I’ve always been a music fan, and grew up surrounded of music of all kinds.  I started playing the piano at age 6 through the Royal Conservatory of Music, so I learned all types of classical music from the masters, like Beethoven and Bach.  My mother has a beautiful voice and loves to sing, so our home would occasionally turn into a karaoke studio, where the songs of Chinese opera and the Erhu (Chinese violin) would play throughout our home.  And every Christmas, my father would dust off his vinyl collection and play Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”, which would only get us to delve deeper into his collection, where he had some gems like Don McLean’s “American Pie”, and albums from ABBA, The Bee Gees , and The Beatles.

The biggest influence in my musical life, however, will have to be my sister.  When I was young and impressionable, I always looked up to my sister and followed her musical tastes.  I remember she was right in the middle of the grunge era, and still remember how upset she was the day Kurt Cobain died.  I remember her huge crush on Ben Gillies of Silverchair, and how she liked to draw and paint to songs of Our Lady Peace.  She also liked other styles, like hip hop and R&B with her love of Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey, while also respecting the classics like Michael Jackson and Motown artists.  Then there was the downward spiral into boy band territory, but we’ll forgive her for that!  (Though, to be fair, I do have a soft spot and certain respect for pop acts due to her love of catchy songs and top 40 hits).  But the biggest influence my sister made was when she passed on her music collection to me.

The first CD I ever bought with my own money was Weird Al Yankovic’s “Bad Hair Day”.  And, although it was a great album full of some classics, I don’t think I would have been a successful Polka-parody musician.  Seeing as my collection was pretty bare, my sister decided to hand me down some of her albums, which changed my life forever.  Within this collection were Metallica’s “Reload”, Nirvana’s “Nevermind”, and The Foo Fighter’s self-titled debut.  That Foo album was the biggest one to me, and I still listen to it over and over.  I still remember making a joke band with my friend, Bas, called the Food Fighters, and we couldn’t even play guitar or drums at that time.  That self-titled album was followed by “The Colour and The Shape”, my favourite album of all time, containing my favourite song of all time, “Everlong”.  My first ever concert was to see them at Arrow Hall, and have since seen them over 5 times.  Their music has influenced me through every stage of my life, and I have a huge man crush on Dave Grohl.

It’s funny, I initially wanted to write this post as a shout out to The Tragically Hip on their final tour, and it ended up being a rambling trip down my musical memory lane.  I’ve written too much already, so I’ll have to save it for another post.  Toss on those headphones and listen to some old music you haven’t thought about in a while.