Radio LBB: Felt Music

I've never come up with a good answer to the question: ‘What music are you into?’ So, I’ll just have to go with my default answer. The three musicians I listen to most regularly and am absolutely obsessed with are: David Bowie; Prince; and Bruce Springsteen. Then depending on whether it looks like the other person is trying to escape the conversation or not, I’ll either leave it there, or launch over enthusiastically into a few more of my favourite artists.

I guess, like a lot of people, my first musical influences were from my Mum and Dad. Neither of them had a musical background, but whether it was car journeys, holidays, or BBQs in the summer, music is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think about growing up. It’s entirely their fault for instance that when me and my sister ended up doing karaoke at a mate’s birthday recently, nostalgia took us straight to Marvin Gaye, Van Morrison and an embarrassing amount of Osmonds songs!

I stole an interest in Fleetwood Mac and Dire Straits from Mum. Whereas if Dad wasn’t listening to The Beach Boys, the rest of his musical taste seemed to be heavily influenced by his time in the US army, (and just like that scene in Platoon) he’d normally either be listening to country, (particularly John Denver) or Motown/soul.

Aside from that, (and a love for the Rat Pack and Nat King Cole, which I stole from my Gran) I wouldn’t have described myself as much of a music fan, until I was in my mid-teens. At which point two things happened at about the same time: Firstly, after being nagged by Mum for what I wanted for my birthday, and having no ideas, I said the album of whatever song was on the radio. I was lucky enough to get it, and even luckier that it accidentally started my love of hip/hop. The second thing was my uncle introducing me to the Blues, funk and most importantly for me, The Doors.

At that point my music obsession exploded! I spent most of my free time after this point listening to anything and everything, I could get my hands on. Like most teenagers, I didn’t have much money, so I’d spend hours in record shops, but specifically looking at the CDs (they were a lot cheaper, and I could burn them onto my iPod, which pretty much represented my entire personality at that point).

This followed me to uni, where I spent too much time sneaking into the music section of the library with my pianist friend’s access card, burning full discographies of The Beatles, The Who, Bowie, Dylan etc onto iTunes, until the noise of my laptop’s fan sounded like it was about to take off!

I did a history degree but was desperate to get onto the one music module I was allowed to do. It was about Woody Guthrie and the artists he inspired. This is where within a week I went from thinking Bob Dylan was boring and that Bruce Springsteen was a Bryan Adams wannabe, to (in true university cliché) becoming absolutely obsessed with both. This reached its embarrassing climax when, for our end of module assessment, me and my friend who were both cosplaying The Boss in white t’s and denim, poured water over our heads and ran into the lecture hall to ‘Born To Run’ (hopefully there’s no video evidence lying around) to begin our presentation.

I haven’t changed much since then. I can still be found in record shops, or at gigs a lot of the time, and still get a massive buzz from finding a great band I’ve never listened to before. Here’s to finding the next one, and the one after that too!