Intro to Music 101

People who know me have often heard me say that 1993 was the best year for music. That's only a half-joking statement. Subjective? Yes. Truth? Probably. Regardless, a lot of my music choices at that time came from listening to the radio, or watching MTV, VH1, or Friday Night Videos. That began to change once I graduated high school in 1994. A new world opened-up. I started attending the local community college, and began going to the local LGBT nightclub, where there was all sorts of music played across the booming speaker system. So many sub-genres of dance music. Being exposed to that every week was eye-opening.

I ended up meeting a lot of different people at the club, many of whom were varied and interesting, and had eclectic tastes in music. Not all of it interested me. There was one guy I met while out one night whose apartment I visited a week or two later -- purely on a friendship level -- and whose CD collection was so humongous that it rendered me numb. It was too much to take in. Impressive, yes, but over-stimulating to the point of almost shutting down the mind. A few other occasions, with different people, were much more pared down and accessible.

There was Brent. He wore glasses, had brown hair, a great smile, was smart, and affable. He was straight, if memory serves correctly, but was comfortable being around a lot of gay men, and enjoyed his time at the club. I remember going over to his house one sunny day. There I was introduced to Massive Attack, a British trip hop band whose songs still dot some of my playlists. As Brent and I hung out for a bit, he had one of their albums on in the background. I can't remember if it was Blue Lines (1991), or Protection (1994), but whatever it was made me curious. He happily talked with me about why he liked them, and it was an introduction to a style of music I'd heretofore been unfamiliar with.

I've written about Jeff in these pages before. We met in 1994. We became friends. I had a mild crush on him, which he tolerated well, and he was someone who became very formative in my taste in music as a young adult. We would chill at his place at night sometimes. He liked to keep the lights low in his apartment and, while it was never really romantic, it was definitely intimate (if that makes sense). There we would sit on his couch, talking about things -- our lives and what not -- and in the background there would be music. Jeff had a decent CD collection, and it was there, in that environment, that I discovered the Pet Shop Boys. They would become my favorite music group of all-time. Jeff introduced them to me, along with Cocteau Twins.

When I started working at Circuit City in 1997, there was a guy already working there whose name I can't remember (and, believe me, I've tried) and he introduced me to another music group whose work I've come to appreciate over the years. GusGus is an Icelandic electronic band. At the time, they'd just released their  second album, Polydistortion. I'd initially toddled on over to the small electronics department so I could sheepishly talk with the aforementioned co-worker. He wore spectacles, had angular features, and hair that was parted in the middle. He was one of those people who is so intelligent that they seem intimidating at first. But he was playing a CD when I walked over that caught my ear. I inquired about it, and he avidly talked about the band with me.

The term 'formative years' is often referred to during various phases of childhood. Once we become adults, we're often thought to be fully grown. While that may be true to a certain extent, I would argue that our late-teens and early-twenties are very important in terms of development. We're almost like mature babies, seeing aspects of the world for the first time, often inundated with new people, and  somewhat moldable by new experiences. I'm not saying we shut down completely as we get older, but we do tend to calcify a bit as we age, our minds a little less open than they once were. We've experienced more, and less and less seems new. And, if it does seem new, we're not as prone to be receptive to it.

I was in my late-teens and early-twenties during the mid-1990s. It felt as though the world was young then, though that was likely my age talking, rather than the times. Still, the music was better then. Some of the tunes I discovered were down to listening to the radio and watching music video channels, while some of it was because of people like Brent, Jeff and what's-his-name from Circuit City. Brent and I are Facebook friends, though rarely interact. Jeff would be in his early-fifties now. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 37 -- way too soon. And the guy whose name I can't remember? Who knows? Maybe he's still listening to GusGus somewhere.