Reading this My First Record post from Chris Cantino of the band Archers, I wasn’t terribly surprised to find it had a deeply nostalgic bent to it. The fantastic five-piece that Cantino co-leads with his brother Mike has a similarly wistfulness that resides under layers of frenzied guitar playing and aggressive rhythms. The band has been slowly and steadily building up a healthy foundation of buzz in Portland thanks to their airtight live shows and their debut 7″ which finds them mining the rich vein of mid-’90s indie rock.
Thinking back on my favorite first records, I now realize that I never discovered any of them myself. These cherished albums all have a special connection to the family and friends that exposed me to them. The more I think about it, the more apparent it is that my musical taste was imminent and driven by fate. Growing up, records were not chosen by me but instead penetrated my subconscious through pronounced memories of joy and sentiment in the company of people I have loved.
Waking up from a nap and walking down the stairs, corn tortillas frying in the kitchen. My mom played Joni Mitchell’s Blue more than anything I can remember hearing as a child, and it remains a favorite to this day. I was always struck by the raw ache of the record but I didn’t have the vocabulary to know what she was really singing about at the time. I remember thinking the record must be very “sad” and “girly”, and being entranced by “All I Want” and “My Old Man”. Uncovering the depth of it in my late teens and linking it to those early memories was incredibly satisfying and make Blue forever priceless in my mind.
Eating enormous sandwiches and working on puzzles. My grandparents lived around the corner from us and my brother and I would bounce between there and our parents’ place several times a week. Our grandpa is a man of excellent taste, and not only did he make the best sandwiches, but he also had a primo stock of jazz records in a large room at the top of the house where we worked on a several thousand piece puzzle of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch”. His favorite track was Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll”, and it could not sound any better today than it did back then. I remember him proclaiming certain players to be the “best” and showing us videos or playing records as proof. Some of the best included Buddy Rich, Dave Brubeck, Joe Williams, and Wes Montgomery. One time grandma and grandpa took Mike and I to see Maynard Ferguson who played at our local high school. Grandpa made special note that he was “one of the only trumpet players who could hit a high C”.
Sitting in bed with headphones on and reading fantasy novels for hours. In second grade my parents bought me a stereo and I listened to it daily while reading Piers Anthony’s Xanth books. My dad’s Beach Boys best-of cassette was an early favorite, especially “I Get Around” and “Don’t Worry Baby” which I would constantly reset the tape counter to. A couple years later he gave me Green Day’s Dookie and The Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which sounded nothing like the old Clapton and Dean Martin albums he used to play. Before long, my cousin Jill was dubbing Weezer and Oasis cassettes for me. My tastes were changing rapidly.
Skateboarding and learning the riff to “Come As You Are”. When I started junior high I thought I was cool for being one of the first kids into Bush and The Offspring, but then I met Alex Amezcua who changed the way I looked at music. Alex’s brother was in a real punk band, and they could both play power chords extremely fast. Alex taught me how to play guitar and gave me a bunch of cassettes of bands like Pennywise, Gorilla Biscuits, FYP, and NOFX. I listened to those records every day but when I borrowed his copy of From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, my mind was blown entirely. After that, nothing else compared and I was compelled to learn every Nirvana song on guitar. Thanks Alex, wherever you are.
Driving my dad’s 97 Thunderbird to Hollywood and smoking with my friends. At 19, I got my first record player and immediately bought every pre-’78 Dylan record I could find. And I looked a lot. Bi-monthly excursions to Ameoba Records in LA or SF yielded a couple hundred LPs by everything from The Velvet Underground to the The Clash, but none of them fueled my love for vinyl like Dylan. This music was meant to be initiated manually and thought about before flipping sides. My Quadraflex receiver glowed a warm yellow and when the needle hit, it might as well have been God himself phoning in the lyrics.
