text
Music
When I was about 12 years old, I got interested in pop music, and more specifically, anything by Cliff Richard. I started to buy LP's (yes, all vinyl at that time) and played music on my second-hand turntable, almost 24 hours a day.
Pop
As for the rest of pop music, every Friday afternoon, I listened to the Top 40, and taped the songs that were new that week, thus creating my own tapes of all Top 40 songs throughout the years. Stupid me gave those tapes away years later...
I kept listening to the radio until I started travelling, which was about 1991. I didn't really stop listening, but I preferred playing CD's and I didn't like the 'house-music', which was on the radio quite a lot. Oh hang on, there was one house song I actually liked a lot, "I wanna be a hippy" by Technohead. It had a funny video clip showing a couple of gabbers running through the Vondelpark in Amsterdam.
Rock
Around 1990 as well, I used to visit a friend once a week, on Thursday night. This friend was heavily into hardrock, and every time I was at her place, Headbanger's Ball would be on MTV. I didn't like it too much at first, but I sort of got sucked in, and became very fond of this type of rock music. I liked Bon Jovi, Skid Row, Guns 'n' Roses, Whitesnake, some songs by Metallica, and a whole range of less famous bands like White Lion, Danger Danger, Poison, Tesla, Kip Winger, Magnum.. to name just a few. I'd have to get my old tapes out to remember more names.
Israeli pop and folk
I still like both Cliff and 80's pop, as well as the heavier rock, and while travelling, more types of music were added to my favourites.
First of all, there was the Israeli folk music, and also Israeli pop and rock, with names like Schlomo Artzi, Schmulik Kraus (who I've met in Tel Aviv), Alon Oleartchik (folk/pop), Eifo HaYeled (Where's the kid), Monica Sex, Mashina and Stella Maris (rock).
Legião Urbana
Then, while staying in Brazil, I got to like the typical Brazilian carnival music, and again, rock. My favourite Brazilian rock band must be Legião Urbana, whose singer Renato Russo, was a great songwriter. He died of AIDS in 1996, a few weeks before I got to Brazil for the first time. Until recently I was using one of his lines in my sig on Usenet: "Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito." (Dreams come. Dreams go. The rest is imperfect.) It's from the Legião song "Há Tempos".
Bass guitar
Left over from the time I regularly practised playing bass guitar, is the love for good bass music. Although I never managed to remember many names of musicians, there are still some I can mention, like Marcus Miller and Abraham Laboriel. I just love to hear a good tune on a bass, but most of the time I don't even know who plays it. Songs that come to mind, are "Nite Klub" by The Specials, Pink Floyd's "Money", and "Sunshine Of Your Love" by Eric Clapton in his early days with Cream.
I also like Stevie Wonder's music a lot, and particularly "Sir Duke" and "I Wish". My music teacher had me practise the latter till I could play it, only to tell me afterwards that Stevie doesn't actually use a bass to play it. It's a synthesizer. Still like the sound of it though :-)
