How do you find the time to listen to all that music? Some of you post these loooong lists of artists that you're listening to now and I think, that would take me a year to explore that much music! Am I just a slow listener or what? It takes me time to fully digest an album. Music's influence is so elusive, mysterious, malleable, sublime, and dependent on mood that for me it changes a bit at each listen, so I just keep listening to the same songs until I find some cash to buy a new album.

Are you obsessed? Do you listen to music at work? Do work in a record store? How do you do it????

I listen to music about 16 hours a day.

I'm constantly looking for new sounds to stimulate my earholes, I guess you could call me obssessed.

when it's not in the foreground, it's in the background.

i grew up in a household where music was always very important. i remember when i was little, my mom was going to alice cooper and frank zappa concerts. i remember her coming home from a Police concert and talking about how the opening act would never amount to anything (it was joan jett and the blackhearts). music was the number one thing in our house growing up, like some families revolve around sports or whatever. the first play i was taken to see as a little boy was "beatlemania".

i guess growing up that way, music just becomes a second language.

Well, for me, it started with my parents and relatives listening to some really great music when I was little. It was always being played in the house. My dad and I, to this day, discuss artists -- it was even more so when i was little.

Then, when you're mature enough to understand that your favorite, wee little artist was influenced by other artists, you pick them up and give them listens. Then you see who their buddies were and read up on folks who tend to get a lot of press and accolades for their creative contributions. Then, you see who else bears those seminal artists' influences. For me, this could be seen in: Prince --> Hendrix --> Prince --> Terence Trent D'arby --> Stevie Wonder --> Brian McKnight --> Nat King Cole --> Harry Connick Jr. --> Wings --> Beatles --> Clapton --> David Sanborn --> Joe Sample --> Lalah Hathaway --> Marcus Miller --> Miles Davis --> Prince --> Sly Stone --> Eric Benet --> Prince --> Santana --> etc. , into this circular deal that just gets wider and wider.

Then, being a journalist, I was privvy to reading wire services that carried CD reviews by the dozen, every week. As my music tastes grew, so did my familiarity with the new names I'd see. Compound that by a number of years, and numerous discussions with friends who also suffered from the same affliction, and it just led to a LOT of music I've amassed over the years.

And, if you're a musician on top of all that, the folks you jam & perform with will often hip you to some OUTSTANDING artists, as will other artists in your circuit.

It doesn't take long before you're a full-out musical junkie.

heartbeatocean said:

we have a radio on at work but I listen to a LOT of music at home

I'm obsessed with music lol...I used to sit there as a 5 year old and tape music from the radio to make my own compilation CD's which is what fuelled my love of music...music is my first love and always will be

My musical digestion (or in some cases indigestion) has occurred over the course of few decades. There was always music in my household from the time I can remember anything. Gospel via my grandparents record collection (and more importantly, live via my grandmother's church). Jazz from my dad and his friends competitive record collecting and popular music through my mom's listening habits.

Luckily I grew up during a time you could hear all kinds of music, old and new, on the radio. It became such an addiction that i'd go to bed with a transistor radio on under my pillow. My friends were also music junkies so we were always trying to out hip each other by being the first to discover a new group.

Currently, i've got a very long commute to and from work (which is music related) so thank goodness for the CD player in my car. Also being a musician keeps me looking for new things as well as revisiting older material.

Over time all those sounds add up.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

heartbeatocean said:

posers?

Much like theAudience, my musical education is ongoing, and has been actively taking place for decades. I'm always looking for new styles of music, as I was raised on many different genres. I even had Bill Withers and James Brown playing on a small transistor radio in my crib when I was a child! I'm a pianist/keyboardist as well, so music has been a major part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I started listening to music in the disco era. I stayed with my grandmother every weekend, holidays, and all summer long. She was my second mother. She was also very overprotective and didn't want me to go anywhere. She bought me records every weekend when I came over so I could have something to entertain myself. Every weekend, she would give me money for either three 45s or one 12 Inch. She bought me several albums for Christmas and birthdays. If there was a particular album, I really wanted, she would buy it for me. Any money I got from other family members at Christmas and birthdays, I also spent on records.

As I said, she was very overprotective. If a concert was coming to town, she would bribe me with several albums if I wouldn't go. I soon learned how to manipulate her....you know how kids can do. She knew what I was doing but she loved me as if I were her own child.

