Plinky Answer 3: Soundtrack Of My Life
Since Plinky's lj service isn't really doing it for me, I'll just post it here myself.
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I think all in all that the soundtrack to my life already exists: it's all those records that were with me at key moments in my life, or just helped me pass time, feel better or feel worse, get lost in thoughts or get down and clean the house.
As a child even, I remember music having a prominent place in our home. My father plays the guitar, not very well but well enough to be enjoyable, and I remember him sitting on the coffee table playing. We had vinyl albums in a cupboard, and to me they were magical. I was a bookish nerd of a girl, always stowed away in corners reading and imagining, but music to me was the greatest gateway to different worlds. I've never understood the concept of getting wasted or doing drugs, because to me - as clichéd as it sounds - music is the ultimate drug.
Three of those albums have really stayed with me: Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's and Queen's Best Of. They also informed my musical taste to this day: it can be as loud or quit as it wants to, it can be about something deep and heartfelt or about nothing at all, but I have to dance to it. It has to have rhythm. It has to have that beating, pulsing heart that tugs at your body and creates movement.
The first album I owned myself that in a way changed my life, was a tape I got from a friend that had PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love on it. I was already into alternative music, and I listened to almost everything I could get my hands on, but I remember the experience of listening to that tape for the first time with extreme vividness: the feel of the deep dark bass on my skin as the opening title track droned by, the smudginess of the production, the opulent dispair and sensual darkness of the whole tiny masterpiece.
In a similar way I remember other key tracks from my rebellious teen days: how enthralled I was by Suede's Animal Nitrate, how bewitching I found the music video to Björk's Human Behaviour, how the harpiscord in Tori Amos' Caught a Lite Sneeze excited me and Pearl Jam's Given To Fly moved me to tears.
I remember the first time I heard David Gray's Babylon, and simply couldn't stop listening to it.
The single most powerful encounter with music in my life thus far, was the first time I saw Nine Inch Nails in concert. I knew the band through the song The Perfect Drug, which was one of my favourite songs ever. But I'm not a metalhead, and so I never looked further into the band or its music. The nineties were pretty much internetfree for me, and it wasn't as easy as it is now to find more music by an artist you think might be something you might like. So I listened to my taped-from-radio version of the song regularly, but never really listened to Hurt or Burn, songs I could have known but didn't.
Almost by accident we ended up seeing them at a summer festival, me and my sister, and it was love at first sight. I was so inspired and energized by the performance, and in discovering the albums I became so obsessed with the music, I actually ruined the band for my sister.
Nine Inch Nails did change my life. If Björk and Tori were the steady voices guiding me through my teenage and adolescent years, Trent has provided the soundtrack to my adult life so far. There have been other sounds that have carried me these past years, from the eerie beauty of Sigur Ros over the slick darkness of Mark Lanegan all the way to the festive authenticity of Beirut and the upbeat misanthropy of Tom McRae.
There are many dreadfully syrupy songs about music being your life, so much that I've started to become a bit ashamed of saying it, but it's actually true: music is my life, or my life is music. It's the glue that holds every single moment of it, every single version of me, together. It has shaped me, and who I've become. And in turn, I pass it on to friends, students, coworkers, strangers... and hope it inspires them the way it did me.
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I think all in all that the soundtrack to my life already exists: it's all those records that were with me at key moments in my life, or just helped me pass time, feel better or feel worse, get lost in thoughts or get down and clean the house.
As a child even, I remember music having a prominent place in our home. My father plays the guitar, not very well but well enough to be enjoyable, and I remember him sitting on the coffee table playing. We had vinyl albums in a cupboard, and to me they were magical. I was a bookish nerd of a girl, always stowed away in corners reading and imagining, but music to me was the greatest gateway to different worlds. I've never understood the concept of getting wasted or doing drugs, because to me - as clichéd as it sounds - music is the ultimate drug.
Three of those albums have really stayed with me: Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's and Queen's Best Of. They also informed my musical taste to this day: it can be as loud or quit as it wants to, it can be about something deep and heartfelt or about nothing at all, but I have to dance to it. It has to have rhythm. It has to have that beating, pulsing heart that tugs at your body and creates movement.
The first album I owned myself that in a way changed my life, was a tape I got from a friend that had PJ Harvey's To Bring You My Love on it. I was already into alternative music, and I listened to almost everything I could get my hands on, but I remember the experience of listening to that tape for the first time with extreme vividness: the feel of the deep dark bass on my skin as the opening title track droned by, the smudginess of the production, the opulent dispair and sensual darkness of the whole tiny masterpiece.
In a similar way I remember other key tracks from my rebellious teen days: how enthralled I was by Suede's Animal Nitrate, how bewitching I found the music video to Björk's Human Behaviour, how the harpiscord in Tori Amos' Caught a Lite Sneeze excited me and Pearl Jam's Given To Fly moved me to tears.
I remember the first time I heard David Gray's Babylon, and simply couldn't stop listening to it.
The single most powerful encounter with music in my life thus far, was the first time I saw Nine Inch Nails in concert. I knew the band through the song The Perfect Drug, which was one of my favourite songs ever. But I'm not a metalhead, and so I never looked further into the band or its music. The nineties were pretty much internetfree for me, and it wasn't as easy as it is now to find more music by an artist you think might be something you might like. So I listened to my taped-from-radio version of the song regularly, but never really listened to Hurt or Burn, songs I could have known but didn't.
Almost by accident we ended up seeing them at a summer festival, me and my sister, and it was love at first sight. I was so inspired and energized by the performance, and in discovering the albums I became so obsessed with the music, I actually ruined the band for my sister.
Nine Inch Nails did change my life. If Björk and Tori were the steady voices guiding me through my teenage and adolescent years, Trent has provided the soundtrack to my adult life so far. There have been other sounds that have carried me these past years, from the eerie beauty of Sigur Ros over the slick darkness of Mark Lanegan all the way to the festive authenticity of Beirut and the upbeat misanthropy of Tom McRae.
There are many dreadfully syrupy songs about music being your life, so much that I've started to become a bit ashamed of saying it, but it's actually true: music is my life, or my life is music. It's the glue that holds every single moment of it, every single version of me, together. It has shaped me, and who I've become. And in turn, I pass it on to friends, students, coworkers, strangers... and hope it inspires them the way it did me.