Friday 21st May 2004
It all started when my dad made me some tapes from his vinyl records, tapes I listened to on our holidays in the early '90s, in the heat of the French summer. Before that it had been all Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi and The Simpsons. A cheap walkman now fed my ears The Who, Queen and Don McLean — it got me hooked. 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and 'American Pie' formed the soundtrack to my pre-teen years alongside the fun, punky brilliance of The Who and their classics like 'Generation' and 'I Can See For Miles' ("...and miles/ I can see for miles and miles...").
My next era was Green Day and The Offspring — the fore-runners of punk-pop as we know it today. It was my childhood friend Jim who introduced my to The Offspring's 'Smash' in my bedroom — he turned it down at the climax of 'Bad Habit' in case my parents heard. His brother had all of Green Day's albums on tape and even had a CD single, back when Compact Discs were a new and exciting format. I fell in love with '2000 Light Years Away' and the early Offspring albums: together the perfect backing to adolescence.
The Offspring's gig in April 1996 at the Civic Hall in Wolverhampton kicked of a new phase — it was my first gig, and afterwards me and my friends would go to a concert almost every month. Marilyn Manson (then on his Antichrist Superstar tour) was next; over the next couple of years, I witnessed Deftones play their first UK show at the Wulfrun Hall and Incubus play the tiny upstairs room of the Varsity, both on the recommendations of friends, particularly Dani, who I was in a band with not long after.
We're at about 1998 now, and it was in that year that I went to my first festival, the first UK Ozzfest in Milton Keynes. In true rock'n'roll style, I went along without my parents' permission and saw some of my heroes and favourites like Pantera, Coal Chamber and Life of Agony; by then I'd gotten into heavier music. I was a Kerrang!-kid, with a wallet chain, band tour t-shirts and progressively baggier jeans making up my wardrobe. I didn't go the whole way with the stereotype, though — there were no drugs, piercings or tattoos to add excitement to this story, I'm afraid.
The musical aspect deepened after I picked up an old, out of tune guitar and learned to play Nirvana's 'Come As You Are'; then I bought a bass guitar and Rage Against The Machine CDs. I got into the folk singer Ani DiFranco via my older sister, and learned that songs could exist without a drum beat. I got into Tool and learned that songs didn't have to be accessible. I got into One Minute Silence and realised that songs could carry a huge message. All the while, music became more of an art form in my eyes, so much more than the sing-along fun I discovered it as, or the emotional vehicle I had found it could be.
By the year 2000, me and my friends had formed a band and practiced in living rooms and garages; by '02 we were playing gigs in our hometown. We'd gathered our influences and splashed them together to form something that would make people dance, and we'd go mad on stage, that was our manifesto (but that story will be told another time). (hed) p.e., At The Drive-In, Taproot, Snot — the same bands ran around in our heads, making vibrations that changed the way we created.
But come 2004: we've split up the band and I'm waiting to start University, at last. What better time to start writing about music?