music machine

so. over the weekend i had an interview and have been invited to write for an LGTB publication as an entertainment contributor on a trial basis.

the bulk of the writing for now will be music centered, possibly expanding at a later time.

i am SUPER excited for this opportunity. i learned from the last magazine gig that i ADORE interviews. i love getting to sit down with people and get a peek into their life. i love asking questions, seeing people light up with excitement to tell you about a project or a memory. making a personal connection or finding common ground is always exhilarating and then being able to take that and share it to a group of readers is even better.

HOWEVER.

i'm a musical fake.

don't get me wrong- i LOVE music. i always have music playing at home or in the car. i have pandora on my phone, tv, and bluray so it's available wherever i am. i put on some bad. ass. concerts in my kitchen while i cook. i do not sing in the shower (never could figure that one out) but i will do a whole show with encores in my car.

but i don't KNOW about music. i can't tell you which drummer left which band in what year between which albums and joined the OTHER band and released the next album which had a sophomoric urban feel opposed to the angsty grunge feel he had before.

I AM NOT LANE KIM.

i have this idea stuck in my head that to be a true music journalist i need an encyclopedic knowledge of all music across all genres from ALL TIME.

i thought about this on the way home from the interview. will i be able to ask the "right" questions? will they know i'm a fake?

let's take a trip down musical memory lane:

i don't remember when my fascination with music began. i remember having a plastic record player that plinked out songs when you turned it on.

i remember a sesame street cassette with such classics like "If I Knew You Were Coming I'd Have Baked a Cake" and "C is for Cookie" (which a google search just told me was the name of the album).

other childhood albums included evie, the bill gaither trio, and agapeland music machine:

for better or worse my ability to do the alphabet backwards to this day is thanks to the bill gaither trio a-b-c- song: a-b-c-d-e-f-g jesus died for you and me OR z-y-x-w-v god is watching over me.

if i ever have to do a field sobriety test that officer is in for a real treat.

i can still tell you the sound the music machine makes- it goes whir, whir, chicka, chicka, bomp, bomp, psssst. even more humiliating? i SEARCHED for this album and bought it on CD less than a year ago because i loved it so much as a kid.

things were a little edgier at my dad's house- he bought me an ann murray cassette (a gift i'm sure he deeply regretted later that same summer after hearing teady bears picnic for the millionth time). oooo. a canadian singer. can you handle all my edge?

i remember my dad whistling/singing john denver songs on road trips and his deep baritone singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" on occasion.

i learned on my last trip to his house ever that he loved musicals which i'm 100% sure is where i get it from.

as a teenager i somehow managed to own a copy of  Hearts of Gold, The Pop Collection which i completely wore out listening to over and over and over again. OH MY GOD WILSON PHILLIPS. and janet jackson! sinead o'conner! she shaved her head. CAN YOU FEEL THE REBELLION?

good thing that album didn't have madonna- i would have never been allowed to have in the house. madonna was complete scandalous trash, don't you know (she was the whole reason i wasn't allowed to watch A League of Their Own, yes, the baseball movie).

i remember my brother having a beach boys tape that i was SO jealous of. somwhere there is a GLORIOUS picture of him in his chubby phase wearing spandex bike shorts, some horrible tank top, with a flat top hair cut listening to that tape on his walkman.

the beach boys- they sang about girls and cars and surfing. so hip. he even had the soundtrack to cocktail on cassette. lucky bastard.

i went to a DC Talk concert with my youth group in high school but i spent the whole concert being worried about people seeing how much i was sweating through my super awesome but hot as fuck silk shirt (seriously, why didn't any tell me what a bad choice silk was for a jam packed high school auditorium?). my only other concert of my youth was a vince gill concert also in high school. again with the edge.

outside my pathetic collection of cassette and concerts my personal experience in creating music was also sadly limited. i played clarinet in middle school and jr. high. i always managed to snag second or third chair, but never really enjoyed playing (i figured out how to tear the pads off my clarinet in 8th grade so mine always needed repair and i wouldn't have to play). i did a few years of piano as well. my mum figured out early on that i could play by ear and immediately signed me up for lessons (that managed to train that out of me). i played piano until my teacher started shoving me in competitions all over the place. it takes the fun out of music when all you're doing is learning a piece to play for a judge that is going to tell you all the ways you did it wrong. there's a small collection of WSMTA (washington state music teachers association) pins around my house somewhere along with all my participation certificates and judging sheets.

i always wanted to keep playing piano. i still really miss it around the holidays. just couldn't figure out a way to make them let me play music just to play music. there was a lady that tuned our piano twice way back in the day- Ruby Bartel (or something close to that). she was...i don't even know the words. she was what i wanted to be when i grew up. she had this beautiful long black and silver braid and the coolest red cat eye glasses. she was a reporter for the local newspaper at a time when computers were just starting to be used and i remember hearing about how she typed so fast that she would finish a piece, walk away to get a cup of coffee and the computer would still be putting words up on the screen.

and she played piano.

holy. fuck. do i remember her playing the piano. i remember her showing up at our house and tuning the piano with a simple tuning fork. after it was tuned she played old school honky tonk/ragtime that cartoons are based on- she played with so much energy and passion that you swore the piano was jumping. i remember staring in complete awe as she just railed the piano and didn't miss a single note and created this...music. this color, this sound that was bigger than life.

dude- to be her. this cool, single, independent journalist that could play music like that. that would have been the most awesome thing ever.

but that's it. the extent of my music experience. as a child of the 80's when MTV first aired and the 90's when Nirvana was just over the mountains and music was everywhere on walkmans on cassette or cd's (oh my god cd's!). i missed new kids on the block. i missed jenny when she was from the block. I MISSED ALL THE GOOD BLOCKS. i can't tell you any of the hanson brother's names. i can't readily name off any greenday albums or one song the red hot chili peppers were famous for. 
i never figured out what meatloaf wouldn't do for love. i have ZERO information on any of that devil noise music like AC/DC or Motley Cru or Alice in Chains. i DID learn to play bryan adams everything i do on the piano.

i'm not an audiophile. i don't know what new cutting edge bands are on the verge of making it big. i don't know what the next big sound will be. i don't know the music underground. i'm not the one to compare music catalogs with. i've never even listened to the dark side of the moon.

so. i'm not sure how i'll be as a music journalist. but i do love talking to people. i do love asking questions. and when it comes to if i like something or not, i'm pretty good at being able to dial in why or why not and at least having an appreciation for the effort and feeling behind it.

and so it begins.