360 Degrees In Music Part 1

 For as long as i can remember music has always been  present in my life, this is down to my family, my parents and grandparents have always been interested in music, my dad was always a big rock and roll fan including such artist's as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Everly Brothers and T.Rex.
My mum was a big motown and pop fan including artist's like Diana Ross, Temptations, Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, my grandparents were the country fans, including Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and Hank Williams.


 My earliest memories are of visiting my grandparents every Sunday when i was little (earliest age i can remember is around the age of leaving pre-school) i can always remember my late granddad would always have his big old free standing record player on, waiting for us, either playing his latest records or listening to some country or golden oldies radio station. At the time i can remember feeling very bored but very interested at what i was listening to, i wasn't quite aware at that age of what this music was really about. After a while both my granddad and my dad would teach me about the artist's and the significance of the artist and genre.

  Another early memory i have is of one of my first ever Christmas presents from my parents this was a Sony Personal Walk-man Cassette Player, the year was 1988 and the cassette album i got with this was of Bros's Push Album, i can still remember the excitement i had of opening these presents at the time (no doubt i had received other presents that year but none of them stand out like this one). I also remember my sister receiving Wham's Make It Big album on cassette which i later claimed as my own when she lost interest in it after a few days, so there i was 6 years old with my very own Personal Walk-Man and two of my very own albums to play on it, bliss i thought.

  One year my dad was building a conservatory on to the back of our house, i remember this being in one of the six weeks holiday when i was in middle school, i remember him asking me and my sister to help out as we were both bored and had nothing better to do.
 As any typical kid i really didn't want to spend my time helping my dad do this (i thought it was going  to be one of the most boring things i had to do), turns out anyway we didn't have a choice lol, so i asked my dad if i could play my Michael Jackson Bad Vinyl Album whilst we were helping him out which he didn't have any problems with.
So we put the album on and got on with it, i remember it didn't actually take long to do in the end and i had enjoyed spending some quality time with my dad as well as managing to learn all of the lyrics to that entire album, a skill which has stayed with me to this day, being album to remember song lyrics of by heart that is.
 I can always remember when my dad was at work i'd always sneak some of his vinyl collection into my room and play it continuously until i knew my dad would be home and then i would sneak it back in again to his collection, this was if my mum hadn't already let us play them in our front room on the record player.
 As i said earlier both my parents were always in to lots of different music and genre's but the albums i remember most was my mums Motown and Michael Jackson's albums as well as Elvis Presley G.I. BLUES soundtrack album which again i new all the song lyrics to after a couple of days. And an album that has stuck with me throughout my life and of which i now own my own copy of, unfortunately on CD, not that that's a problem i just remember the great sound of the vinyl copy i use to listen to.

To be continued ......