Your First Favourite Band
by Fraser Neilson
Do you remember your first
favourite band or artist? The first time you fell in love with a
musical act? And probably the first time you ever fell in love with
music too? Do you remember how it felt?
My story may be familiar to
yours as I’m sure there are millions of people who were having the
very same experience as me. I was a typical teenager who wasn’t
very sure of himself, but I was sure that I loved music and this was
largely due to my mum who always had music playing around us as I
was growing up. In the house and in the car, it was always on but
was mostly chart music from the radio or the 50s and 60s ballads
that my mother liked.
I started to hear about some new
bands from other kids at school and I also began to find some
interesting sounds on a station called Radio Luxembourg, which was a
pirate station broadcasting from Europe, and it played a lot of the
post punk new wave music that I was destined to fall in love with.
I remember it well now – lying
in bed with the radio on at midnight, the volume turned down low so
my parents couldn’t hear it while the Alternative Top 30 chart was
broadcast late into the night. It was around this time that it
happened – I discovered my first favourite band.
My first love was a band called
Japan, and it was in 1984, two years after they had split up that I
fell in love with their music. It was through a friend at school
that I discovered them, he was one of the cooler kids who was at the
forefront of the alternative music scene that was leading that way
then.
We were all Baby Goths at the
time – too young to be ‘proper’ Goths but wearing as many of the
clothes as possible - dressed in regulation tight black trousers,
pointy toed boots, flowery psychedelic shirts and black bikers
jackets or long black coats, all topped off with lots of silver
jewelry and chains.
We were in the park one day
listening to that great staple of the 70s and 80s teenager’s musical
diet – the compilation tape. John had a typical ‘alternative’
compilation with A Forest by The Cure, Spiritwalker by The Cult and
several Bauhaus tracks, but he also had some tracks by another band
I had heard of but never heard any music by, and that was Japan. He
recommended that I get the Assemblage album, which was basically a
compilation of their early singles.
So off I went to Virgin records
and sought out a black vinyl copy of the album and took it home in a
big plastic album bag to my trusty turntable. I pulled it out of
the sleeve, excited about what listening pleasures lay before me and
pulled the lever that sent the needle over to the record’s edge. And
the effect of that first track quite literally changed my musical
life.
As the opening bass, synth and
guitar lines of Adolescent Sex came through the speakers, for the
first time in my life I felt a shiver down my spine and the hairs on
the back of my neck literally stood up. It’s an old cliché but it
was absolutely true and I was filled with the emotion of what this
music did for me. I loved the feeling and I wanted more and I was
sure Japan could supply it.
And that was the start of my
quest to buy as much as possible of Japan’s music. Over the next
few months I bought everything I could find and afford. I just
about memorised their discography as I read everything I could about
the band and even sought out fanzines, bootleg tapes and books of
photographs.
I remember sitting at home at
night writing out various different lists of my favourite Japan
tracks – favourite guitar tracks, favourite synth tracks,
instrumentals, various different versions of my top ten which
invariably changed every night. It was great, it was new, it was all
consuming, it was a passion….and I loved it.
Over the next few years I had
several similar experiences with other bands I discovered and got
quite obsessed about. And with one band I went even further than I
did with Japan in terms of my desire to collect every note ever
recorded on record, studio demo tape or live.
But none of them ever really
recaptured the newness and marvellousness of the experience with
Japan, my first favourite band.
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Fraser Neilson
is webmaster at
www.QSPmusic.com and a true music lover. You can find some great music
resources, special offers and ideas to help increase your enjoyment over at
www.QSPmusic.com/resources.html.
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