I was listening to a podcast with Tom Segura, who is an up and coming comedian that I just can't get enough of. He has a dry delivery but what he says is over the top and almost relatable. The host asked him about his early musical influences and he admitted to liking early rap. This got me thinking and up until 7th grade or so that I discovered cassettes, I was a fan of what my parents liked. Luckily, my folks were semi cool in the music department as I have always had a love for 60s and 70s music and it just seems to match the feel of being in Corpus Christi to me, which is a town that to me had its heyday back then. By 60s and 70s music, I mean stuff like The Beatles, Jim Croce, Bread, James Taylor, probably all falling in as soft rock, but it was good stuff that still holds up.
Along with that, we are Hispanic and tex-mex music was always playing at the house, on the weekends it seemed, especially. My folks even had one of those giant stereo things that was bigger than a TV box and had a record player and an 8 track player up in there and back then we could catch channel 55KTSA on AM radio, it was huge, so we could blast some music pretty loudly for back in the day. I still even remember my mom teaching me how to dance real quick in the living room before one of my first dances with probably some Mafia or Selena or Mazz, which were hot when I was headed to high school. I remember before junior high rounding up all the 8 tracks, which were like cassettes, but bulkier and probably didn't even produce "stereo" sound but it is what we had and I could fill the glove box which also used to be bigger. Again, one of my parents was apparently cool, because it was them buying music, I just can't figure which one. My dad has always been a bit of a savage, but he did manage to get himself an IPOD and load it with his music for when we are at "boring" places like the mall. I just don't see my mom spending money on music with four kids in the house, but she would be the hipper one back in the day before Jesus grabbed her by the brain.
My introduction to "my music" wasn't until 7th grade. We had a gift exchange and my gift was supposed to come from one of the school tough guys, so I figured I wasn't getting shit, but he surprised me and although I didn't get it until after school or a couple days later, he gave me a cassette from AC/DC, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. Man, it was one of the greatest things I ever heard. It had Big Balls, which is a tongue in cheek song about big balls like the kind Cinderella attended, or big balls like testicles. I thought this was genius and set me on a path where any time I can find music like this, I am in love with it. Later, I bought Two Live Crew's Me So Horny which was not tongue in cheek, that one just beat you over the head with its raunchiness, but it was right up my alley. Aerosmith's Pump had a couple dirty songs, specially F.I.N.E. This was all mixed in with Ozzy Osbourne who was my music through high school and that grew a lot more with the other heavy metal stuff once I got to the junior college, with Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeth.
This was my play loud stuff, but what I really like was the Dr. Demento silly stuff that parodies music, the Weird Al Yankovich stuff that has been around since the 80's. I find it easier to listen to nowadays, since everything is on You Tube. We are no longer slaves to the radio stations that play the same 4-5 bands all the freaking time.
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