It started when I was a kid. When we still lived in Norfolk, before we went to live with my dad, the radio was ALWAYS on the in the house or in the car. Usually it was tuned to Z104, the local Top 40 radio station. So I grew up on a steady diet of Madonna and Billy Ocean and all the other 80s pop.
Once I went to live with my dad, I pestered him for a radio. Finally my stepmom gave me this old thing that probably was made in the 1970s, but it did the job. Then I started listening to WAVA in DC -- which I just realized could stand for "Washington" and "Virginia." Hmm. They just always referred to themselves by all four letters. But anyhow. WAVA played 80s rock, and my favorite song when I was six years old was (and I kid you not) the Beastie Boys' "Fight For the Right to Party."
No, I didn't know what a porno mag was. Yet, anyhow. *wink*
Now WAVA, to the best of my knowledge, plays Christian rock. Not my cuppa.
Anyhow, also in the first grade I started badgering my parents for piano lessons. They thought it was just a phase, that I would grow out of it. How little they knew me! I bugged them every single solitary day for a full year before they gave in. And once they did, I was in heaven.
Not saying that I loved to practice. But once I learned a song, I loved to play it. Also, my parents had given me a electronic piano (let's here it for the Yamaha!), full-size complete with pedals (minus the sostenuto pedal, but one hardly uses that anyhow), into which I could plug headphones. So I would sit down at my piano, plug in my headphones, and shut out the world around me.
It was heaven.
Come fourth grade, and the strings teacher came to our classroom to encourage us to sign up for strings. Those who were interested were pulled out of class to determine which stringed instrument would be best for us. Of course, with my short, stubby fingers there was no way I could play the violin or even the viola, so cello it was.
Every Friday I would haul my 3/4 size cello (I told you I was a big kid) from my house up this ginormous hill to the school, a 15-minute walk away. Every Friday we'd be dismissed from class and head to the temporary classroom next to the playground, where the strings teacher would try her best to teach us the basics of playing a stringed instrument.
(Yeah, and remember that kid down the street that caused me so many problems, Michele? Tony?? Yeah, he was in that class too. Oh my, did he make my life hell. *shudder* That poor kid...)
At the end of the school year, we were sitting in the gym at an assembly for the presentation of school awards. It was about a million degrees in the gym -- mid-June in northern VA, and schools back then didn't have air conditioning. Then you put 600 students into a gym, and it gets pretty sweltering. I was just sort of in my own little world not even paying attention, playing with my shoe laces, I think, when all of a sudden I heard my name called.
Holy cow, I'd won an award!!
That day I received a trophy for musicianship, the most improved strings player in the school.
To this day I treasure that trophy. I still have it! It's the only award I've ever won.
Fast-forward to high school. At this point, I'm in the school orchestra. I've had to give up piano lessons because we'd gone down to one income so my stepmom could be a stay-at-home mom, but my parents still tried to give me private cello lessons until I was in a school that had an orchestra. I'm also getting very cheap voice lessons from the music director at church, and I'm ashamed to say I didn't take them seriously, for which I am very sorry. As if orchestra and voice lessons weren't enough, I'm in the pit orchestra for the spring musical at school, the string ensemble for church, the youth ensemble (singing) at church, and trying to be in the adult choir at church as much as they'd let me.
And my car radio was constantly tuned to DC101, the local rock and alternative rock station in the DC area.
I never could stand the djs on HFS (the other local alternative rock station). *shudder*
But I've always had a weird taste in music. I love 80s pop. I love Metallica. I love classical. I love Sublime. I love Bon Jovi and all the other big hair bands. I love Meatloaf. I love Paula Abdul. I love Barenaked Ladies. I love the Offspring. I love old Madonna. I seriously like Eminem -- his music, not him personally. He's got issues. I like Ani DiFranco. I like Lisa Loeb. I like the Dixie Chicks. I like disco. I like dance. Basically, I like everything, save opera (never did get into it; I don't know why) and gangsta rap.
I've always been teased by my taste in music. In college, my roommate and her friends always made fun of me for liking the mainstream stuff. For them, if it wasn't indie or way out there or somehow not mainstream, it was cool. But I didn't care. I knew what I liked, and if my music gave offense, then I just plugged in my headphones.
Imagine my surprise and shock when I met Kurt again in 2000 and went pawing through his CD case. There I found Metallica -- no surprise. But there was also Madonna. And Def Leppard. And Ani DiFranco (although he initially bought her music just because he has a thing for lesbians) and Tori Amos. And the Offspring. And Meatloaf. And Sublime.
Looking through his CDs was like looking through my own. It was a serious shock. Here was this guy I'd just met (again) who had the exact same taste in music as I do.
Lately we've been a little bit split. He's more into rock than I am at this point, although I have just recently found an alternative rock station that I've been digging lately. But we still have mainly the same loves, and it just amazes me that someone else could have such a wacko taste in music.
Just like me!