What did you grow up listening to?

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

Dumarest

Vaquero de Alta California
Joined
Jan 20, 2018
Messages
15,721
Reaction score
34,438
I have a turntable out in the main living room but recently ordered a 2nd turntable so I can play records in the master bedroom as well, so I had occasion to dig through my LPs and came across the records I inherited from my parents. This is the stuff I grew up listening to in the 1970s and early 1980s. My dad was born in 1921 and fought in WW2 so rock'n'roll was greasy kid stuff as far as he was concerned and Mario Lanza, Frank Sinatra, and Placido Domingo were where it's at. My mom grew up in a very small town with strict Catholic parents and never had a record player until she went away to college in the late '50s-early '60s when the folk boom was happening. Neither ever owned a rock'n'roll album in their lives unless you count Bobby Darin. Feast your eyes on the sounds of my childhood!
Webp.net-resizeimage (3).jpg
Webp.net-resizeimage (4).jpg
So what was in rotation in your formative years?
 
Elvis, Abba, Boney M, Cliff Richard, Rolling Stones, lots of "Christmas with the Stars" type stuff

there was a box of 45s lying around, I recall The Fortunes
 
From my dad: Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, Sons of the Pioneers, Steppenwolf, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Rolling Stones.
From my mom: John Denver, The Beatles, Beach Boys, Barry Manilow, Elton John.

What I listen to on regular rotation: AC/DC, Nightwish, The Real McKenzies, Airbourne, The Hu, The Runaways, Sex Pistols, Ramona, etc.
 
My parents were folkies so Dylan, Cohen, Cash, Kristofferson plus some more full on folk stuff like Leon Rosselson and Dick Gaughan.
 
The Beatles, Supertramp, Moody Blues, James Taylor, Harry Nilsson and Fleetwood Mac were probably on the heaviest rotation.
 
My mom and dad had LPs of bands like Cream, Zeppelin, and even KISS but they didn’t play them often. I grew up listening to Casey Kasem and whatever the stations played at night on their request hotline. My favorite person before I was 12 or so was Michael Jackson, no contest. I remember almost every kid in elementary school liking him, one kid even wore a sequin glove to school. In middle school I made the transition to hard rock and Def Leppard became my favorite band. Then Van Halen. That was before I turned 18.
 
My parents only had a handful of records. I don't remember any of them except one, except that I thought they were incredibly boring.

The one I do remember, however, was Zamfir..."Master of the Pan Pipe". I would listen to that over and over again, especially The Lonely Shepherd, which is one of my favourite songs to this day.

 
My parents have a huge collection of lps and now also cds. So I'm probably gonna miss something here. But here is what I remember they had then I grew up.

Dad: Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Simon & Garfunkel, The Who, Rolling Stones and The Doors.
Mom: Elvis Presley, Roy Orbinson, The Beatles, Bee Gees and Bob Dylan. Also some Italian popmusic albums I don't remember the names of.

They also had lots of classical music from all the greats such as Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and Verdi. They also had some operas like Rigoletto and Cavalleria Rusticana. Also some albums with great tenors like Domingo and Pavarotti. The opera and tenor stuff is solely my moms, but all the other classical stuff is both.

Lastly there was also lots of danish music like Gasolin, Kim Larsen, Shubidua and Brødrene Olsen.

I like most of it, but my favorites were The Doors, Elvis, Roy, Bee Gees and those Italian popmusic albums.
The classical music stuff were also awesome, I used those a lot as background music when playing Rpgs.
And TristramEvans TristramEvans my parents also had Zamfir albums, and it's absolutely some great music.
 
We had this lying around on 45rpm vinyl. An artist I know nothing about but I loved this as a kid. Perhaps my love of ska and reggae developed from this.



I also very clearly recall this one.

 
I've owned three records in my entire life, all purchased by the age of 7. In order of purchase: Mike Batt's The Wombles, Fred Dagg's Greatest Hits and the Star Wars soundtrack. At one point, my father gave me an old valve radiogram, which I used to listen to the local AM stations on (this was before they went to FM in the '80s). Unfortunately this died and was never resurrected. I can remember Hotel California, Emotional Rescue and Total Control from that era.
 
Last edited:
When I was a child, my mom's favorite band was The Police and the radio station was always KROQ which in the 80's was punk and new wave. When I was really young, I dimly recall stuff like Steely Dan, Earth Wind and Fire, and that Baker Street song.
 
My Dad primarily listens to classical music, the usual Mozart, Beethoven, Bach etc but also a lot of lesser known composers. He has deep knowledge of classical music, anytime I hear something new (to me, most of this stuff is hundreds of years old after all) if I mention it he almost always knows exactly what I;m talking about and can hum a few bars to ensure we are talking about the same piece of music. He plays the piano and has written some pieces (unpublished) so there was a lot of that as well.
There was an exception to modern music, he liked the Beatles when I was a kid. In later years he has added some contemporary classical composers as well as some other more modern artists like Enya, but it is still mostly classical classical. Until my parents got divorced when I was 12 or 13 classical and the Beetles was about all I heard in the house. Occasionally some Arlo Guthrie, Cat Stevens, James Taylor or similar would get into the mix, but not often.

