What were you listening to at fourteen?

[Harry]

I recently read somewhere (can't remember where) that the music we were exposed to and liked at age fourteen is the stuff we'll like for the rest of our lives. For me, age fourteen came in 1965, the year I was hearing Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass everywhere.

It sure stuck with me.

Harry

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

I was 14 in 1966, and by then, had been listening to Herb for two years. The Baja Marimba Band was next on my list. In June of that year, some guy named Sergio Mendes opened the show for Herb & TJB at the Yale Bowl in New Haven. It's been a great run for all of them. Its sad that Julius is no longer making music for us. Perhaps we can uncover more of his unreleased tapes and TV appearances.

 

[Dave]

I was listening to whatever was "new" when whatever "new" was GOOD...! Circa. 1984...;

Yes, I was into a new artist known as Madonna... Had every LP, '45' and 12" and somehow papered my room up with her until about 1989, when she had her last hit "Vogue" and then turned into a bit of an "obscurity"... By then, I latched onto my Heavy Metal Phase...!

Was turned onto Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Poison, Megadeath, Metalica and even oldies like Aerosmith and KISS...

The rest is really History...




Dave

 

[TonyCurrie]

It was 1966 and I was into Herb Alpert, Sounds Orchestral, Tony Hatch, Petula Clark...... erm, nothing much has changed since then!!

 

[Michael Hagerty]

Funny you should ask, because I've been re-creating the music library of my youth recently...and I'm just now listening to the albums from the year I was 14 (1970). Here are the LPs I bought in 1970:

[*]Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water
[*]The Beatles: Let It Be
[*]Tom Jones: Tom
[*]Frank Sinatra: Watertown
[*]George Benson: The Other Side of Abbey Road
[*]Andy Williams: The Andy Williams Show
[*]Freddie Hubbard: Red Clay
[*]Blood, Sweat & Tears: B,S & T 3
[*]Quincy Jones: Gula Matari
[*]Carpenters: Close To You
[*]Diana Ross (the eponymous LP with "Ain't No Mountain High Enough")
[*]Jose' Feliciano: Fireworks
[*]Van Morrison: His Band & Street Choir
[*]Santana: Abraxas
[*]George Harrison: All Things Must Pass
[*]Antonio Carlos Jobim: Tide
[*]Henry Mancini: Love Story

(with no 1970 releases from Herb, Burt & Sergio, Warm, Make It Easy On Yourself, Crystal Illusions and Ye-Me-Le were still getting listens from me, along with Wes Montgomery's Road Song, Paul Desmond's Summertime and From The Hot Afternoon, Quincy Jones' Walking In Space and Milton Nascimento's Courage.


Being 14, I bought a lot of singles, too:

[*]Creedence Clearwater Revival: Who'll Stop The Rain/Travelin' Band
[*]Brook Benton: Rainy Night In Georgia
[*]Chairmen Of The Board: Give Me Just A Little More Time
[*]Friends Of Distinction: Love Or Let Me Be Lonely
[*]Kenny Rogers & The First Edition: Something's Burning
[*]Elvis Presley: Kentucky Rain
[*]Supremes: Up The Ladder To The Roof
[*]Jackson 5: ABC
[*]Jerry Naylor: But For Love
[*]Ray Stevens: Everything Is Beautiful
[*]Guess Who: American Woman
[*]Tom Jones: Daughter Of Darkness
[*]Four Tops: It's All In The Game
[*]Bobby Sherman: Hey, Mr. Sun
[*]Three Dog Night: Mama Told Me (Not To Come)
[*]Jackson 5: The Love You Save
[*]Freda Payne: Band Of Gold
[*]Temptations: Ball Of Confusion
[*]Vanity Faire: Hitchin' A Ride
[*]Tommy Roe: Pearl
[*]B.J. Thomas: I Just Can't Help Believin'
[*]Ronnie Dyson: Why Can't I Touch You
[*]Stevie Wonder: Signed, Sealed, Delivered
[*]Edwin Starr: War
[*]Creedence Clearwater Revival: Lookin' Out My Back Door
[*]Elvis Presley: I've Lost You
[*]Chicago: 25 or 6 to 4
[*]Michael Nesmith: Joanne
[*]Guess Who: Hand Me Down World
[*]Bobby Sherman: Julie, Do Ya Love Me
[*]Free: All Right Now
[*]Jackson 5: I'll Be There
[*]Kinks: Lola
[*]Four Tops: Still Water (Love)
[*]Spinners: It's A Shame
[*]Sugarloaf: Green-Eyed Lady
[*]100 Proof Aged In Soul: Somebody's Been Sleeping
[*]Brian Hyland: Gypsy Woman
[*]Supremes: Stoned Love
[*]Badfinger: No Matter What
[*]Chicago: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is
[*]Guess Who: Share The Land
[*]Michael Nesmith: Silver Moon
[*]Presidents: 5-10-15-20-25-30 (Years Of Love)
[*]Fifth Dimension: One Less Bell To Answer
[*]Elton John: Your Song
[*]Three Dog Night: One Man Band
[*]Stephen Stills: Love The One You're With
[*]Gladys Knight & The Pips: If I Were Your Woman
[*]Carpenters: Merry Christmas Darling
[*]Joey Scarbury: Mixed-Up Guy
[*]Diana Ross: Remember Me
[*]Perry Como: It's Impossible
[*]Gordon Lightfoot: If I Could Read Your Mind

If that seems like a lot of music for a 14 year old kid, I got my singles at Crane's Records in Inglewood, California for 53 cents each. The LPs listed above were all $2.49 (except for All Things Must Pass, which was $3.36)...so my total music investment for the year was $72.35 plus tax...spread out over 12 months.

I don't really care if I hear Chicago, BS&T, Creedence Clearwater Revival or The Guess Who ever again...but that's just because of radio overplay, which I contributed to beginning the following year.

The Andy Williams Show LP is now so obviously a patched-together studio LP...but I loved the TV show at the time.

The Ray Stevens and Bobby Sherman...hey, I was 14. Though I still maintain "Julie Do Ya Love Me" is a great song and should be a mandatory play at Karaoke nights. The rest of it I still find pretty enjoyable music. There's probably something to that theory.

---Michael Hagerty

 

[Rudy]

I recently read somewhere (can't remember where) that the music we were exposed to and liked at age fourteen is the stuff we'll like for the rest of our lives. For me, age fourteen came in 1965, the year I was hearing Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass everywhere.

Must be coincidence that Saturday Night Fever was released in 1977, and I discovered it in 1978 after borrowing it from a cousin. 1978 was the big year--I discovered a Saturday evening disco program on the A/C station WMJC, and soon an all-dance channel launched. I got into all that R&B, funk and disco back then, and today have a decent collection of 12" singles to show for it. We were also getting into jazz in school, and my other favorite radio station, WJZZ, played a lot of contemporary fusion jazz along with a few classics...and I still listen to that music as well.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I started listening to the TJB around 1965 or 66, not long after GOING PLACES came out. (That was the first LP I bought.) I was 10 or 11 at that time. For a long while I listened to TJB and almost nothing else, to the consternation of my family.

I wasn't really into pop music until I was into high school. The first 45 I bought was "A Horse With No Name" by America, which was in '71, when I was 15. I still like that song today, but most of my favorite pop music is stuff that came out in the mid-to-late 70s (Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller, Boston, Foreigner, etc.) and early 80s (Cars, Alan Parsons, and so on). I discovered Sergio Mendes just after that MUSIC BOX variety album came out, whenever that was. My first Mendes album purchase was STILLNESS.

So I guess I was a slight late-bloomer, musicwise.

 

[DAN BOLTON]

I've noticed that I don't have a lot of the music I listened to at 14, which was 1968. I downloaded some of the more obscure stuff I knew I'd never find in a store, like KEEMOSABE by Electric Indian[rememger them?]; but I listened to the radio so much as a kid that I must've burned myself out.