When I grew up, I continued buying music with my own money. Actually, music changing for the worst these days could be a good thing. If music was still good, I would be broke from continuously buying it. I still go to the record store about once every few weeks but I always come out with something old.

music doesnt belong to me, i belong to it, from the day i was born Music grabbed me and said "Mine" music was and will always be my life's blood i listen to music constantly,i hear music in everything. Music was always in my brain since i could even think about anything else really as a child.and now at my age now being 38 iv'e digested soo much music and its al logged in my brain, like one huge vault.

There was always music in the house. Guess I have my mom to thank for that. She played lots of Otis, Sam, Jackie (I saw Jackie Wilson when I was too young to remember.) I remember seeing the O'Jays in concert (they had processes and William Powell was in the group! that's how long ago it was!). Watched a lot of tv too! (I remember when Soul Train first started.) Since I watched shows like American Bandstand, Wonderama (kid's show, but musical guests appeared), Don Kirschner's Rock Concert, Midnight Special...I was exposed to lots artists who didn't do R&B.

We read a lot too, so I learned a lot from Jet, Ebony, Soul, Right On!, etc.... I also listened to the radio a lot, still do. When I got old enough to go to the clubs I got a dose of all kinds of music there as well.

Basically, I keep an open mind about stuff, and that includes music too.



[Edited 10/13/04 7:51am]

Since I was a child music has been a part of me. It's more than having time to listen to it or an obsession about having a collection of music. I can agree with most of the above posts as I've also been a musician since I was 8 years old. Learning and reading and listening about something that's a part of me is just a natural progression like researching your family tree.

So you can put a name like "music buff" on me if you'd like but it's deeper than that.

spelling
[Edited 10/13/04 7:50am]

wow, this is my kind of question. i am a music junky! i can't live without it. from a very early age me and my sister were deeply into music and the arts in general. i was exposed to a lot of muisc as a kid from my sister and that was mostly old skool rap, pop and house. then when i got into my teens i became a huge rock fan, so that's when i really started buying tapes and cd's. i also worked for a record company, so i got loads of free music. i still buy music all the time though, maybe too much but i can't help it. i'm just very passionate about music and various kinds. i also love to know about the artists, especialy if i'm realy into them. as for when i find the time, that would be on my way to work, whilst listening to my walkman and a little bit at night before bed, but it's true i don't have as much time as i used to.

i gave up on it years ago. i used to care about seeking out new things, but it just got too time-consuming and expensive, and i didn't end up listening to more than half of it anyway. so i just stick to the ones i know i like. sometimes i feel disappointed in myself for that, but certainly there are more important things to worry about in life than whether or not my musical horizons are broadened.

that said, there are times when i come across something new that really gets me. but it's usually got to be something i discover on my own. no matter how hard someone tries, i have to discover it for myself. even if it's through them, i have to take it on as my own, in my own time, to truly appreciate it and make it a part of my own rotation.

You all are pretty buff.

It's in the blood:

My Grandfather's a Jazz musician, and so was my Father. And my Mother used to sing, but not anymore.

But that has very little to do with why I wanted to play.

To answer your question, Heartbeat: music is therapy to me. It's one of the few things I live for in this world. And it is my misson to endure the never-ending quest for the perfect sound.

Well, the whole New Wave thing came from my Mother too. She was a fan and i guess it kinda rubbed off on me.

ThreadBare said:

It's interesting that this aspect of musical discovery is brought up. Just the other day I was going through my own evolution, mentally, wondering how it would look. It's like a family tree that keeps branching out. It never ends though; it is an ongoing journey.

One day I should sketch one out detailing my own muscial interests, just to see how it's all connected.

Well, my dad was a music artist. He was always singing and playing the guitar around me. This is when I was very young. My mother plays piano, violin and clarinet. So, she would play as well.Still does. I was totally born with it. As far back as I can remember, I was into music. When I was a baby, I was always trying to play the guitar and the piano by banging on it. When I was around 4, I started actually holding the guitar, fucking with it, trying to get sound out of it. I started playing drums when I was 7 after always picking up shit like plastic banannas and beating on the table like I was playing drums. From the Jackson Five onward, I remember very clearly from around 3 years old watching their cartoon and listening to the J5's albumsand singing and dancing to them. I was just into all types of music. When I was around 8 was when I started buying albums. It didn't matter what genre, as long as I dug it. I 've been that way ever since. So, that's a lot of music that I have absorbed, not only by being a musician/songwriter, but as a lover of music.

