Music Influences

At this point in my life, I can enjoy any kind of music if there's talent and respect in it. I owe this to my sister. She was the first musical influence in my life. My parents didn't listen to too much music. Maybe they had some classical music on reel to reel tapes, but we never listened to background music at home. When Jen started to listen to folk music, I caught on. John Denver, James Taylor, and Janis Joplin were some of Jen's early favorites. In high school it was the Indigo Girls.

At the moment "Violets" by Push Down and Turn is playing on my iTunes. They're a very obscure rock band from the West Lafayette area of Indiana. My sister went to Purdue for three years and started liking the band. Being two years apart, I started going to Principia college when Jen was in her Junior year at Purdue. That was a hard year for both of us because our mom had passed away that summer. I remember some late night calls with Jen very sad about how things were going at her sorority, Sigma Kappa, and she didn't have her regular support network of mom to talk to. So she talked to me and I tried to be as encouraging as I could.

Later that year, 1995, Jen came to Principia for a visit. Push Down and Turn was "on tour" to a club in St. Louis. Jen and I went to their concert. I was finally "on par" with my sister in the music scene for a moment. Since then, our music tastes haven't converged too much. Actually, I don't know where my sister's went post-college but that's probably because we stopped living in the same town and growing into our own persons. But I'll never forget that my sister first planted that musical seed in my heart.

There's probably some study out there about why music is tied to memory. We all have stories about what we think of when a particular song comes on the radio. What song are you listening to now? What does it make you remember?