What got you into music?

[old Skool]

I think I was 15 or so and couple older kids in high school used to get together in the auditorium during lunch and jam. The girls would all sneak in the back of the auditorium to watch and talk about how cool these guys were. That's when the light bulb lit up. Once I started playing though I was hooked. Music wasn't just a way to meet hot groovy chicks but an escape. Don't know what I'd do now if I couldn't play.

[BDR]

Music wasn't just a way to meet hot groovy chicks but an escape.

Cool, you used the word, "groovy." That's just groovy.

Don't know what I'd do now if I couldn't play.

There's always the sexy phesant farm you'd been talking about ...



r:>)

[J Michaels]

Got a $20 toy record player for Christmas '75 (age 5) - my mom always claimed it was the best $20 she ever spent. Can't even remember how many needles we went through.

Then, age 8, a baseball coach gave me an end of season gift - Ki$$ Double Platinum.

'Nuff said.

[mjb]

that damn KISS, they'll do it to you every time. i remember my brother and i saving and combining our allowance to get kissalive 2 and then theyre solo albums came out. my infatuation with kiss was short lived but they def. have a place in my evolution though.

[skipisode]

I grew up in a family where we had many musicians (fiddle players, pianists, guitarists,trumpet players, flutists, etc., etc.). As a young child I used to stay up late with my older brother and sister to watch TV shows like The Midnight Special, Don Kirschner's Rock Concerts, The Carpenters
(believe it or not), and even Hee Haw, etc. My cousin David came for a visit from Berkley, CA around 1969-1970 and played a 12 string acoustic
at my house doing songs like Stairway to Heaven, House of the Rising Sun, etc. I was fascinated. By age 6-7, I was taking instrument lessons
on piano and trumpet. Soon after that I began learning to play guitar. It's
been a lifelong Love Affair with music ever since! I don't know what I'd do without it!

[bassist_25]

Other than playing trumpet in the elementary band, my love of music first began when I was around 11 or 12 years old. It was the summer before junior high started. I remember one day my father was fixing our front porch and said that I could pick out a cassette to listen to outside. I grabbed a greatest hits compilation of the Charlie Daniels Band. For the rest of the summer, I mined a lot of pop's collection, listening to the afermentioned Charlie Daniels, The Beach Boys, Billy Joel, Merle Haggard, and Starship. Dire Straits was the first band that I really got into. I still remember the first time I heard the opening riff to Money For Nothing. It was one of those "moments."

I started studying the piano about a year later. Then I plinked around on guitar. Dad was always a semi-pro bass player, so I started learning things off of him. He gave me his first bass, a 1972 Fender Musicmaster. It had these tapewound strings on it that were probably as old as I was. I still remember going into Jarett's to buy a new set of strings for it. They were GHS Boomers. I started accelerating much faster on bass than guitar, probably due to the fact that I had access to an actual bass player to learn off of. I made the decision that bass was going to be the instrument which I stuck with. Granted, I'm still happy that I played piano for as long as I did. I honestly believe that a truly well-rounded musician should be able to play the piano (not saying that I'm more well-rounded than anyone else, but there is a reason why you have to learn the piano if you're a music major in college), and it really helped me with theory, because it's easier to visualize the relationship between melody and harmony.

When dad would play outside jobs, I'd often get the chance to sit in. By then, I had graduated to his Rickenbacker 4001. When I was about 15, dad and I went into the studio and did our own album of original material. It's definitely cool having that background though, because as I've said before on the forum, I really haven't been surprised all that much since I started gigging. Also, I think that I'm pretty realistic about things and never really had stars in my eyes.

Cool topic.

[Klamachpin]

The radio in the early seventies - WCRO in Johnstown in particular. But before that it was me & Granny singing "Yellow Submarine" together!

[rickw]

As seems the trend here, my parents both had a hand in giving me the thirst for music. My mom would regularly bring home the latest Beatles 45, and to this day my brother still has them all, pretty cool that. My father bought me several guitars over the years including my very first from 1964 or so that I still have. I never really got serious about it until I heard Chicago Transit Authority's first album that featured an amazing guitar player named Terry Kath. That got me hooked on guitar. The album that got me hooked on music to stay was Yes' Fragile.

[Hawk]

Parents. My dad played drums in a band. My mother played piano. I just grew up with music as a part of life.

About 2nd or 3rd grade I HAD to choose an instrument. This was around 1962 (yeah I know I'm an old man). I said guitar. My dad said the electric guitar was a FAD and was going to go out of style. I had to pick something else.

I soon started drum lessons from Tom Petro. I always played around at the piano (mom would show me things). In high school I started piano lessons .

My great uncle Albert (co-founder of the Unter Uns) lived with us until he died around 1963 or 64. He wrote and arranged music. People would knock at the door and say they needed an arrangement for say a nine piece band. He would sit at the piano and write out each part. Amazing man to be around. In the early 1970s I got to play in a band that played some of his music. So cool !

