1991
By You Can't Hear it on the Radio
October 18, 2010
You Can't Hear it on the Radio is a blog about the current golden age of music. At no time since the 1960s has there been such an output of quality music by so many varied artists. Add to that technology that makes it easier than ever for the curious to find good music today. But, like an unlimited selection at an all-you-can-eat buffet, there's no table service. You will have to seek it out. The old model is dead. Generally speaking, you can't hear it on the radio. You can learn about it here, though.
My father is an avid Bob Dylan fan, but aside from taking my brother and I to a Dylan concert when I was about ten, he never pushed Dylan on us. In fact, the only Dylan-related album I can remember listening to as a child was the Traveling Wilburys - Volume 1, which came out when I was 11. While both of my parents like music, there was never a lot of music played in our house. As a result, like many of my generation, my early music tastes were formed by MTV and top 40 radio.
The first album I asked for (and got) was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I also memorized the words to “We Are The World” – I was seven. After that, music was never much of an influence until junior high school. I do remember having copies of U2’s Joshua Tree and Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever in the intervening years, but my musical taste just never congealed as a kid – not that it should have. I never had an influential music fan to guide me, only peers, MTV and the radio.
In the fall of 1989, I was a new student at a small urban public K-8 school mostly populated by upper middle class white kids. But that didn’t stop us from loving hip hop and R&B – Vanilla Ice, Kid ‘n Play, Kris Kross, Bell Biv Devoe, Tony Toni Tone, Color Me Badd, Another Bad Creation – you name it, if it was popular (and, in retrospect, terrible), we loved it. I had never listened to much hip hop, but MTV and everyone in my school liked it and I was along for the ride. Trying to fit in as a the new kid in school is never tougher than in a small junior high where all the kids have been together for years, so I rationalize my terrible taste in music by claiming I was peer pressured into it. Some kids are peer pressured into having sex too young – I listened to terrible music.
That changed during the summer of 1991, I was between junior high and high school and visiting my aunt in Seattle. While I was there, I saw a story on the local news that caught my attention about a local band with an album coming out in August. I liked the music they played during the story and remembered the name of the band…Pearl Jam. When I got home, I heard “Even Flow” on the radio and vividly remember forcing my mother to take me to the Sam Goody in the local mall to buy Ten. What I didn’t realize at the time is that – starting with Ten - the next eight weeks would see the release of four albums that would be hugely influential in shaping my musical taste.
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