Introduction

Since an early age, music has fascinated me. Admittedly, my contact with ´real´ music came quite late in life. To give you an idea, my mother used to try to style her perm and do her make-up in the kitchen whilst listening to Heart FM. Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan and Bananarama were probably among the first artists I heard regularly. Bear in mind this was the 80s and after recently staying at my mothers house for a few weeks, I can safely say that the playlist hasn´t changed that much in twenty years.
My mother was a huge Elvis fan and by the time I was 6, I probably knew the words to nearly all the songs he ever made. She also loved listening to Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and Meatloaf. My father, on the other hand, was a little more conservative. Sunday afternoons where spent listening to Vivaldi, Pink Flloyd and The Moody Blues whilst my mother peeled potatoes. Between the two of them, they managed to provide me with a fairly diverse base on which to develop my own musical tastes.


As a child, I went through the normal school girl crushes on boy bands like Take That, Backstreet Boys, East17 and Boyzone. (Yes, I had the posters on my walls from Smash Hits Magazine!) I remember my first concert. I was 10 and my friend and I were taken by our mothers to see Boyzone at the NEC in Birmingham. Obviously, we knew the music was awful at the time because we both sat there with our fingers in our ears throughout the entire show! Thank God cassette tapes were a brief phase in music history.

Ah yes, taping the top 40 on a Sunday night. My teenage years were spent trying to define my musical and social identity. I secretly loved No Doubt, Greenday, Prodigy and Guns n Roses, but I could never admit this to my friends! The popular culture at my school was the early r&b and garage scene. So my cd collection boasted 2pac, sosolidcrew, bob marley and various garage compilations. Another music scene I crossed over into during my late teenage years was the dance/trance culture. The raves and Ibiza style clubs were among my first regular haunts. Not surprisingly as these places were much easier to get in to as an underage drinker.

Throughout my life, there has always been contact with Rock and Metal. Many of the underground bars I went to regularly were "dodgy" and smelly affairs. I remember puking blue vomit at a place called Eddies no.8 and trying to mosh in my platform boots. I dated a drummer briefly. He was very much in the gothic scene and I remember it was a very short affair. After he took me to a fetish club, I realised it wasn´t going to work out! I was about 15 and I don´t think I´ve ever been so scared in all my life!
After leaving school, I finally started to develop my own musical tastes, away from the pressures of being in the "in" crowd. With the help of the internet and my little brother, I started to discover all the music I´d missed out on the first time around.

Nowadays, I love all types of music. I appreciate the work that goes into creating something as heavy as Stillborn but I can still be listen to something as melodically vocal as Dog Days.