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| From | Stewart Mason <flamingo@theworld.com> |
| Subject | Re: The Big Five |
| Date | Thu, 06 Feb 2003 15:37:48 -0500 |
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I have to do this Michael's way:
1. The Beatles -- first single I bought, at the age of 5, was the Apple
reissue of "If I Fell"/"And I Love Her."
2. Alex Chilton -- first album I bought, also at the age of 5, was the Bell
SUPER HITS compilation by the Box Tops, because I loved my older sister's
single of "The Letter." I came to Big Star in the '80s because they were
"that later band by the guy from the Box Tops."
3. AM radio, 1969-1978 -- My sisters were AM fanatics, especially Dawn, and
this era of AM radio was one of my biggest childhood influences. The first
song I ever loved was Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows Where My Rosemary
Goes," for example. Hail KIMN!
4. Freeform radio, 1978-1983 -- I've told this story here before, but I was
handed down an old clock radio when I finally got my own bedroom at the age
of 9, but it only got the local stations in clearly. So when all my friends
were listening to the Denver stations like KIMN or KAZY, I was listening,
by default, to Boulder's own KBCO, which at the time was slowly
transitioning from a hippie-era freeform station into a more
forward-looking station that introduced me to Blondie, Elvis Costello, the
Clash, the Beat, Split Enz and dozens of other bands that most of my
friends never heard of.
5. (tie) Video killed the radio star, 1981-1984/College radio, 1984-1988 --
MTV hit my 12-year-old soul like a ton of bricks, but even more important
(especially since cable did not come to our neighborhood in Boulder until
late 1982, which severely limited my MTV exposure) was FM-TV (later
Teletoons), a locally produced show on Boulder's public television station
KBDI. FM/TV had a much more diverse and eclectic playlist than MTV did
(even in its scattershot early days), where I'd hear and see Prince
followed by the Swingers followed by Renaldo and the Loaf followed by a
Sally Cruikshank cartoon or an old 50s high school safety film. After I
moved from Boulder in 1983, I was a little adrift until I discovered
Lubbock's college radio station in late '84 and fell into the growing
indie-jangle underground.
No matter where I lived, college radio managed to hip me to new and
interesting music until around 1992, when I was assigned an email address
by my college and discovered that work study hours flew by much quicker
with this new thing called the World Wide Web. (I later got a succession
of jobs -- and for that matter, a wife -- that wouldn't have been possible
without our friend the net, but I still think of it as the world's biggest
jukebox.)
S
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