She introduced me to good music growing up. Well, wait, let's back up for a second here. She didn't actually kindly take my hand and lead me to the glorious path of a music lover, no. She was too busy telling me to get out of her room and to "MooooOOOM!!! Katherine stole my stuff AGAIN!" to focus on the fact that I really and truly just wanted to be her disciple. Because back in 1985, my sister was a rock goddess.
Here are a few of the bands that she listened to, and I copied listening to because I loved them so much. Most I still love to this day, and I have built my musical tastes around these early pioneers of my musical schooling.
Kon Kan. Anyone remember these guys? Puss N' Boots/ These Boots Are Made for Walking and Harry Houdini are the two songs that I remember the most. I learned to do the shuffle dance to these songs. You know, the dance where you are too young to be a cool 80s queen with big hair so you just kind of shuffle along looking like you want to bust out at any second? Yeah, that one. I would still do the shuffle dance to these guys.
Depeche Mode. Still one of my favorite bands of all time. Me as a 6-year-old singing Strangelove and Never Let Me Down? God, I can only dream that my hypothetical children will be that cool one day.
New Order. Who doesn't remember Bizarre Love Triangle, Blue Monday and True Faith? So good. Especially Bizarre Love Triangle. So good that it has foever been immortalized in one of my favorite movies ever, Pretty in Pink. Oh dear. Am I stuck in the 80s?
Of course we cannot forget about Duran Duran, Erasure, Wham! and all the other greats that she would listen to with her girlfriends, locked away in her bedroom giggling about boys. Sigh. All I wanted was to wear acid wash skirts and white pumps with slouch socks. Instead, I was the bratty little sister who wore her underwear with noticing it wasn't mine. I must have been infuriating. Not anymore though, I swear.
Fast forward a few years and her music got even cooler. Never mind that she started listening to hair bands (which were COOL to me at the time) but she also had a Johnny Rotten streak in her as well. And I thought she was JUST as cool then as she had been before. Gone were the tapered jeans and Varnet shirts: they had been replaced with a school girl uniform (not because she wanted to) and uber large glasses that weren't a prescription. They were just her style. The bands she listened to then had me on the first swear. Bands with rough voices and wailing guitars. Here is where she left my music education, but I took over from there and now I am the rock goddess. Version 2.0.
So let's continue on to the rock and roll education I was getting from this little fahionista. Later on she turned to a harder, darker side of music, and it suited me just fine.
Social Distortion. Mike Ness and his barbed wire voice. I loved it. I never even knew someone could sound like that. I mean, after Milli Vanilli and New Kids on the Block (who I loved by the way) who knew that singers smoked cigarettes and had many women? My life goal at the tender age of 10 was to become one of those women after listening to Story of My Life on tape.
The Forgotten Rebels. Not for the weak hearted. In grade six I believe I was the only kid singing out "Fuck me dead! One, two, three, four!" on the school yard. It was a beautiful sounds in my ears. It still is today.
And many more. So I guess I just wanted to say thank you, sisty, for introducing me to the one thing in my life I love more then anything.
You are still pretty effin' cool if I do say so myself. Even though you are old and decrepit.
xoxoxo