My family instilled a love and passion for music into me.

[Hal]

I soon started drum lessons from Tom Petro. I always played around at the piano (mom would show me things). In high school I started piano lessons .

Was he a DJ for a cambria county radio station?? That name rings a bell for some reason.

For me, I had older brothers who were into rock music. My parents had one of the record turntable/ AM FM Radio/ 8 Track floor model cabinet stereos. I remember I would thought it was the coolest thing just because how loud it got and how I could get it to thump. Well, from my parents' collection I remember most rocking out to Boxcar Willie, Cash, and the Beatles.

My brothers immediately got me hooked on KISS. But it was more because of the face paint because the only albums we had were the Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley solo eight tracks. I think I just liked the image on the cover. Then I heard Alive album and that was it, I was hooked.

I always had my brothers' music collection to jam to so I was extremely lucky compared to kids my age who at the time were listening to New Kids On The Block.. I was jamming to Testament, Obituary, Flotsam & Jetsam, Suicidal Tendencies and all the 80's hair band albums (I was in elementary school at the time.)

Started to play some guitar and took some lessons for a while at the old Richland Mall. Got away from it when I graduated high school. That was 12 years ago. Became of age to go to bars and got sucked right back in by all you local guys.

I haven't started playing anything again but have a great hunger to start banging on some drums. I think it will be happening shortly here once things get in order for me a little bit. I also wouldn't mind punching the shit out of an upright string bass either. Time will tell!!!!

[Jim Price]

My older brother, Mike, was probably the biggest factor in getting me started in music when I was a kid. He used to play several instruments, including drums, accordion, clarinet and sax; and I eventually started taking accordion lessons for a few years. Then when Mike started attending Penn State, he was bringing home albums from Pink Floyd, Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer and others. I started listening to those albums, and the rock'n'roll bug had bitten me. I began to buy 45's with my allowance money, and I still haven't recovered...

[VENTGtr]

Hearing Elvis, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Gene Pitney, The Beach
Boys, Charlie Rich, Chet Atkins, and a bunch of other similar stuff around
the house.

Seems like when I was little if you went to visit any relatives on weekend
you'd see Hee Haw, or Lawrence Welk on T.V. as well.

Got a cheap little acoustic around '75 and started plinking around. Took
lessons for a couple of months. Learned a few chords and songs like
"Don't Fence Me In", a couple of other songs from the "Mel Bay"
books.

Used to watch the Hudson Brother's show on Saturday mornings (A bit
later on, the Bay City Rollers show. First singles I ever got were "Saturday
Night" by BCR and "409" by The Beach Boys) ended up with a few 45s that
I'd listen to, somehow ended up with an LP of 50s stuff (GOLDEN GREATS)
that I listened to like crazy.

In '77 got "The White Album" and "Help" at a barn sale and thought
(And still do) they were the greatest things I'd ever heard.

Everything since has just been in addition to.

Was just listening to a Marty Robbins CD a few days ago and still can't
believe how great it was.

[Banned]

I think the old video of U2 playing "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in the rain at Red Rocks made me want to be in a band. Like a lot of guys in the 80s, Eddie Van Halen determined what instrument I wanted to play.

Probably the most important influence, though, was dozens of forgotten garage punk bands playing in firehalls, at skate parks, and on traded cassettes. When you're young and have no talent and no knowledge, it's a huge inspiration to know that you don't need to be a virtuoso to make music that means something to somebody. If it weren't for punk, I probably would have given up after realizing that it takes longer than six months to be Eddie Van Halen.

[witchhunt]

Let me see. If memory serves me, in 1972 or 73, I was 11 or 12 , just started Jr. High and had to start riding the bus. I knew some of the older kids who always got the back seats and sat with them. The one guy who we called "Zombie" would bring his battery powered 8 track. One of the first things he played was Sabbath Vol 4. I thought that was great stuff. A lot of ass kissing to my parents soon got me my first stereo. I bought Vol 4, Master of Reality, and Cooper's Love it to Death and Killer. I knew I had found my passion. After a healthy bowl of beans, I would sit for hours with the tunes as loud as was permissable and study the album covers. BTW, Rush is releasing 5000 copies of Snakes and Arrows on vinyl.

[metalchurch]

Witchhunt, I actually have Master of Reality on 8 track! It was my dad's, I remember when I was little and hearing this thing play over and over. I also have Paranoid, and Ozzy's Bark at the moon.

[Mistress_DB]

my mom got me into music. She used to rock me to sleep as a baby to old Beatles 45's. I fell in love with 80's glam metal in 87 and it was all downhill from there. You'll hear a bit of everything in my house from oldies to country to 80's rock and metal to current rock.