Music into which I am

I know I had a recent post about concerts, but because music is important to me I decided to write a post about music in general.

As a kid most of what I listened to was kid's music like Raffi and Disney songs that I had on LPs. For those of you that don't remember, music used to come on dinner plate-sized disks made of vinyl. They were known as an LP because they rotated slower than a 45 or a 78. If that doesn't make sense, then you are not in my target market.

Anyway, my parents also had record collections into which I would occasionally delve. I recall my dad having some Beatles, several Chicago albums, the Beach Boys, Bee Gees, and a Burton Cummings album that I liked.

Around about 1983/84 I remember starting to get into watching the music video shows. The one I remember was called 'Video Hits.' Back in those days it was mostly new wave and 80s pop, but I didn't know any better. Maybe that is why I have always been such a big Devo fan.

During that same time, as those who were there know, one artist eclipsed all others on popularity; and that of course was the king of pop himself, David Hasselhoff. Just kidding, it was actually Michael Jackson. At school there were at least 20 kids running around in red faux-leather jackets that were covered in zippers. I never had one, but my best friend at the time, Chad Alexander (I wonder what ever happened to him), certainly did. I credit Michael Jackson for Weird Al Yankovik's meteoric rise to fame during the mid 1980s. It's profound to think that without MJ's 'Beat It,' we would never have had 'Eat It.'

By the time I reached the age of 11 or 12 I began to develop a rudimentary sense of the types of music I enjoyed. My family drove to Disneyland in the summer of 1989 and one of the tapes (a tape was like an LP, but a lot more messy) we took with us was some 'best of' Beach Boys compilation. I listened to it over and over and memorized all the songs, and even started learning some of them on the piano, because everyone wants to hear Beach Boys songs on the piano.

In Grade 7, one of my friends was selling a couple of portable CD players for really cheap. My family had never had a CD player, So I shelled over the $40 and shortly afterward my parents bought me 4 CDs:
-The Righteous Brothers, Unchained Melody
-The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour
-The Beach Boys, 20 Golden Greats
-The Monkeys, Best of the Monkeys
Having only 4 CDs, I listened to these 4 albums A LOT. I really liked the Beatles album, so I subsequently bought a couple of others including Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Rubber Soul.

As I went through Jr. High, my tastes in music began to be more heavily influenced by the radio and of course my peers. It was probably around 1991 or 1992 when I first began listening to popular music on the radio to any significant degree. For some reason it seems that there was a lot of dance music that was popular on the radio. Maybe I was just listening to the wrong stations. I just barely missed the whole 'hair' band era (I would have to re-discover it later). This was also the beginnings of the 'grunge' phase.

I first heard Evenflow by Pearl Jam and Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana on the radio. At first I don't think I thought too much of either of them, but then when I discovered Columbia House (10 CDs for 1 cent) I decided to get what I thought was 'cool,' which was a lot of this new Seattle-based music. It turns out I liked it, and I ended up listening to Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Soundgarden a lot during that early 90s period.

During my senior year in high school (94-95) I started getting into some of these new 'punk' bands like The Offspring and Green Day. At the same time though, I was actively discovering Classic Rock' for the first time. I went to a Rolling Stones concert in 1994 and quite enjoyed it. I also started to get into older stuff like Pink Floyd, Neil young, Led Zepplin, Eric Clapton, and Rush. At the time it difficult for me to explain to people what kinds of music I liked because it wasn't cool to like classic rock and punk and alternative grunge rock.

I got a guitar when I was 15 and this probably had a significant impact on the kinds of music I listened to. Some of the first stuff I tried learning was Nothing Else Matters by Metallica, Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chile Peppers, and Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne. I ended up getting really into Ozzy and Metallica both of whom I saw in concert in '96. This only complicated things because now I was into punk, grunge, classic rock, and metal.

For the last half of 1996 I lived in Pennsylvania with my aunt and uncle. My cousin Nathan was really into Punk and Hardcore at the time, and so I drifted in that direction; but at the same time I still stayed into everything else. It was during this time that I also got more into the band Bad Religion. Gregory Walter Graffin, Ph.D, who is the lead singer of Bad Religion, is well known for his large vocabulary and poignant commentary on social and political issues. I felt that I could identify with most of the issues he sang about, and so for a time they were my favorite band.

Needless to say, once I became an adult, I no longer had the ability to adapt to new things or know what was cool; so I am more or less still only into the music that was cool in the mid 1990s.

