My musical path... or how I became Journey fan. Long read...

[Maro]

Can you remember how you began listening to music and how your musical taste changed thru time?
Today I was thinking about all the phases I moved through... to finaly end on Journey being my no. 1.

I was born back in 1974. in communist Yugoslavia... We were communist country, but yugoslavian communist regime was much more liberal and open to western influences than our eastern neighbours who were under more strict soviet control...
Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia (parts of former Yugoslavia) had very strong rock n' roll scene since 1973. with many popular bands. Western music was also very popular here, with strong influences of british and german charts.

I remember that back in 1979. ,as a 5-year old, I was already big fan of Smokie (Living Next Door To Alice, Lay Back in the Arms of Someone...) and I was walking on my street and backyard with badminton racket in my hand doing air guitar and singing Smokie's song Oh Carol... My parents were travelling a lot in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Italy, etc. with me and my older sisters, so we bought Chris Norman's & Suzie Quatro's vinyl single Stumblin' In in Austria. I was listening to it religiously...
After Smokie, I was hooked for a while on Elvis Presley and Beatles...

Through primary school I was slowly losing interest in music, but it came to me again around 1986.
In first half of 80's my sisters were hooked on bands like Duran Duran, Simple Minds, A-ha, Wham!, Talking Heads, Paul Young, etc. so they made a collection of vinyls and tapes from their favourite bands...

My return to music came in 1986. when I discovered vinyls and tapes from Duran Duran, A-Ha and Simple Minds.

With my going to highschool in 1988/89. I got hooked on U2, Spandau Ballet, Roxette and Human League, and after seeing couple of their videos, I become interested in three gothic rock bands - The Mission, The Cure and Sisters Of Mercy...

From those gothic rock bands I moved in 1990. to hard rock bands like Guns N' Roses, Skid Row, Aerosmith, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Alice Cooper, Motley Crue, Van Halen and Saxon...

1990-1992. were years when Yugoslavia was disintegrated and Croatia became independent (but we had war here and in neighbouring Bosnia up to 1995., mostly away from me, I live in northwest Croatia which wasn't on battle lines)

In 1991. I was hanging with friends who were into heavy metal, so I quickly abandoned hard rock and moved on bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Motorhead.

Just before I moved on even heavier bands I got to know a band which was dear to me even later when I heard really brutal kinds of metal... It was Queensryche... I really loved their albums Empire and Operation: Mindcrime. Still consider them masterpieces.

When I switched from hard rock to mentioned heavy metal bands, my friends moved in even more heavier territory, thrash metal, so in 1991. I also moved on bands like Metallica, Slayer, Testament, Anthrax, Megadeth, and later in 1992. on even more heavier bands like Sepultura, Kreator and Sodom.

In 1992. I went on university in Zagreb, and this is the time when me and my friends were hooked on most brutal genre of music - death metal... bands like Napalm Death, Death, Obituary, Deicide, Morbid Angel, Entombed, Cannibal Corpse, Carcass... I even went on Napalm Death concert in Zagreb where I almost lost my hearing due to standing too close to the very loud speakers... Their brutal sound was ringing in my ears for days...

With death metal being smash hit among european metalheads in 1992/93., grunge wasn't so strong at first here...
For me, grunge was boring music, with only one interesting song for me (Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit). I never really dig that style.

In 1993. I discovered three bands which were, like before mentioned Queensryche, really special to me: british gothic metal band Paradise Lost, californian power metal band Armored Saint (whose lead vocalist John Bush became Anthrax vocalist at that time) and british 70's hard rock legends Uriah Heep.
Since then, I started to hear different kinds of metal and hard rock.

Around 1995. I was doing metal fanzine named Apoplexia (I released only one number in about 100 or so copies), sung in local thrash metal band Eutanassia with my friends playing (we covered Metallica's Seek And Destroy and For Whom The Bell Tolls; Slayer's Seasons In The Abyss, Black Sabbath's Paranoid, Motorhead's Orgasmatron; Megadeth's Countdown To Extinction; and had three original songs on croatian language - total crap of songs, by the way). We even had one concert in old local movie theatre at the beginning of 1996.

In 1996. I was listening music from bands like Biohazard, Bodycount and Pantera.
Biohazard and Bodycount played here so I went to their concerts...
At the end of 1996. I starded volunteering as DJ on local radio station where I was hosting metal/hard rock show called Twilight Zone.

One day I was reading old music magazine (released in 1983.) where I found story about Journey on couple of pages. I was intrigued with everything I've read about them, and after finding and hearing vinyl of Escape on local radio station I decided to do one show dedicated only to the AOR bands (Journey, Foreigner, Toto, Starship, Asia, etc.).
Since then I was more and more hooked on AOR bands and less interested in metal.

I think I became serious Journey (and Survivor) fan in 1997. when I also got my internet connection (it was time when it might be common in USA, but it was still rare in Croatia).

I remember reading on Sony's Journey website about Easy To Fall being planned as single release from TBF, I remember my everyday's visits to Stephen Lake's Journey Tribute website for any info on their doing... reading about Steve Perry leaving Journey, Steve Augeri being recruited, anticipation of downloading and hearing Remember Me mp3, joy of learing about existence of Steve Perry-simmilar vocalists (Kevin Chalfant, Hugo, etc.)...

Around that time I discovered melodicrock.com's predecessor site (don't remember how Andrew called it at that time, it was something about south or so...).
My radio show ended it in 1998. but since discovering this website I became interested in all kinds of AOR, pop/rock, hard rock and adult contemporary rock artists.
Many informations about interesting bands I took from melodicrock.com and allmusic.com... Later I've found two other interesting sites (heavyharmonies.com and rockdetector.com).

Since my "Journey-influenced conversion" in 1996/97. my musical taste was always expanding, and now it goes from Michael Bolton's crooning to Paradise Lost's gothic metal, from Craig Chaquico's soft jazz to W.A.S.P.'s shock rock...
Now I'm proud owner of over 1000 interesting original cd's...

Journey is my no. 1.
Survivor, The Storm, Hugo, Alias (Freddy Curci) and Terry Brock are battling for being my no. 2
But that's not all... there is so much good music out there...

Life is good, music is my driving force.

[Perry86fan]

That was a good read thanks.