xtcian

"Is there a reason there aren't any African-American artists above,"

michael jackson? (pre-Bad anyway...)

Interesting blog today.

Despite not being born until around item number 6 on your list, I found myself smiling and nodding several times at the bands and artists listed.

As for the ones I've never heard or heard of, now I have something to do today when I get bored at work! Thanks Ian!

And 2 points to CP for the MJ catch!

Oh!! Thank you for featuring the videos. What a delight to start my morning with these songs, especially "Dear God," which never fails to send chills down my spine. And Lucy will love your favorite music because she loves you. That's why I still love Johnny Cash and Jimmy Buffett--because my dad listened to when I was a kid.

Wow -- Jellyfish. Good call. Haven't thought about them or played that album in years, although am punching them into my ipod as I type. I saw them in concert in the spring of 1993 (at an Earth Day fundraiser, no less) when they were promoting that album with a line-up of other home-grown-early-1990s-non-grunge-neo-flower-child-type artists like Belly, Dada, Matthew Sweet, the Posies, etc. and a few Manchester-based navel gazers, and it was awesome. Now that I think about it, the early 1990s was one of the last times in my life where I could find entire radio stations (albeit usually just one in any given area) playing newly released music, almost all of which I could appreciate. Does that mean I'm old now that I can't abide most of the crap the "kids" are listening to? Sheesh. Thanks for the early morning nostalgia.

Great post: everyone should write one of these, for what it tells of your history.

I heard a thing on NPR last night about the relationship between getting older and losing one's sense of adventure. The scientist who had done the study says that a person's window for new music is open from 14-21, then closing gradually and slammed shut by age 35. Anybody out there agree or disagree?

(In case my fancy-pants attempt at html does not work, here is the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5652676)

Bald. You're bald, fellah. Bald, bald, bald, you're bald as a ping-pong ball, are you bald...

Sad and grumpy,
Down in the dumpy.
Snuggly, huggly,
Mean and ugly.
Sloppy, slappy,
Hoppy, happy.
Change and change and change.

Hats off to Kent for sharing his musical tastes with you. I've determined that there are numerous advantages to older sibs, but one of the biggest is being exposed to another generation of music. I would have never known about Squeeze, Oingo Boingo, Peter Frampton, Boz Scaggs or Marshall Crenshaw had I not had older sibs. Also, I was introduced much earlier than normal to 10,000 Maniacs, James Taylor, Elton John, Arlo Guthrie, the Band, Pink Floyd and Talking Heads due to my siblings' influence.

I don't know the definition of twee, but reading it out of context, I gather it is a negative term. If so, my vote is that your list of music is not twee.

I loved "Free to be you and me". I had the album and the huge book with lyrics and pictures. I remember "Girl Land" always scaring the crap out of me and not getting "Atalanta" but knowing that it sounded right.

I had a tape recorder as my first "stereo" and I bought a John Schnieder(Luke Duke) tape and Duran Duran's first tape at Radio Shack. What an odd pair.

The first 45 I purchased was Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life." On the B-side was "He's a Rebel."

That was followed by "Da Do Ron Ron" by Shaun Cassidy and "Baby Come Back" by Player.

The first 33 RPM album I purchased was "Barry Manilow Live."

I'm happy to say that my musical tastes have evolved since then.

"Sunny" was my parents' wedding song!

Taking my daughter to and from camp in the NC mountains the last two weekends meant 10-hour driving days - so a lot more music time that I normally get as a working mom. Proving how square I am, I do not own an Ipod. We do, however, have XM radio. To Isis' post above, I found that I spent 80 percent of the time listening to the 80s channel, the "classic alternative" channel or Soul Street. What I grew up knowing as beach music is 50s and 60s soul -- so listening to channel 60 is a trip back to my childhood (and a lot of UNC Frat parties.) Interestingly, my husband, who grew up in the college town of Auburn AL and heard all the great Athens-based bands early on has recently decided to revisit 80s hair metal as a genre. I think it may be some sort of mid-life crisis thing. I'm a bit more worried about that after reading about the influence that parental music choices have on kids. As some sort of barometer, my girls (4&7)know the words to several Jimmy Buffet songs, some old Fleetwood Mac, most of the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, several Broadway tunes and all of the songs in Disney's High School Musical. Oh - and Sk8ter Boi or however it's spelled.

This blog is better than a mix tape. This blog is 10 mix tapes. I have some downloading to do now.

In elementary school, some students in my class (me included) performed at a PTA meeting to Rosie Grier's, "It's Alright To Cry". We looked like KISS with our sad clown faces. And I still know all the words to Marlo Thomas', "Free To Be You And Me."

I discovered Cocteau Twins walking into Schoolkids Records on Franklin one day looking to get an Indigo Girls CD when "Frou-frou foxes in midsummer fires" was playing. I bought the Cocteau Twins album, "Heaven or Las Vegas" that day.

