Episode 0 – Getting to Know You…
December 1, 2022
In this episode you will learn all about ME, Mark, and how I got to this place along my musical journey. I’ve got two asks of my new audience. The first is to send me your Top5 for Episode 1…
Episode 1’s Top 5 Theme will be
TOP 5 SONGS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY!
The second ask if for you to share this podcast with all your music loving friends!
Links
Show Transcript
Welcome to songs that don’t suck. My name is Mark and I’m gonna be your host for this musical discovery adventure that we are about to go on together. This is episode zero and the reason I’m doing
episode zero is well there’s two reasons. One, I’m super excited for this podcast and while I’ve
announced that January 2nd is the first episode that is going to drop, I was like, you know what,
Mark? The audience needs to know who you are because if there’s no context to who you are
and why you’re doing this, then I think the meeting is going to be lost. So this is episode zero
and I want to give you my musical background, the experiences that have formed me and molded me
to who I am today and why this podcast is so exciting for me.
So my earliest musical experiences or memories were the sounds of Motown. My parents are British and you would have thought that maybe I would have been raised on the British invasion and a lot of those Mersy Beat artists, but that was not the case. My mom was really into Motown, in fact she still is, and I remember listening to Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, you know, the rest of those Motown artists, you know, and I mean, that was really when I was really young, like before
Kindergarten, I have these memories of hearing those vinyl records playing in our living room.
As I got older, I just listened to basic pop radio, you know, through the early and mid-80s and in
and in the summer of 86, we were on a trip visiting family in England and my cousin, who was learning
how to play guitar at the time, he’s a couple years older than I am, we were staying at their house
and he had all of these vinyl records with these amazing covers. These covers were from a band
called Iron Maiden. Now, I had never heard Iron Maiden before, but my cousin put on,
I think it was Number of the Beast, was the first album that he put on for me, and this was stuff I
had never heard before. It was mind-blowing for someone who was 10, 11, 12 years old, and I was
hooked. So, I actually, on that trip, we went to the high street where the stores were, and I found
a music store and I had, you know, a few dollars in my pocket and a few pounds, I guess, and I
purchased my first piece of music, which was Iron Maiden’s Live After Death, which was their live
album that they had recorded at Long Beach Arena in California, as well as the Hammersmith in London.
And that was the beginning of what I will consider my musical journey. I also vividly remember prior
to that watching MTV when it launched, the day it launched, I was watching the Buggles
with Video Killed the Radio Star. Very vivid memory of that happening, and I miss the days
when MTV played music, and I’ll get into that in a little bit. But, so after that trip where I
purchased the Iron Maiden CD, shortly after that, I actually started playing drums in school,
you know, just playing snare drum, learning to read music, but not really learning to read music,
which came later. But a couple years after I started playing that, I started teaching myself
how to play drum set. And then I formed my first band, original band, in 1991 or 1992.
My memory is not that great when it comes to those types of things.
But, you know, we weren’t even playing, we’ve played covers every now and then,
but we were writing our own songs. We had about four songs, five songs that we had written,
which were horrible, but, you know, we’re high school kids, and these were the first songs we
wrote. Also in 1992, I actually went to my first concert. Call me a late bloomer, but my parents
are older, I’m the youngest child, and they were not ones to go to concerts, and definitely not
to take me to concerts. My older brother, not a big concert goer. I don’t even know that he’s a
big music fan, to be honest. It’s not one of those things we talk about. Anyway, that first concert,
I should probably call it a concert very loosely. It was a show in a bar in Dayton, Ohio,
but the artist was Stu Ham in The Urge. Now, if you recognize the name Stu Ham,
you probably know him better as the bassist for guitar players like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.
This was an amazing show. There’s probably 200 people in this bar, but Stu Ham is an
amazing musician, and especially to see live. The fun addition to this show was the fact that
the person who took us was the director of the stage band for the show choir. Her cousin played
drums in Stu’s band, so afterwards we got to meet him and hang out on their tour bus.
