Those First Tentative Steps…
Whilst it was a year in Glasgow with the redoubtable James Strath that finally marked my transition into the world of cutting edge indie, there had been signs in previous years that I was ready to abandon the steadying hand of my parents’ Stones, Dylan and Bowie records and take those tentative first steps on my own, into the brave new world of popular music.
Unsurprisingly I tottered a little at first, and there were a few bumps and bruises along the way. Living in Austria meant there was no Madchester for me – not even The Stone Roses. My peers were loosely divided into heavy metal fans (Metallica, Iron Maiden, Guns ‘n’ Roses, although they don’t half sound tame now) and dance fans (shudder). There quite simply was no indie in Austria.
Consequently, the first really popular songs that I liked at the actual time they were popular were a hodge-podge of tracks that leaked out of these two camps and reached just far enough into the indie territory that I still didn’t realise was my genre that I was able to get a handle on them. Mostly, I must confess, it was the rock stuff that I liked, albeit generally the less shouty stuff that tended to catch my ears, but it was a pretty incoherently mixed bag of bits and bobs at the beginning.
The album that I finally connected with completely, the one that marked my actual participation in mainstream popular music for the first time, came in about 1991 when Pearl Jam released 10. But until then it was these stray songs here and there that I was starting to catch onto and began slowly to realise that there was something in this popular music thing that might just be for me…
Ugly Kid Joe – Cat’s in the Cradle
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Under the Bridge
Metallica – Nothing Else Matters Heavy metal for people who really don’t like heavy metal!
Faith No More – Easy
And a couple released a bit later that I was actually aware of as they were released – the first time this happened to me.
Guns ‘n’ Roses – Live & Let Die Kids in my class actually cut school to run to the shops and buy this the second it hit the shops.
Stone Temple Pilots – Plush That Beavis & Butthead favourite. I thought B&B were really, really fucking cool!
