Take a moment for a trip down memory lane with me… What was the first music-recommendation somebody gave you when you were in your teens that made a big impression on you? A song that somebody told you you simply HAVE to listen to or an artist you can’t live without?
I remember mine clearly, probably because the recommendation was made by a slightly-too-old-for-me-and-therefore-so-cool boyfriend during one of my summers in Ireland. It was August of 1993, I was 13 (going on 14, essential when you’re that age) years old and Ireland was very proud of their latest homegrown export product: The Cranberries. Boyfriend in question asked me if I knew them and I said no. I remember the look of horror on his face, then he ran to his tape collection (yes tapes! oh the nostalgia of it all, remember buying blank tapes and pressing record and play simultaneously when your favourite song finally got played on the radio?) and immediately played me the song Linger.
Ever since, the song has been a big favourite of mine and whenever I hear it I am instantly transported to long hot summers in Ireland (yes they do exist, though admittedly I might have erased the rainy bits from memory), hanging around the park with my cousins to see the boys who we then pretended not to notice.
Although I did eventually buy one or two Cranberries records, ours was not a lasting love affair. Neither was the one with aforementioned boyfriend, though we faithfully wrote long letters until Christmas which was quite the commitment for a 14 year old! But in honour of my first decent music-advice, here’s the (pretty bad) video to Linger:
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cheers Elton 
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2 August 2007 at 8:51
anorthrnsoul™
Nice story. Mine was The Church when I was probably like 16. An older and much cooler friend I worked with made me a mix tape with mostly them on it and I just loved them, and still do.
2 August 2007 at 19:04
Mighty McFearless
A cool story indeed
. And a pretty decent song by the Cranberries, even if her voice still makes me flinch.
But to answer your question:
“What was the first music-recommendation somebody gave you when you were in your teens that made a big impression on you?”
That would be the almighty Alice in Chains. Hell yeah!
My ex-girlfriend at the time (after going steady since i was 5 and she was 8, she broke up with me when she hit puberty, but we remained friends) gave me a copy of their album Dirt. Yes – on a TAPE! She added I probably wouldn’t like it, ’cause I was not into seattle bands.
Which was true – I was a Michael Jackson fanatic who had fallen in love with cock rockers Skid Row. i thought the Scorpions were really hard rockin’. I used to wear skinny jeans to school more than a decade before they were invented. I was a chubby kid with a mullet and an Ugly Kid Joe tour shirt. I was REALLY whack.
But Alice changed it all. With Alice, I hit musical puberty. Soundgarden and Pearl Jam started to make sense (and, I admit, Babes in Toyland). I met girls who smelled like me. I rocked out, and started smoking at parties and vomited a lot. I went to play in crappy bands, and developed a happily misanthropic look on life.
I LOVED the nineties, the whole grunge thing. If there is an afterlife, it has a couch and MTV, non stop playing crappy nineties grunge videos. Blind Melon. Mother Love Bone. Screaming Trees. Soul Asylum. Smashing Pumpkins. And of course:
2 August 2007 at 19:30
brokenbranches
anrthrnsoul, must admit I never heard of The Church! Will defnitely check them out now, I’m curious.
Mighty McFearless, you SO need your own blog!!!! Love your story, particularly ” I met girls who smelled like me”
) Move over on that afterlife couch! I hear Ray Cokes is on next…
2 August 2007 at 21:49
Mighty McFearless
Oh, the golden days of MTV. Last thing i heard Ray Cokes had a show on some French tv channel. But somehow i doubt if it’s still on
.
And Enrico Silvestrin’s a DJ now. He used to be The Ultimate in coolness, a.k.a. the Asymptote of Cool… but at 35 he seems to have watered down into a kind of pouting trim-bearded couture-jockey. Check that douche at myspace: http://www.myspace.com/enricosilvestrin.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.