Another fun fact is he toured with Blue Oyster Cult, and he now produces music in New York City,
and it’s really funny because I had that memory pop up of that whole moment of the first show,
and I found him on LinkedIn, and I sent him a message, and I said, hey, you probably don’t remember me, but I showed up to a concert in Dayton, Ohio with your cousin, and got to meet you backstage when I was in high school, and it was one of those moments that just kind of has always stuck with me, and I just wanted to say thank you, you know, 30 years later, and he actually sent me a message back, and he’s like, I totally remember that night, because his cousin was there, probably helped, but you know, validation that my memory was awesome and just really cool to connect with him again. But anyway, I digress.
So I mentioned that the director of the stage band for the show choir took us to this concert.
That was one of the things I did in high school. I played drum set for the show choir.
I was obviously in marching band, concert band. I played in the basketball pet band,
and after high school at this point, I loved music so much, I was like, you know what, I’m
going to be a band director. I’m going to coach or coach. I’m going to teach marching band and
concert band, because I think that would be fun. Now, little did I know that entering college
as a music major comes with challenges. Now, if you’re a trumpet player or a trombone player,
you are going to play trumpet or trombone. You might have to take a wins class to learn
some basics about wind instruments, maybe a basic percussion’s methods, but mostly you’re playing
your instrument. Now, if you enter as a percussion major, you learn all of the battery, which is
your snare drums, bass drum, timpani, basically anything you hit with a stick. You also learn
all of the keyboard instruments, so your marimbas, your xylophones, your glockenspiels,
your vibraphones, et cetera, et cetera. You also learn all the hand percussion and ethnic
percussion. You also learn steel drum. There’s a lot of practice involved. And for me, who was
probably not as disciplined as I needed to be to be successful there, ended up changing my major
after the first year, mainly because I wanted to experience more college than the inside of a
practice room 8 to 12 hours a day, plus going to class. So I switched to computers. That’s another
conversation altogether, but it’s allowed me to do some other things. So after college,
and I didn’t, okay, here’s one of my regrets from college. I never started a band in college,
and I wish I would have, because I think that would have been a lot of fun playing the local
college bars, writing music, doing all the things that college bands do, but I didn’t do that.
After college, however, shortly after, I joined my second band. And since then, I’ve been in,
I think it’s about 10 different groups, either playing with singer-songwriters or playing in
bands, and I’ve been lucky to release a fair bit of music, which is actually available on Spotify
today, which I’ll include a link if anybody is morbidly interested about the type of music
I’ve played over the last 20-ish years. Have at it. So check the show notes for that link.
Now, those bands varied in what genre they were. All rock-based, but some were more folky, some
were more progressive, some were more bluesy. It just depended, really. But like that,
I’ve always had a very broad taste in music.
Now, at one point, I had a collection of physical music media, so CDs, cassettes, vinyl, whatever, that numbered in the thousands, and it was across all the genres, right? Classical jazz, country, pop, rock, independent, local bands, hip-hop, rap, you name it. I listened to it. And these all came in phases. I’ve always dabbled, but I would definitely have phases where I was very heavy into certain types of music. So in high school, dominated by your hair bands, your metal bands, and most Saturday nights,
you’d find me watching MTV’s Headbangers Ball, catching all the latest videos, finding new
artists, things of that nature. In college, I got really into grunge and country oddly. So the Seattle sound and basically the Garth Brooks heavy era of country. It was a weird time. Now, after college, I got really into more folky artists, singer-songwriters, that type of stuff. And because I was working full-time, had some money to burn, I would do a lot of kind of neighboring city concerts, like anything within a six-hour radius or sometimes a little more. I would drive to to see some of my favorite artists. It was a good time.
Now, the reason I did that is because I’m a huge fan of live music. I started late, as I mentioned.
I have made up for it in spades because I have come to view live music as a sacred space and I
have really started to understand that about myself over the last two and a half, three years.
When everything was shut down during the pandemic, I was longing for live music.
And it was so good when concerts started happening again. And I was hungry and I started
just going to concerts. And it’s been fantastic. But it is a sacred space for me. And no matter
what’s going on in my life, I can go and spend a couple of hours really focused on that live music
experience. And I am not thinking about anything else. Now, over the years, I’ve lost count with
the number of shows that I’ve been to. That’s how much I made up for my slow start. But there are
bands that I have seen upwards of 20 to 30 times. And when you add in the local bands that I used to
go and see when we had a good local music scene going, some of the smaller regional touring bands
that I get hip to and go check out, that list is pretty long. But all of that brings us to today.