That's not entirely true. I have got more into Raffi again lately.

100 Random things about me...

There has been a lot of buzz lately about this '25 Random things about me' chain letter thing.
Because I'm almost exactly 4 times more interesting than other people, I am posting 100 random things about me:

1. I was born in Edmonton, Alberta
2. I have 3 laptop computers
3. I have 3 Palm PDAs
4. I have been to Mexico five times
5. My favorite color is invisible
6. I have attended six colleges/universities
7. I attended six elementary schools
8. I started dating my wife less than 2 months after she turned 18
9. I have been in approximately 7 car accidents (very few causing injury)
10. I was a private investigator in Calgary in 2003-2004
11. I have read Lord of the Rings 3 times
12. I have five suits
13. I have 4 pairs of Dr. Marten shoes/boots
14. I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was about 3 in about 1980
15. As a kid I watched Inspector Gadget every day at 4:00 PM
16. I broke my right big toe in 1993 and it still hasn't fully healed
17. I majored in vocal music for my first semester of college
18. I have camped in -30 degree weather more than once
19. I have two pairs of Converse All-Stars shoes
20. I have Hard Rock Cafe hats from Las Vegas, Cancun, San Francisco, and Rome
21. I lived in Pennsylvania from June to December of 1996
22. Several of my ancestors were polygamists
23. My paternal grandfather was my principal in grade 2
24. My school laptop has a 1920x1200 15.4" monitor
25. I do not have a 'land line' telephone
26. My kids were born in 2003 and 2005
27. I started playing the piano when I was 3
28. My Fender Stratocaster has replacement knobs
29. I have had two Blackberry phones in the past
30. The most hot dogs I've eaten for one meal was 7
31. I once rented an electric keyboard for an office party
32. I didn't like apple juice when I was a kid
33. I get dizzy really easily
34. I do not think that time travel is possible
35. I have never been arrested
36. I have not been skiing for about 13 years
37. I once threw a penny off the front of Hoover Dam
38. I have been to New York City twice
39. I have only been to California 3 times
40. I have 20/16 vision, whatever that means
41. I am 5'9.5" tall, and have been since I was 15
42. I am a Photoshop expert
43. I have never been to eastern Canada
44. My left ear is noticeably smaller than my right ear
45. The fastest I've gone on my bike is 44 mph (downhill)
46. I was once hit by a pickup truck whilst riding my bike
47. I am one of 3 Canadians in my MBA program
48. I have lived in 11 different cities/towns
49. I am the oldest of 6 kids
50. My favorite poem is The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
51. I recently applied for a grant for almost a million dollars
52. My iPod holds 160GB - 40GB more than my Dell Latitude D830
53. I haven't logged into my MySpace account for over a year
54. I have memorized most of the dialog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
55. I can solve a standard Rubik's Cube in 49 seconds
56. I have had my Hotmail account since 1996
57. I once got an email from Brian Baker, the guitarist from Bad Religion
58. I have never been golfing
59. I have not been to a psychiatrist in the last 10 years
60. I once fell into a duck pond in Vernon, British Columbia
61. I lived in Dolan Springs, Arizona for 5 months
62. I can do David Blaine's 'levitation' trick
63. I do not know how to shuffle cards
64. I cannot remember my own birth
65. I have a YouTube video with over 16,000 views
66. I went to a Jewel concert in 1996 without knowing who she was
67. I didn't vote in the 2008 US presidential election
68. I have my gmail account set to the 'Ninja' theme
69. I like cats way better than dogs
70. I am uncomfortable swimming in the ocean
71. Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch (nicht sehr gut)
72. I have not turned on my guitar amp since last summer
73. I eat at Subway usually at least once per week
74. I often take the bus/train to school
75. I am 31 years old
76. I almost always wear socks
77. In 7th grade, I had locker number 77
78. I prefer the heat to the cold
79. I like to program in BASIC
80. I change my Facebook status several times per day
81. I once got in trouble at a Boy Scout camp for shooting a metal pole with a 22
82. I have eleven Rubik's Cubes
83. I fried an egg on the sidewalk last summer (it tasted fine)
84. I have a Fender Stratocaster tattoo on my lower right calf
85. I was a big Pee Wee Herman fan when I was about 10
86. I have had about 18 different jobs so far
87. I have been to the following states: Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Georgia
88. I have been to the following provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan
89. I've been to the following Mexican states: Sonora, Nayarit, Jalisco, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo
90. I don't like mushrooms
91. My fashion sense became dormant sometime in high school
92. I have 48 applications on my phone right now
93. I have 42 applications on my main computer (other than pre-installed junk)
94. I prefer Linux to either Windows or Mac OS X
95. I like Scrabble and frequently score above 400
96. My favorite flavor of potato chips is Salt & Vinegar
97. I am a marketing intern for a medical device company
98. I like The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, and old Dilbert comics
99. I have never been to an NBA or NFL game
100. I love making lists

