I'm in my late forties. [Find it interesting that the majority of AKers are in the same age bracket.] My early musical memories were heavily influenced by both parents and by older brothers and sisters. A few memories:
I remember when the "Beatles invasion" came in the early sixties, we taught my younger brother --just a toddler at the time, who could barely speak-- how to play air guitar and sing, "Yeah, yeah, yeah" over and over. My Dad, who sort of thought rock music was somewhere between a bunch of noise and a drug-addicting sign of the end of civilization, wasn't too thrilled, but my Mom thought it was "cute".
I remember when I was perhaps six years old phonetically memorizing the words (in French) to the "Toreador Song" from Bizet's opera "Carmen". I had no idea what the words meant, but liked the tune and would sing along at the top of my lungs to an old 78 recording of it, much to my family's amusement.
I "inherited" --that is, I got to use in my bedroom-- a system my Uncle had put together for my parents as a wedding gift at the end of the 1940s. It had a Webster record player with heavy steel turntable, a spindle you could stack several records on, with a bakelite thing that would move after the end of each record, causing the next one to fall down. The tone arm and cartridge was a huge boxy thing, with a dual stylus that could be flipped over to switch between 78 and 45/33 needles. The amp was a hiuge tube thing with a chromed steel case that my Uncle (a geeky genius with two PhDs) had built by hand to his own design. The speaker was a big (at least 12") woofer in a wooden box.
My electronics "stash" expanded enormously in seventh and eighth grade, when my school "shop" teacher bought a huge amount of government surplus stuff, and gave me a bunch of stuff from it that the school couldn't use. I got a massive early reel-to-reel, an audiometer (signal generator used for ear testing), an oscilloscope and other stuff like that to play with.
Grew up listening to 60s and 70s rock/pop on the radio (and some on LPs), but I also used to listen in when my Dad listened to an "oldies" show on the weekends. Started collecting old 78s, and by the time I went to college had over 400 of them, so I had a pretty good grounding in big band stuff, too. I played woodwinds in the school band, orchestra and even in a jazz band. Our high school band director had played with some big bands way-back-when and published over 400 of his own arrangements. He knew practically everyone in that field, so our school was visited by a lot of people like Quincy Joes and Woodie Hermann and his "Thundering Herd" whom we got to jam with. I also got to hear the Duke Ellington and Count Basie bands, while they were still around. Great memories!
Among my 78s was an original recording of Doris Day singing "Sentimental Journey" with the Tommy (or was it Jimmy?) Dorsey band. One day I was talking with an old retired guy in the area who always spoke like a drunkard, the result of having had a minor stroke or illness, I think. When he heard that I had that record, his face lit up, and he said, "I played the trombone on that recording!" and went on to talk about the session and his days with that band. Later I got him to sign the record. I think he was surprised and touched that a youngster would still listen to his music.
When I was an exchange student in Germany in 1976, I wanted to go to the Rolling Stones concert in Hamburg, but the parents of the family I was staying with thought it would be too dangerous (drugs and tough people and such). Had to engage in a lot of deception to arrange it :nono: , but....
:yes: :thmbsp:
Stopped playing instruments when I went to college, and all my musical interest sort of got put on hold when I moved to Hong Kong after MBA/grad school. I finally bought a new all-in-one digital system here. Appreciated the lack of hiss and pop and the simplicity, but missed the full analog sound and the fun of spinning vinyl. Upgraded after some years to a mid-fi Denon HT system with separate components, which sounded much better. Finally got back into vinyl and vintage stuff just a few months back (feels like longer!) when I found some really nice vintage Infinity speakers in the trash, but I've talked about that in another thread, so I'll shut up now.