heartbeatocean said:

My father was a drummer, an artist, and a photographer. He took my older brother and I to a lot of musical events. My mother was in charge of the youth choir at my church. I grew up as a "latchkey kid" and spent a lot of time alone listening to the radio. Initially is just amazed at how the artists could get from one station to another(I was around 5-7 years old and thought they were performing live at each station!!!)!! BG...please...don't ...I give!!!!
I grew up in Jax, Fl(right on the edge of deep south and the gateway to
carribean! There were just all types of music to explore...70's soul, the guitars of Southern Fried rock, Disco, Cuban dance, and Reggae!
It was on the radio and I embraced it all!!
My older brother and cousin played drums ended up doing session work for
people like was Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, and Cissy Houston!
As I got older, I met an artist or especially if I saw them perform live,
I would attempt to follow their music.
GGD

heartbeatocean said:

Listen to your CDs on roadtrips especially the ones when you
have to drive alone! Carry tunes that you don't normally
listen to. Doing this helps you appreciate new stuff or find things
in songs that you would miss otherwise!
GGD

growing up, my dad was in a rock band, and they used to rehearse in our basement, so there was always music around. my mom and dad had a great record collection, and as a kid I was much more likely to be curled up in front of their stereo listening to The Beatles, The Eagles, Three Dog Night, Bread, Doobie Brothers, etc... than to be playing with toys.

I was 11 when MTV took off - it was new wave stuff like Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams", Peter Schilling's "Major Tom" and the Human League's "Mirror Man" that really introduced me to "modern" music... and i just dove into it and never stopped. I listen to music most of the day - in the car, all day at work, most of the time at home. My CD collection now has it's own bedroom, LOL. And there is always a long laundry list of new things that I want to listen to, and artists that i want to explore.

buy an iPod, load all your cd's (if possible) on it and play it in shuffle-mode.....you'll be surprised by the music you thought you knew! I am rediscovering loads of stuff!

Music is always going through my head---It's funny, I don't own an ipod, and don't even have a portable Cd, and don't have that much time at work to listen, but it's always there anyway--It's in my dreams, everywhere...

Like a lot of others have said, my parents were the early influence--some of my first memories are of hearing music in the house--from Miles Davis and Wes Montgomery to Aaron Copland, from Debussy to Three Dog Night, from the Moody Blues to Henry Mancini, to Rotary Connection to Curtis, Aretha, and Sly,etc., it was always in the air...and still is...

abierman said:

EXACTLY!It doesn't even have to be an ipod.There are many good mp3 players outh there.I have 4 of them(I am obssessed with anything music related)and I love them all.On my rio,I go to rio dj and random all 20 gigs.It is a great experience.My ipod is 30 and I want a creative labs 40 gig machine. I love these gagdgets!

heartbeatocean said:

Good for you! You don't have to have an enormous collection of music to be a "music buff." Buying CDs to impress your friends, keep up with the Joneses or boost your indie cred is a waste of time, money and energy. You don't get any points for name-dropping obscure bands on the internet. Sometimes, the more you listen, the more you become jaded. If you don't have a lot of albums, and everything you hear is new and fresh, that's an exciting time! Remember, the fewer albums you have, the more you get to listen to each one!

Thanks everyone for the great stories. It's nice to get to know you all a little better.

Here's mine:

My dad played lead guitar and sang in a country-rock band. He turned me onto a lot of music growing up. He took me to Queen and Eagles concerts when I was ten and other shows even before that. (I remember sleeping in the bleachers through a Johnny Cash concert)

I taught myself to play my grandma's piano during two-week visits to her every year. When I was ten, she sent the piano across country to me, but it was delayed by many days and I finally burst into tears because I couldn't bear the anticipation any longer! That was the age that I started playing violin also and when I would listen to Casey Kasem every Sunday night and make lists and track the top 40 hits. My dad worked in a record store for years and would make compilation tapes for me. When MTV was born, I became addicted and watched it for hours on end.

When I was 21, I quit music altogether. I travelled to Europe and couldn't bring the violin or practice and was giving up on my dreams to be a professional. My stereo broke. It was an all-or-nothing thing. If I couldn't do it completely, I wasn't going to do it anymore. That lasted for fifteen years. (I became a film buff instead! )

I bought my first CD player in 2002 and last year I joined a band and started playing violin again. It's all coming back, but I missed out on so much. There's so much to discover.