What does music do for you?

Ah. I love music, and I'll listen to anything. I search for songs that give me a shiver up my spine, but really anything that can effect my mood is worthy of keeping around.

The first song I can remember, pop-wise, of really grabbing me was Suzi Quatro's 48 Crash when I was 11 or 12.

Up till then I'd been mostly raised on on parents record collection, my mother being into classical and opera (I still like the former but can only take small doses of the latter) and dad's 50 Guitars, James Last etc - they also had some shared likes - Mantovani springs to mind. Really not my cup of tea mostly.

Mid teens was top 40 high rotation stuff with the occassional Led Zep, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple sneaking in. But when a pope died, Sydney's premier pop station 2SM which, unbeknownst to me, was catholic owned, played nothing but dreary organ music in morning - I couldn't stand it so I switched to double jay permanently (previously I only listened to it when 2SM acne cream ads drove me nuts).

2JJ was something of an eye opener back then but basically it was massively alternative, especially at the time - I don't think there is an equivalent in any other country. That warped me good and proper. But even it had boundaries. I rely on friends, real and virtual to take me to strange new vistas these days.

I have the weirdest eclectic collection that ranges from the obscure to the massively popular, all genres, around 5000 discs.

I can still listen to my Suzi Quatro records without wincing.

Music, especially playing guitar, enables me to express things and to reach people in ways that nothing else can. It's also kept me out of jail and other state-run institutions.

I once played my aunt to sleep on my uncle's old Gibson acoustic after he had died and she hadn't slept for three days. (She called the next day and gave the guitar, incidentally.)

One night I played for a cancer patient whose doctors told her she had only three or four months to live. For those few hours, she didn't think about dying or being sick, she just enjoyed living. The last I heard, she'd been in remission for over two years.

In turn, the music of others has kept me going when it seemed everything else around me was crumbling. For me, music is life. Pretty much everything else is just existence.

Good thread!

Great thread. I dearly love all my music buddies on this site and can't wait for their posts.

I rock out and punch holes in things.

If I am home I have to have music on, like many others here I have rather eclectic tastes in music and there is always something to suit my mood. Reading a book to Mozart, Flying down Lake Shore Drive with the top off my jeep with Slayer at full volume, playing cards with with some blues, or just having the radio on in the background while on A2K.

Music is also a good approximation of someones character. In my experience people that enjoy only one type of music have narrow personalities to match. As someone smarter than myself once said "variety is the spice of life". I prefer not to be bland.

Glad you're all enjoying the thread I'm actually amazed at the level of intelligence from people on this website. I'm come to believe in recent years that 90% of the population are bland and idiotic. To be honest, I still believe that, but it feels that right about now I've found the 10% I've been looking for. People with a mix of tastes in everything, not just one style, one scene.

Anyway, enough of my rant:
The first song I ever remember liking is the Eels "Susan's House". I was very young at the time (I could probably work out the exact year, but that would require effort on my half). It was on a Radio Channel in the Uk called Atlantic 252, which had a rosta of about twenty songs that played over and over, and I used to listen to it all the time just for that song... It was around the time Joan Osbourne's "What if God was one of us?" song came out, I remember liking that aswell for some reason... I was very young.

In my teens, a friend picked up a Green Day CD, "Dookie" and I absolutely loved it and bought it straight after. The feeling of liking "Alternative" music overwhelmed me and I proceeded to head straight for the Metal section everytime I went to Virgin Megastores (The only Music store at that time in my city). I remember buying Slipknot, AFI, Slayer, PanterA... Never having heard a song by them before. I just wanted to be different, and in all honesty, at the time, I loved it. I'd never heard so much anger in songs before, and when you're an angsty teenager with on outlet, you tend to warm to that sort of thing.
But time changes people...

By the time I was Sixteen, my metal loving days were all but over, I was a Punk! Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Misfits, NOFX... Anything fast. The corporate masses were my enemy now, no Pop music for me, I was a rebel! I was against all that rubbish...
But time changes people...

I turned eighteen, I came across a man I now know affectionately as Skiprat. Me and him worked at the brand new HMV store which had opened in our Town Centre. At first I found him a curious person, he seemed to like all sorts of music, his tastes stretched from here to no-where and I was intrigued. I started spending a lot of time with Skiprat and we'd always listen to something new at his house (He had no TV, which amazed and delighted me) and I begun to change... The walls begun to fall down around me, the barriers of musical genres came crashing down and I begun to fall in love with a style of music and know and love today: Good Music. No filler, no politics, just good, shiver-inducing eclectical electrical unbelievable music. And I'll never go back.

(This overly long story was extracted from SlyEnemy's new novel "Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah")

Well said, thats my favorite genre also.
I almost forgot my manners, Welcome to A2K.

I love music because it makes me dance dance dance........

Music keeps me semi-satisfied with being oh so very alone.

haha music i am obbsessed with music i currently play a tuba and a bass trombone hehe music is a diffrent way to express your emotions thats what i think

I pays the bills, gets me laid, gives me an outlet to express myself, gets me laid, keeps me out of trouble, gets me laid, satisifies on every emotional and spirtual level, gets me laid, makes my toes tap, my fingers snap and over the years has gotten me laid. A lot.

Are you Michael Jackson?

I need music, water, sleep and food to live. In that order.

I listen to music every day, I work with it for a living, I've been making my own for about 20 years.

I only recently begun studying classical and music theory - harmony and counterpoint etc. - just finished my first peice for string quartet and I'm working on a peice for full symphony orchestra.

I play keys, piano, bass (badly) and the great highland bagpipes. (The Kilt would get me laid HEAPS if I wasn't married. If only I'd known back then....sigh)

The first song that "hit" me was ABBA "SOS" when I was about 4 years old. Now I'm into Nine Inch Nails and Enya, The Cure and Rachmaninov, The Pogues and Avril Lavigne, The Cocteau Twins and John Michel Jarre, The Waterboys, George Gershwin and New Order. Anything BUT country....

I can't explain what music does to me....I just can't. All I can do is recommend a tune like the Waterboys "The Pan Within" and say ...see !!!

A wise lady once said-

Dont think of yesterday and dont look at the clock
I like to boogie woogie
Its like ridin' on the wind and it never goes away
Touches everything Im in gotta have it every day

Musiiic makes the peeeople come togetheeeeer, yeah

Sums it up for me.

I can go for ages without putting on a specific album or listening to a radio but every now and again I put on really fast uplifting music and do my 'special' dance in my room.
When I say special I mean dancing how I do when people arnt around.
Its so much fun.

Cant say that music makes me feel horny but some do conjure up romantic thoughts but mostly its all about the energy of the song.

Man I wish more people had posted to this thread.