The TJB and BMB were my faves, of course, and too much a part of my life to leave behind; so they're a big part of my collection. I also find myself drawn to the more obscure acts on A&M and CTI that I was exposed to, but couldn't afford as a kid, like B66, Wes Montgomery and Pete Jolly...these collections are growing.

If it was a real milestone song from the mid/late '60's that was on the charts, something I really enjoyed for it's musical content[like CREEQUE ALLEY from the Mamas And Papas] and I can download it on the cheap, Ill get it...but I notice that most of my stuff from my teen years has more "depth" than most of the "hits" of the day. I always listened for sound instead of popularity.


One of my favorite purchases was the soundtrack from FORREST GUMP; there's a musical timeline of great songs that all us boomers listened to and remember.

Dan

 

[Cortnee]

Funny you should ask, because I've been re-creating the music library of my youth recently...and I'm just now listening to the albums from the year I was 14 (1970). Here are the LPs I bought in 1970
(with no 1970 releases from Herb, Burt & Sergio, Warm, Make It Easy On Yourself, Crystal Illusions and Ye-Me-Le were still getting listens from me,
---Michael Hagerty

Sergio did release STILLNESS in 1970, I believe it was the fall 1970 in addition to SM & B66 GREATEST HITS.

 

[Mike]

I turned 14 in the summer of '69!

We was poor ; buying records just didn't happen in our house. So, I was listening to whatever was playing on the radio -- Top 40s stuff.

Regards,
Mike

 

[Captain Bacardi]

It was 1972 when I turned 14, and I was already playing trombone and playing along with my TJB albums. I was also into Chicago, Chase, Blood Sweat & Tears, and was just really getting into jazz. I didn't have many records at the time, but kept listening to Chicago radio stations for anything that had horns in it. I was also just starting to listen to some classical music, such as Tschaikovsky and Bach. I would try to listen to anything that would drown out my dad's Hank Williams records!


Capt. Bacardi

 

[Larry]

I turned 14 in 1965 along with Harry apparently. I had gotten a transistor radio in early spring that year but what I remember most was that summer. Hearing The TJB's A Taste Of Honey on the radio was a real treat. I looked forward to hearing that song when I was listening to that radio. Ive been hooked on the TJB ever since. By June or July of 1966 I had all the TJB's albums. I'd spend my allowance, and what I earned from the grass cutting and newspaper jobs I had on records.

 

[Mike]

This is a sample of what was playing on the radio when I was 14 years old.

Get Back - The Beatles
Good Morning Starshine – Oliver
Hair - The Cowsills
Hot Fun in the Summertime - Sly & The Family Stone
I Started a Joke - Bee Gees
In the Year 2525 - Zager & Evans
Lay Lady Lay - Bob Dylan
More Today Than Yesterday - Spiral Starecase
My Cherie Amour - Stevie Wonder
In the Ghetto - Elvis Presley
Easy to Be Hard - Three Dog Night
Dizzy - Tommy Roe
A Boy Named Sue - Johnny Cash
And When I Die - Blood, Sweat & Tears

The '60s was a time when you could turn on the radio and it was hard not to hear good music... It seems that times have changed.

Regards,
Mike

 

[Captaindave]

Hard to remember exactly, but the year was 1965, so whatever was playing then. No doubt Beatles, Rolling Stones, and the other British stuff at the time. Beach Boys. Herb Alpert and the TJB was about a year away for me then.

Whatever was on Top 40 radio.

 

[Mark-T]

Yesterday Once More and all the old Motown greats...

 

[henryjg]

Top 40 but especially lots of disco and Donna Summer "Bad Girls" in particular. It was 1979. I still love that album today.

 

[AM Matt]

I was listening to Supertramp "Breakfast In America" when I was 14 years old in 1979. Matt Clark Sanford, MI

 

[Bruno]

I turned 14 in 1978.

As a child, I had listened mostly to the singles of some German singers, nothing international. Then I was more into classical music, like Bach and Händel.

I think, the first pop album I ever bought was an album by the Dutch group EARTH AND FIRE. I can't remember the title of the album, cause I don't own it anymore, but it included the smash hit WEEKEND.