It probably goes without saying that I’m a bit of a music junkie. Spotify and Sirius XM are
the two sources that I primarily get my music from. But because of that, I struggle to find new
music. And let me tell you why. So streaming audio for me is a blessing and a curse. It has destroyed
my music discovery process. But it has made all of the music that I’ve ever owned and then some
available to me. Back in the day, when you would go to your local music store, you’d be browsing for
bootlegs or European copies or whatever, all around that room would be posters of upcoming
releases. So you knew if a band that you had heard of had an album coming out, if you’re a fan of it,
you’d find out that one of your favorite bands is coming out. And then you’d go talk to the person
behind the counter. And they might show you the release calendar and point out a few things to
say, hey, I know you’re a fan of X, Y, and Z. You really need to check out this band. And it was very
organic because it was almost like a barista knowing your order. It’s like, oh, hey, you know what?
The temperature is a little bit colder today. Maybe you want a peppermint mocha. They knew your
musical tastes if you were a regular and they could point things out to you that you would be
hip to. And to me, that was a very exciting time when somebody would hit me to a band. It’s like,
oh, yeah, this is fantastic. Now, today, it’s really easy to produce music. Anybody can produce
music. And it’s very easy to get it published online. The online platforms have made it easy.
There are companies that help you put it online. But because of that, it’s near impossible to find
consistent, high quality new music because not everybody should produce music. Let’s just put
it out there. There is some hot trash. And it makes finding quality music very difficult because
you have to sift through that pile to get the gems. Now, a few will pop up here and there,
but it’s very rare for an artist to grab me the way it used to when I was younger.
And that is why this podcast exists. In this podcast, I’m going to dive deeper into new music
than I ever have before. I’m going to make a very deliberate effort to find new artists that I
would normally not find. And through that process, I’m going to share my thoughts on the best of
things that I find. And maybe I’ll turn you on to them in the process. And hey, I’m also up for
recommendations. So if you’ve got a song or artist that you think I need to hear, there’s going to
be a form for that. The website for the podcast is songsthatdontsuck.net. There’s a form that you
can fill out for song and artist recommendations. I’m going to thank you in advance for sending me
those. I cannot wait to hear what you’re going to send me. There’s other ways that I want to keep
the audience involved too. One of which is I want to do a theme each week. I want to do a top five
list. And I’ll give you my top five based on this theme. And then I want to give you the opportunity
to give me your top five as well. So on that same website, songsthatdon’tsuck.net, there’ll be a
form for you to give me your top five songs or artists or whatever the theme is that week.
Once all the votes are in, I’ll aggregate the totals. I will present the groups top five,
the communities top five, along with mine. We’ll see what matches, what doesn’t.
It’ll be an interesting experiment if nothing else. I’m also going to include my teenage daughters.
Now if you listened to the trailer, you’ll know that I’m a father of two girls. They are 17 and
13 currently. My 17 year old is a music junkie the same way I am. My 13 year old is getting there. So
every couple of weeks or so, I’m going to have them on to tell me what they’re listening to
and see if we can find something that seems interesting. I don’t know. We’ll see how that
works out. It’ll be interesting. The girls are hilarious. So getting them on the mic for a bit
will be entertaining if nothing else. So I mentioned the top five. So let’s go ahead and
throw out the theme for episode one. This gives you a month to come up with your most brilliant
refined top five list of songs that make you happy. These are the songs that you put on
and you have to chisel the smile off your face. They’re the songs that you crank up in the summer
in your car and the windows are rolled down and you don’t care who hears it and you are going to
sing it at the top of your lungs. That is the top five that I need from you. So on the website
songsthatdon’tsuck.net, go to the top five form, fill that out. Let me know what those songs are.
I have one last ask of the audience who is listening.
Please share this podcast with all of your musical friends. The larger community that we build, the more music we are going to discover. It’s going to bring back the social aspect of music discovery. And episode one, again, will drop on January 2nd, 2023. So we’ve got a month to build the hype,
to build the community, and start something that I feel is going to be really, really amazing when
we get down to it. So top five songs that make you happy. Share this podcast with all of your
musical friends. And until January 2nd, 2023, keep listening to and keep searching for songs that don’t suck.
