The domino effect

Today, I was thinking about how certain events in my life impacted my current musical tastes.

For instance, for a very long time, I had an irrational bias against the Promise Ring. I had a long-distance thing with a girl who was into "emo." With TPR being the only "emo" band I had heard of, I bought Nothing feels good out of the used bin at Cheapo.

All these years later, because I discovered that I loved The Promise Ring, I am a huge fan of two of the bands that spawned from their breakup - Maritime and Decibully.

When I first discovered that I liked punk, all I knew was on Punk'O'Rama vol. 1, which my friend Schanen owned and readily shared with all interested.

That prompted me to follow NOFX, Pennywise, Bad Religion, Down By Law and the Offspring. He was also the one who bought Mustard Plug's Big Daddy Multitude first, and sparked my interest in ska.

One of the few friends from Wisconsin I retain, Pete, was a teammate of mine on beer league hockey team. Didn't really speak to him much, but I did speak to his best friend, Chad, a lot. I ran into them a couple years later at a public skate session and while Chad was off doing whatever, I discovered in conversation with Pete that we had identical tastes in music. However, Pete, being four years older, had the advantage of recommending good music to me.

The first two bands he mentioned to me? Unwritten Law and Voodoo Glow Skulls. UL's Oz Factor was on constant play during the summer of 1996 and got even more play after I saw them at Warped Tour '96 with Pete, of course.

Really, that whole summer was one of discovery.

Pete, being a college music writer, got us tickets to that year's Warped Tour, where I discovered the Blue Meanies and Rocket From the Crypt and not only saw NOFX and met Fat Mike, but bought another influential compilation Survival of the Fattest. From there, I got into Tilt, Propagandhi, Lagwagon, No Use for a Name, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Snuff and Bracket.

Warped was the beginning of an impressive string of shows I'd attend over the next three years with Pete.

Many say that music changed their life, but I can honestly say it did.

Follow, if you will: I bought Skankin' Pickle's Green Album, which was on Dr. Strange Records. Dr. Strange, as many other mailorder labels, included a catelog in that CD. Along with Zoinks! I also ordered Rhythm Collision's Clobberer.

While Zoinks!'s Bad Move Space Cadet is one of the greatest pop-punk albums ever, Clobberer was about the greatest thing I'd ever heard.

I wrote to order a t-shirt and the first RC record. Their singer, Harlan, wrote me back with the goods. I then started ordering as much merch from them as possible. After they got back from their Brazilian tour, I learned that their drummer had a band in Minnesota, so I ordered the CD.

Fert Mert was exactly the kind of band I've have started if I knew competent musicians. Fast songs about not being able to get a date... man, that was me Noj was singing about! I wrote to beg them to come play Milwaukee. I came to learn that they needed a drummer. I volunteered myself, then set about to learn every song on the CD (there were 49 on it... all short songs).

I tried out, made the band and moved to St. Paul.

While with Ferd, we opened for The Stereo, AMP-176 and Cadillac Blindside, all of whom I got into prior to their demise. We also played with The Fairlanes, Belvedere and Pezz. I own all of The Fairlanes' stuff, bought three Belvedere CDs over the years but Pezz blew me completely away.

So many experiences shape who we are and what we listen to. I have zero regret.