Later, I bought two albums by Jean-Michel Jarre, the french synthesizer musician. The albums were called OXYGENE and EQUINOXE, and they were purley instrumental.

I guess, I bought the STAR WARS soundtrack in 1978, too.It was a double album.

As I have given away all my vinyl albums in 1992 (yes, I know, this is a deadly sin), I can't quite recall it all.

My brother, who is three years older than me, used to listen in 1978 all the time to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and an album by Kate Bush.

It was some years later that I discovered my all time favorites: Carpenters in 1981, Barry Manilow in 1983 and Neil Diamond in 1984.

In fact, my interest in pop music started not really before 1981, when I turned 17 and fell in love for the first time. I didn't have the money to buy all the singles and albums I wanted to, so I recorded many contemporary songs on my cassette machine, mostly from BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service), the radio station for the british soldiers in Germany.

Bruno

 

[Mr Bill]

Interesting theory!

I was 14 in 1974. At that point I'd been making movies with serious dedication for two years (though I'd been messing with it for six years). It was 1972 I decided my 8mm movies needed musical accompaniment and TJB and BMB LPs (and a few Percy Faiths) fit the bill well. I cna't recall that I drifted much beyond those few artists by the time I was 14 but I know by 15 I had virtually all the first 100 A&M LPs I could find and started exploring jazz as well...

Prior to 1972 I didn't really care much about music. Finding the music for my films at the same time I started Junior High got me into the school's music program where the instructor (sadly) said "no" to me for trumpet because of my apparent overbite at the time. I opted for clarinet (when I meant saxaphone), shifting to keyboard percussion a year later...

--Mr Bill

 

[seashorepiano]

At 14 in the late '90s, I was listening almost entirely to classical music. Didn't catch on to jazz, let alone A&M musicians, until the tail-end of high school. I'm definitely a case outside the theory-- I'll never go back exclusively to what I usually listened to at that age.

 

[Rudy]

At 14 in the late '90s, I was listening almost entirely to classical music. Didn't catch on to jazz, let alone A&M musicians, until the tail-end of high school. I'm definitely a case outside the theory-- I'll never go back exclusively to what I usually listened to at that age.

Give it 10 or 20 years, and you'll rediscover what you used to listen to. I had pursued a lot of other music between my R&B/funk/disco phase in the late 70s/early 80s until the mid 90s, when I started buying up some disco compilations on CD and dusting off my 12" single collection. Since then, I've managed to pick up a rare 12" or two every year; this year I found Sheila & B. Devotion's "Spacer" on 12" at a decent price. (It's a Rodgers/Edwards production...you'd swear it was Chic. )

In fact, I even got away from most of the early A&M recordings and other 50s/60s favorites by the late 70s. I was just listening to so many newer sounds, I didn't even consider playing them.

I think we listen to specific music too much at periods throughout our lives, and take an extended break. Then when we come back to them, we have a greater appreciation and it sounds that much more fresh. I'm hearing new things in recordings I put aside decades ago.

Listening to classical is nothing to be ashamed of. I'm not a huge classical listener, but have a handful that I like. The Living Stereo SACDs certainly increased my awareness of some of the great performances on RCA Red Seal during the 50s and 60s, and they're affordable enough that I can fill in a few works that I've missed over the years. Those 50 year old tapes still sound great!

 

[jimac51]