DFB's & T's introduced me to XTC, the titular group for this blog. Still love "Dear God" and "King For A Day." Both are on my iPod. I have to also credit DFB for introducing me to scads of other alternative late 80's early 90's bands like The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Max Q, Jane's Addiction, The Smiths and Milli Vanilli.

Okay, I lied about the Milli Vanilli, but I did have their tape.

Finally, I wouldn't beat yourself up for having a dearth of black artists. Although you should know that your self-proclaimed dainty tastes were influenced by scores of black artists.

Take your beloved Beatles, for instance. As we all saw in the classic SNL "mockumentary", Eddie Murphy personified the 6th Beatle (Clarence, I believe) who played the sax in many of their early hits. So, you see. You have been influenced by black artists, after all.

Though they may not have been on your artistic radar,they were sure as hell a big part of life at 510 E. Franklin St. and all African American.
Tribe Called Quest
Young MC
Digital Underground
Bootsie Collins
George Clinton

..This was young John, running like the wind...

F2BU&Me trivia is the funnest ever. Love goes around in a circle..

i am always learning something from this blog! i didn't know that "it's alright to cry" song was from "free to be you and me"! my kids have this cd from a local berkeley nonprofit called mosaic project and it is fantastic - i mean, i will have to buy my kids a new cd after the 5 gazillion times they have played it. one of the songs they do is "it's alright to cry". maybe this is "free to be you and me" for the next generation: http://www.mosaicproject.org. they have samples on the site, but the actual cd production quality is better than the online samples, they may have been from a demo or something.

that clunky walkman memory made me smile - i had one of those early walkmen in japan which i thought was *the shit* because it had the new fangled auto-reverse via a little button on my headphone cord. i listened to ghost in the machine and synchronicity almost exclusively, on auto reverse, just playing them over and over continuously. and i was content. i do recall eventually a mixtape slipped in which was comprised mainly of hall and oats, lionel ritchie, and men without hats.

that was all in the hazy period of my b.p. days (before prince). your ability to remember this stuff is amazing.

So, the very next time you happen to be
Just sitting there quietly watching TV,
And you see some nice lady who smiles
As she scours or scrubs or rubs or washes or wipes or mops or dusts or cleans,
Remember, nobody smiles doing housework but those ladies you see on TV.
Your mommy hates housework,
Your daddy hates housework,
I hate housework too.
And when you grow up, so will you.
Because even if the soap or cleanser or cleaner or powder or paste or wax or bleach
That you use is the very best one,
Housework is just no fun.

Children, when you have a house of your own,
Make sure, when there's house work to do,
That you don't have to do it alone.
Little boys, little girls, when you're big husbands and wives,
If you want all the days of your lives
To seem sunny as summer weather,
Make sure, when there's housework to do,
That you do it together!

Oddly enough, F2BU&M logic doesn't work on my husband. Consequently, all the days of our lives don't seem sunny as summer weather. I feel a little bit ripped off. ;-)

"Glass Houses" was the first album I ever bought as well. I wore it out, soon to be followed into vinyl overuse by "The River." ("Hungry Heart" will be played at my funeral; mark my words, future attendees...)

My fascination with '80s Brit-pop manifested in a debatably unhealthy obsession with OMD. Their first several albums were really edgy electronica; then they sold themselves out and poured on the sap for that stupid song on the "Pretty in Pink" soundtrack...I just got a DVD of them playing live in 1981 on ebay. Haven't watched it yet. You gotta love that their band name derives from an obscure Kraftwerk track...

I also was rather attached to Bronski Beat's 1984 album "The Age of Consent." I, too, later married a woman, but my man-crush on Jimmy Somerville threw early predictions into doubt...

oh yeah, i forgot to mention...on the cassette tape version of the police's "zenyatta mondatta," if you flip the cassette at the end of "canary in a coal mine," it is cued precisely at the beginning of "man in a suitcase," and vice versa. eerie...

My sister is named after "All for Leyna" on Glass Houses. It's a fun album, but the lyrics to "The Leyna Song" (as it's known in my family) are kind of disturbing as the inspiration for a daughter's name. But it sure is a pretty name.

Regarding the window of new music, and it closing...

Unfortunately, there is very little that really IS new after a certain age.

When I was a teenager, I really knew very little music except for the current top 40. So it was a big revelation to start listening to the classic rock station instead when I entered high school. I was blown away by how much good music I'd missed. It inspired and thrilled me.

But it's not much of a revelation any more. I've heard every Kinks song dozens of times.

You mention Rubber Soul and Revolver, but you show the cover for Beatles for Sale? (Couldn't hurt to explain to your daughter what an "Album Cover" was)

Something deeply significant about the disallusionment that B4S seems to relate.

If I were deep, I might be able to figure out what Lennon was trying to tell me.

Somehow I'm guessing that you probably saw at least one The Veldt show in Chapel Hill while you were there...