What got you started?

It's been a long time. It's sad, but true that this blog has gone on the back burner as school projects loomed. Now that they're mostly done, I'd like to ask a simple question: what got you really interested in music?

My earliest memories involve riding with my dad in our red Ford F-150. The oldies station out of Dallas, KLUV, was nearly always on. I heard The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Lou Christie, The Supremes, The Beach Boys - I also heard a lot of one-hit wonders that may have meant nothing but fleeting success for people who are no longer celebrities... if they even were. Among the first songs I remember are "Under My Thumb" and "Get Off Of My Cloud" by The Stones, "Black Is Black" by Los Bravos, and "Love Me Do" by The Beatles. A side note about Lou Christie: his song, "Lightnin' Strikes" featured a falsetto chorus that led me for years to think a woman had to have sang that.

With my mom, though, we listened to country. In the car, we listened to the station out of Waco, which played the hits of the day. At night, though, the JB Hunt Show, specially designed for long-haul truckers staying up through the night, came through the little clock radio by her bedside. I slept in my parents bed when I was a toddler, and since my dad was at work, my mom and I were all alone and we would stay up and listen to Conway, Haggard, and all the classic country.

Oddly enough, I also remember commercials and infomercials for "Best of" collections. I believe this is where my love of Blondie's "Heart Of Glass" came from. I really have no other explanation.

It's funny what makes an impact on us. We usually don't even realize it at the time, and often, we find ourselves only remembering fragments. We can hum part of a chorus, but as far as the artist or song name, we're clueless.