Depeche Mode, the ballsy crunch of X and The Cult, the raw emotion of The Cure, Yaz and the Violent Femmes. These bands and radio stations later led me to Love and Rockets, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo & The Bunnymen and Talking Heads.

Although I had heard hip hop music before, 1986 was the year that it all came together. Run D.M.C.’s Raisin’ Hell was the first time I realized the incredible power of the 909 kick and street poetry from Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. From the first beat of “Peter Piper” I was hooked. It’s hard to overstate the influence this album had on me because it led me to a whole new world filled with the Beastie Boys, Eric B. and Rakim, Public Enemy, Ice-T and countless others. The next year, Yo! MTV Raps went on the air and became required viewing every day after school. It’s hard to believe how ahead of its time that show was, especially when you consider what passes for hip hop television these days.

Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back drove home the point that this was the music for me. From the day it came out, you could tell that it was important music that couldn’t be ignored.

The late 80s was a golden era for hip hop. De La Soul’s Three Feet High and Rising was a refreshing change from the harder styles and rocked many a high school party. Paul’s Boutique was the Beastie Boys’ high point. To this day, I still know every word and every beat of this record, and I consider it to be one of the best albums of any genre, ever.

While hip hop remains central to my musical tastes, the 1990 808 State album Utd State 90 opened my mind to a whole different world. I was already into electronic music, but Utd State 90 changed the way I thought about music forever. From the first bird chirps, warm keys, synthetic sax and tribal drums of “Pacific 202″ I was sold. Again, thanks to WRCT and WPTS, I hunted down all the techno I could find. LFO, Underground Resistance, Sven Vath and Laurent Garnier were some of the first techno artists that I was exposed to. Finding techno wasn’t exactly easy back then as most of the music was found on 12″ singles and obscure compilation CDs.

Soon the beginnings of the Pittsburgh rave scene (mostly private loft parties) popped up. At that point, even bad techno was good techno as people searched for that perfect beat.

Unfortunately it was time for college 800 miles away at the University of Alabama. Techno didn’t exist in any form at all in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Luckily I was saved from Lynard Skynard by three landmark albums: Nirvana’s Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s Ten, and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger. Though all were classified as grunge and shared some elements, each was a distinct and important work of art. I can testify that the football dorm was evenly split between grunge and Public Enemy, and I was probably the only one who didn’t mind either way.

Luckily Matt’s Deep South Adventure only lasted a year, and I was back in Pittsburgh by the time the rave scene really got going. The one and only Dieselboy held a biweekly residency at Metropol and played the newest in UK hardcore sounds. Around this time a friend from Florida turned everyone in town on to two DJs from England who had been burning down clubs in Orlando. Those DJs: Sasha and John Digweed. Say what you like about what they play now, but in 1993, their music was all that mattered. Listening to the original mixtapes and the first two Renaissance compilations influenced a generation of ravers and local DJs like Kimball Collins, Chris Fortier and Dave Cannalte as they picked up the progressive house sound and mixed it with their native funky breaks. This sound raced up the east coast and formed the basis for the rave scene in Pitsburgh, Philly and Baltimore.

Next in the progression was house and drum+bass. New York house was king in the mid 90s. DJs like “Little” Louie Vega, DJ Duke, David Morales and Keoki rushed to put out as many CDs as they could, and I bought just about all of them even though big-room house sounded much better in…big rooms.

While I hated it when I first heard it (mostly due to sub par soundsystems), drum+bass eventually made a huge impression on me. LTJ Bukem’s Logical Progression series of gems and his live sets with Blame are the pinnacle of the atmospheric form. On the harder side, Dieselboy became a legend for his signature jackhammer beats, DJ Hype added turntable skills to jump-up and DJ Sine held it down on both sides of the dancefloor.

In the late 90s, my tastes widened as I discovered early 80s dub, Austrian/German downtempo, and rediscovered Detroit techno. I had been resistant to Jamaican music because I didn’t like reggae, but dub was like the good parts of reggae minus the fluff. Listening to Germany’s Basic Channel family of artists made me appreciate and investigate further. Kruder and Dorfmeister and their G-Stone label and Rockers Hi-Fi and their Different Drummer label blended a Jamaican vibe with elements of house and techno, just what I was looking for as the rave scene was in its death throes.

I still listen to a ton of hip hop, but even more selectively than ever. I seem to like some artists (Clipse, Xzibit, Dutchmin, Nine and others) much more than most people, while disliking (or not caring about) legends who seemingly everyone else likes Tupac, Jay-Z, and even Notorious B.I.G. Luckily, other people’s bad taste doesn’t affect me much.

These days, armed with my iPod and 300GB worth of music on my G4, I have the ability to search decades of music and listen to whatever I want at any time. Technology has made it possible for me to avoid digging thorough boxes of cassettes, clicking through 8-track cartridges, cleaning dusty needles, and even sorting through stacks of CDs. That perfect song of the moment is never more than a few clicks away.

Viva la revolucion!

**Stay tuned for additional installments by other 1115.org contributors. For now, feel free to share your stories in the comments section below.