mbeam

I just read this piece about a musical journey over at tinymixtapes and decided to reply (it keeps me away from schoolwork for a few minutes).

I was a navy brat growing up. My parents were always really into music; their collection consisted of lots of great records: Beatles, Brubeck, Bach, and more (Stevie Wonder, Rickie Lee Jones, Iron Butterfly, James Taylor…). I also grew up watching Harry Nilsson’s “The Point,” which I think was a latent influence. At the same time, I grew up listening to Anita Baker, The Pretty Woman soundtrack and whatever adult rock my parents were into at the time.

In elementary school I was living in northwestern Florida (not the cultural center of the US), but somehow I managed to get into a radio station from Mobile, Alabama that featured lots of cool mixes on “Friday Night Jams.” DJ Magic Mike frequented the show, and since we shared a name (I’m Michael), I jumped into his stuff. This introduced me to sample-based music, electro, dub and southern bass. To my parents dismay, until about 5th grade I was stuck in an almost all hip-hop world, from 2 Live Crew to A Tribe Called Quest. My first tape ended up being “It Takes a Nation of Millions..” by Public Enemy. The only thing I listened to outside of hip-hop was some R&B. I had an obsession with Michael Jackson (same first name, again) and his sister Janet (Rhythm Nation 1814 rocked my world).

At the same time my parents had me taking piano lessons, so I was learning music theory along with Baroque and Classical greats. I wouldn’t appreciate this until way later—but learning about Bach was a touchstone to my musical evolution.

In 6th grade we moved to the Northeast corridor. I was ripped away from the Southern hip-hop radio and immersed in alternative rock. Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and all that junk was pretty popular in school, on MTV and the radio. I liked it well enough; I was an angsty teen too. Then, something amazing happened–I found Radiohead. I was only 11 or 12 at the time, so it really wasn’t something all my peers were doing, or even any of the cool kids for that matter. Those people were all busy getting drunk and jamming out to Incesticide.

My discovery happened by chance again—like getting into hip-hop because a DJ shared my name. I was back in Florida visiting my now distant friends and “Spencer’s Gifts” was having a sale on concert t-shirts ($3!). Now, even though I was about 4′9″ and 90 lbs (I’m 11 at the time), I decided to go for the extra-large googly-eyed Pablo Honey shirt since it looked cool and I liked that song Creep well enough. (I still have that shirt…and now it almost fits..)

After getting the shirt I felt a little guilty for not having the actual album, so I went ahead and bought Pablo Honey–a move which changed my life for sure. I quickly became obsessed and listened to pretty much nothing but angsty Radiohead. My older sister, who was hanging out with a really hip high school crowd, caught wind of my decent music and made me a tape with the Pixies, the Cure and My Iron Lung—a Radiohead track she found at her high school radio station. My best friend was British, and into the whole Britpop scene, so we talked our parents into letting us buy Radiohead tickets in ’95, when I was 13, right before the US release of the Bends. Although I had seen the ‘Stones (with Counting Crows opening) earlier in the year, this was what I consider my first show…my parents let us go on our own, so it was a pretty big deal. What a night!

After the Bends, Radiohead found a relatively cultish following and their mailing list and website (not yet run by the band) became really popular. The people who maintained their Internet presence decided they didn’t have enough time to host such trafficy sites. I was also a little UNIX computer geek so I decided I would take charge and take over the Radiohead Mailing List. I also decided to start a server to host all the really good Radiohead websites, so Planet Telex, Oxygen Kiosk, Wasteland, Against Demons and a slew of other RH related sites ran at underworld.net (now defunct). This involvement with the band got me hooked up with lots of other musically talented and interested people (as well as RH and their management), which would lead down a long path. The tips I would get from these contacts on the Internet really opened me up to a world of music. It seems like since this time (‘96ish), whenever the Radiohead is interviewed about their musical taste—I’m digging into just the same stuff…some weird synchronicity happening there.

For example, in high school one of my best mates ended up moving to Detroit. He got involved with electronic music and all the fun stuff going around in that city. In my first visit up there I heard DJ Shadow’s Entroducing and it made my head explode. For the first time in almost a decade all my love for hip-hop came rushing back. I quickly snapped up everything on Shadow’s label (Mo’Wax) and caught up with the years I had been missing in the hip-hop scene. I started a DJ Shadow mailing list and eventually hooked up with the man himself hosting web-chats with his fans.

Another coincidence got me into electronic music. I hosted the aforementioned “underworld.net” (named for an online community that seemed like an underground world). I found out there was a band of the same name and so I checked out Dubnobasswithmyheadman–wow! I ended up hooking up with the crew from dirty.org that ran Underworld’s web presence. On that mailing list (the dirtylist) I got one of the most intense musical schoolings ever. That group may have had the strongest influence over my musical development because they really helped me get into experimental music, which is my passion.

That led me into the Warp catalog (note: this is when RH was finishing up the OK Computer tour and about to head into the Kid A period, following a similar parallel musical trajectory). I took over the Two Lone Swordsmen mailing list and also became pretty immersed in the experimental electronic scene going on in the mid to late nineties in the UK.

Once I got to college I found myself spending less time with these well-established artists and digging deeper into experimental stuff, and being heavily involved in college radio. Kranky, Constellation, Chemikal Underground, Tigerbeat6, Morr, etc. would be playing in my room. I started the Beat Oracle (beatoracle.net) and ran it pretty solidly for about 6 years until I started grad school last year….now it’s sort of on hold until I find some free time to deal with radio again.

Despite my passion for music, I’ve never really considered myself to be part of the music scene, down with the crowd or any of that. I feel more like an excited spectator, hoping to see talented musicians develop some kind of substantial following. I grew up loving music, and I’ve grown to appreciate more and more of it. In retrospect, a lot of really great coincidences changed my life.

My show history is another place to track my musical trajectory.