This is not a religious blog, but to know where
I'm coming from you need to know where I came from.
Two days before my 11th birthday, I moved to South America with my missionary parents. They are great
people, I love them very much, and growing up as a third culture kid gave me a
unique prospective on life that I am grateful for.
That being said, growing up in Quito ,
Ecuador , even with American programming
on television and attending one of the largest English speaking schools in the
country, I was cut off from a lot of what was going on in the U.S.
Most kids develop their musical tastes during the
formative years of middle school and the first couple years of high school.
By age 14 or so I knew I loved music. I also knew
that almost all of the music I'd heard sucked. At the time Reggatone was about
the biggest thing around and no mater where I went, from dance clubs to the
back seats of taxi cabs, I was assaulted by the "Dame más Gasolina!"
chorus of stupid Daddy Yankee song.
I hated it.
It didn't help that the only Rock music to be
found came in the form of post-grunge and Nu Metal wussies like Creed and Limp
Bizcit. Friends would bring these watered down excuses for rock n' roll back
with them after a summer in the States.
I'll admit I pirated the crap out of them and listened to these middle class
crybabies whine about how daddy didn’t love them enough over and over again,
because... well... they were all I had... I didn't know any better.
Then one day, I think it was in 8th grade, but it
might have been 9th, one of my buddies older brothers showed me Nirvana's Nevermind.
I hit the
freaking roof.
By living in the insular bubble of a missionary
community, I had the privilege of experiencing the magnum opus of the grunge
era as it was originally meant to be listened to: as a pissed off teenager in a
world bereft of anything resembling honest rock n' roll.
From that day on, I dedicated myself to finding
this elusive "good music."
I scoured my friends CD collections and listened
to a lot of crap, but that almost made the gems I did find all the more
precious to me.
Great acts like Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, Led Zepplin
and the Chili Peppers were almost immediately available to me, but almost hostilely commandeering CD booklets
from everyone around me lead me to The Ramones and the Clash, and even lesser
known, yet hugely influential punk acts like Bad Brains and The Replacements.
Raiding my dads old CDs and tapes I found Rush, Boston
When I ran out of people to steal from, I went to
the internet. Even though our bandwidth was way too low in Quito
It was hard work to be a fan and very few of my
friends at the time understood it, but the hours I spent searching for the
sounds I liked, the feeling of desperation behind Paul Westerberg’s voice or
the sheer tipped out joy in a Hendrix solo, completed some broken circuit in my
brain.
I believe that is what honest art does for all of
us. Bob Dylan lyrics can answer questions we didn't even know we were asking. Aretha
Franklin's voice could turn an atheist into a true believer.
I'm a cynical sarcastic SOB, but at the end of the
day, I'm a romantic.
That is why I love music.
Thanks for sharing such an interesting and candid glimpse into what makes you tick. I love how honest you are about the things you like and don't like... and the things that impacted you, positively and negatively! I think it's important to self-reflect on what makes certain things important to us, while other things just slide right out of our notice. Thanks for sharing!
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