I can tell you with a retailer's experience that Harry's theory holds up. During the years that I ran a music store and people were looking for a gift for someone but knew little about that someone's tastes,I always asked if they knew what year the person graduated from high school. Taking those four years into effect,I suggested starting with pop music from that era-possibly a Rhino Billboard Top 10-though I think that the senior year of high school holds more memories than freshman.
Another factor is the first time someone makes a purchase of music for themselves,with their own money,whether it be a single or an album. At least when I was growing up(similar Baby Boom times as many here),music was one of the first experiences we did using money,outside of food purchases or going to the movies. This was a power moment in our lives-we were making a decision and backing it up with money.
I,too,have 1965 as my year,though with an end of year birthday,1966 was really the year that meant so much to me. So Herb's WHIPPED CREAM,GOING PLACES and WHAT NOW MY LOVE are strong memories. After earning some money by shoveling snow,I bought the HERB ALPERT PRESENTS SERGIO MENDES & BRASIL '66. Still have them all-original albums. My selection of singles dates a bit further back than 1965-66 because I loved getting those 10 for a buck boxes of 45s at Woolworth's. There are some B-sides and non-hits in those boxes that I cared for more than much of what was played on the radio. My hunt for obscure stuff started then. A vinyl junkie getting his fix and not caring of the quality of the drug as long as the rush happens. Still true today.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I think we listen to specific music too much at periods throughout our lives, and take an extended break. Then when we come back to them, we have a greater appreciation and it sounds that much more fresh. I'm hearing new things in recordings I put aside decades ago.

That's true. But on the other hand....there have been some records that I've eagerly snapped-up on CD, only to listen and say, "What did I ever like about THIS?!" Fortunately, the opposite is true for me more often!

 

[Harry]

There have definitely been "break" periods for me too. I obsessively collected and listened to my favorite A&M artists in the '60s and early '70s, and gradually moved away from that kind of music as I got into radio more and more.

Herb's FANDANGO and "Route 101" brought it all back (as far as TjB listening went) and I dutifully dragged out all of the old LPs, transferred them all to cassette, and happily discovered in-car listening.

The transfer of music to Compact Disc in the mid '80s gave me another "renaissance" with favorite artists as I began once again delving into what was and what wasn't available in the new format.

Carpenters' LOVELINES and box set in 1989 and 1991 (FROM THE TOP) brought that stuff back to me in a big way, and joining A&M Corner in the late '90s brought back all of the early A&M stuff again, as I obsessively sought out not only upgrades to what I had, but to fill in all of the missing pieces of thing I'd missed.

All of this is not to say that we can't discover new things; we do that too, all of the time. I was never big into the Beatles when they were around, but in the '80s, I delved deeply into their catalog.

In more recent years I've gotten into The Corrs, and now obsessively collect their stuff, and just this past year, as mentioned in other threads, I'm finding myself obsessing over ABBA. Those make sense to me, since they follow a pattern established by Carpenters all those years ago - harmony female vocals and catchy pop tunes.

But it all magically "resets", the moment I hear a Nick Ceroli beat or a taxi horn.

Harry

 

[DAN BOLTON]

I think that the different formats we've been exposed to has an effect on our listening habits, too...we've been lucky enough to have been exposed to several new mediums in our lifetime. LPs, 8 tracks, cassettes, CD's and MP3's have all made it easier[if more expensive] to enjoy the older music in many different situations and with greater sound quality.

CIP: when I was 14, I had an Orthophonic High Fidelity record player and a table model AM radio with a speaker about the size of a mini-disc. The record player was pretty good stuff for 1968, but the radio was really just a toy. I tried hooking it up to my guitar amp, and promptly blew out the circuit breaker. Didn't have an FM radio until I was in college, and it was just a clock radio.

It wasn't until about 1979 that I really began to hear what was really going on in the songs; I bought a used Marantz 2220 for 50 bucks, and I still have it[!], then a Technics turntable...I had some dual-cone speakers that I kept until I got married and got some Magnavox with 12 inch woofers that I recently replaced with a pair of KLH Raves. Didn't think I'd ever need a subwoofer until COLORS came along...

As the technology advanced, and I could afford to upgrade, I did so; and each time, it was a real treat to hear the music I grew up with[mostly TJB, but not all...] in a new format with much better tonal quality.

I'm surprised at just how well a lot of the older music stacks up against the newer recordings, too...can't beat Larry Levine's "Wall Of Sound" on SOTB, for example...I tend to get older music I used to listen to now with the desire to find out what it really was supposed to sound like "back in the day...".

I have a lot of TJB music in every format I've mentioned...gets expensive, but it's worth it.


Dan