My Musical Journey: Part I (Wish You Were Here)

In this post I’m just basically going to go over how I came to “love” music. I feel like I may have written about this topic before but for some reason it is something I feel would be a pretty good post just in case I haven’t. So I guess lets start from the beginning.

Growing up I always loved music, I received my first cassette (my parents took a little while to adapt to CD’s) when I was around eight or so and this cassette just happened to be Aerosmith’s “Big Ones.” At around the age of eleven I received my first boombox and the first two CD’s I got were Bon Jovi “These Days” and Queens “Greatest Hits.” During Middle School I drifted away from listening to classic rock mainly because “It wasn’t cool.” I listened to a lot of Bush, Nirvana, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, and Nu-Metal bands like Korn. Many of the bands I liked then I still love today, however none of that music was able to truly drag me in, and because of that, music was never a big passion of mine until freshmen year of High School.

During my freshmen year of High School my parents left a copy of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” sitting on the couch and in pure curiosity I decided to pick it up and give it a listen. First was “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” which I skipped right past because it was just too slow and dull for my taste, I decided to go right into the title track and from beginning to end I was immediately captured, I had never listened to a song that had such an affect on me. I was completely struck by how powerful it was and in all honesty I probably had that song on repeat for two straight hours. Each listen never got old, every time the song came to a close I was in awe of its majesty and prowess.

When going to sleep that night I decided to give the album a listen to from begging to end but I just wasn’t able to get past that boring intro on “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” I just didn’t understand it. I decided to give “Dark Side of the Moon” a listen and I sat there strictly paying attention to every detail in the songs and it just wasn’t doing it for me. A few days later I was on the computer playing some games and decided to leave “Dark Side of the Moon” on in the background and when the CD came to a close without even realizing it I said to myself “What did I just listen to?” I wasn’t even truly listening to the music but for some reason it had this profound affect on me. From there on in I played that CD as if it were the only one I owned and by entering into the world of “Dark Side of the Moon” I was able to finally grasp the “Wish You Were Here” album and all of its beauty.

From that moment on I had found my passion, the one thing in life which mattered to me more than anything…