After the divorce my mother got into a group doing country line dancing so I began to be around the country music popular in the 80s, Hank Williams Jr, Charlie Daniels, Alan Jackson, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings etc. In contrast to that she also had listened to popular early 80s music like Abba who was huge at the time.

My grandfather (mom's side) was a machinist and owned his own shop, but he really had wanted to be a musician, so for most of my life he had a side gig playing saxophone in swing bands. As a little kid I would have extended stays with my grandparents during the summer, and then there were all the family events which were often held at their place. Big Band and swing was what they listened to.

It was also about this time that I got my own room and my own (hand me down) stereo and developed an appreciation for "classic rock" although at the time nobody called it that. I went to school in Oakland and started Jr High in '79 or '80 just as "that rap thing" was getting started. At the time I wasn't into it, but when you are around something all the time it grows on you. I lived in the SF Bay Area until the late 90s so the music at work when there was music tended to be rock or hip hop / rap. As I moved up from no experience required jobs, to foot in the door towards your chosen profession I ended up working for the US Forest Service and living in some very out of the way locations. places where you hear a lot of country music, although classic rock was a runner up, particularly southern rock. This is also the period where I was introduced to Jimmy Buffet. We had a crappy stereo in the fire engine my first year with one cassette tape, a Jimmy Buffet greatest hits album Songs you know by heart. Unlike a city firefighter who only spend a few minutes at a time in the engine, forestry firefighters can spend hours in the engine. Even a "local" fire could be an hour or two away so I got to know Jimmy pretty well by the end of the summer.

Music has always played a big part in my life and by my early 30s I had developed a very eclectic taste. I've got hundreds of CDs (used to have a decent size collection of vinyl, but that was lost). The vast majority falls into rock or metal, but I can fill the better part of a day with just about any common genre of music.
 
Last edited:
Nothing that remarkable I think, the stuff my older brothers listened to and what got played on AM oldies and FM rock stations.

I think I most appreciate that AM radio played such a rich vein of RnB, doowop, soul, country and early rock n' roll in the 80s.

More Songs About Buildings and Food_Talking Heads.jpg
b7b5f87baed3dcaa80f14ffd505ed3ef.jpg

9b84d8018614e36025d2fa1e15fb47a7.jpg

52c7f399c40b851267a1ef8f78184b76.jpg
29264298865_e6f19eb64b_b.jpg
aretha-now-aretha-franklin.jpg
Pink-Floyd-Wish-You-Were-Here-Columbia-Album.jpg

rs-7696-121110-rollingstones-31-rect-1352690542.jpg
reprise1.jpg
when-a-man-loves-a-woman.jpg
 
By the time I was around 11 I discovered hip-hop, I noticed that older people didn't get it the way they did rock music.

It is a real generational thing as I have friends who are just a few years older than me who don't get hip-hop either.

unnamed.jpg

80467f7f66d3e8bd1b6c769992623595.jpg

b8f234ba858a3cee8cd8e7b3a1226e38.jpg
SharedImage-82148.jpg

Beastie-Boys-Pauls-Boutique-album-cover-web-optimised-820.jpg
 
Last edited:
This Album was my introduction to Pink Floyd. It was in my parents record collection although I'm not sure how it got there as I never saw either of them play it.

I always connected to it a lot more than Dark Side or The Wall (although we watched the film all the time on TV) which were the big records everyone owned. It was my favourite Floyd record until I discovered the Syd Barrett and early post-Syd records.
 
My folks didn’t listen to records much, more the radio. That would have been, primarily, BBC Radio 2 which was an easy listening station with more ‘grown up’ artists than BBC Radio 1 with it’s focus on pop.

Some 60s pop music, especially The Animals. Some country music, especially John Denver. Some euro acts, especially Nana Mouskouri. For some reason Peter Skellern was also popular with them. So a fairly eclectic mix...
 
It is a real generational thing as I have friends who are just a few years older than me who don't get hip-hop either.
I enjoy hip-hop, but mostly 90s (the golden age) and old school. I was born 1971.
 
My dad doesn't listen to music, and my Mum really only played Chris DeBurg and Bonnie Tyler. It wasn't until my stepdad moved in in the late 80's that I got introduced to some wider music. Chick Korea, Bruce Cockburn, Cream, Pat Metheny, John Renbourne, that sort of thing. I essentially had to discover classic rock on my own. My own taste was strictly heavy, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Guns and Roses, and then later pretty much anything from Seattle.
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top