In 1995, I felt it was very important to start establishing some sense of a music taste. Though growing up in quite the conservative household, I didn’t know where to turn or what was actually cool.
My main music influences included my parent’s old collection of LPs in a cupboard such as “Come On, Ring those Bells” by Evie (which I actually performed an interpretive dance to and made my family watch multiple times, not even at Christmas time). Here is the album cover art, just to set the scene:
Another favourite of mine was Patch the Pirate, a series of cassette tapes that told the stories of a fun Christian Pirate (oxymoron?) called Patch the Pirate. Plenty of jovial tunes and catchy numbers, including, The Friendship Mutiny. I have come across better naratives:
Though a friend of mine, Dan, who was 10 at the time, had a copy of a little album called “Jagged Little Pill”. I knew nothing about it other than it was cool. So I asked him if I could borrow it,to then naturally do what you did back then, copy it to your own cassette tape via a duo cassette player. Ms Alanis was everything that I knew nothing about, Canadian. And angry. Some guy did bad things to her it seemed, but then at same time, she loved him/them.
I played the album constantly and secretly, in my room. I wrote out all the lyrics (well what I thought the Canadian was saying), it was first time I ever did that. I wanted to ensure that I knew every song, and could pretend to be angry just like her. And Canadian.
Though the one thing missing in the whole thing, her swearing. My friend Dan had taped over every swear word in the entire album (remember when you could tape over the tabs to re-record over the top?). He was a good Christian boy who had been made to tape over the bad bits, and obviously he was really sucky at doing this (in his defence, he was 1o). It allowed about 3-5 seconds of silence in middle of songs, many times. I would have to say it killed the rhythm of the song. It also stuffed up my lyric sheets.
But that began my first proud moment of telling people I liked something hip. And when I mean I told people, mostly my teddy, as he kept secrets.
Now I leave you with this classic video, oh Alanis…