Not Part 2

So, I kind of lost interest in my autobiography. I'll do that later.


Right now I just wanted to say how much I like the theme song from the Gummi Bears cartoon. It's got a catchy tune, a sing-along chorus, and the real selling point - a key change from Bb to C in the middle of the second verse. Whoever wrote that song was a musical genius.

JJ Olsen - The Story

WARNING! LONG POST

My Dad was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada in 1955. His mom, my grandma, moved from England to marry my grandpa who had been a missionary in England back in about 1950. My dad grew up modestly in Edmonton. His father was a school principal and his mother was a secretary.

My mother was born in 1957 in Ottawa, but grew up mostly on a farm in southern Alberta; then moving into the small town of Cardston when she was in high school. She was the third of 8 children, which is how things went in those days.

My parents got engaged and married in the spring/summer of 1976 and I was born 11 months later. I am told that we lived in a small apartment when I was an infant, but I have no memory of this, and am therefore suspicious.

My earliest memories are of living in 'the ghetto' as it was affectionately known. The ghetto was Pleasantview, a low-rent townhouse complex near Southgate Centre in Edmonton. We lived in a three-bedroom/three-story unit with a single bathroom and an unfinished basement. Whilst there our family expanded to include three children.

In about 1980/81, my dad graduated from the University of Alberta Law School, and so naturally we upgraded to a 3-bedroom/3-story townhouse with an unfinished basement and -get this -two bathrooms! Aside from that, in my memory, the house was very similar to the one we'd left. While we lived there I gained two more sisters and about 4 years.

In 1985 My dad got transferred to Calgary, so we moved into a 3 bedroom three story duplex with 3 bathrooms and a finished basement (with two additional bedrooms). I'm not sure why, but for at least part of that time there were 4 of us all sleeping in one bedroom. This house also had a garage, which was a first for me. I enjoyed riding my bike in there, around and around in circles, all winter long. Ha ha!

The second year we lived in Calgary, I was 9 years old and in 4th grade. That was the first year that I attended an entire year of school. My mom had home schooled me for all or part of every previous year. I credit this abnormal educational experience with making me into the imbalanced genius that I am. Also, my youngest sister was born during this time.

In 1987 we moved to Cardston, where my mom is from, because my grandfather was terminally ill with a brain tumor. At least that's why I think we moved down there. My dad still worked in Calgary so he was gone 3 days a week for the 1 year that we lived there. My grandpa died in June of 88, and we moved back to Calgary that August.

So for 6th grade I found myself attending my 6th school (including home school). It took me a while to adjust, but I soon found my place as the class clown. I remember at one point declaring part of the classroom to be under British rule. I put up a Union Jack near my desk and then took it so far as to play 'God Save the Queen' on my little electric keyboard during a school assembly. There are other stories from that year, but I'll save them for some other time.

From 1989 to 1992 I went to Junior High. I attended the same school for 3 years in a row, which was (and still is) a record. During that time I went through the awkward adolescent stage (which is almost over as of 2009). I often had trouble making friends and fitting in, but I got through. It was during this time that my parents' marriage began to become obviously unstable. They were separated for occasional periods of time, and I always tried to cover this up to my friends.

As a stress reliever, I often played the piano for hours at a time. I had started playing the piano in about 1981 or 82. My Mom's sister Gale lived with us for a year back in Edmonton and had taught me a few things. I took various piano lessons here and there, but never anything too formal for too long. When I was a teenager, Gale (again staying with us, but for a shorter time) introduced me to the concept of 'chording.' Maybe it's actually called something else. Anyway, once I figured out how to play songs just by listening to them a few times, the piano became my escape from the humdrum of everyday life.

For grades 10 and 11, I attended Henry Wise Wood High School in Calgary. I was not an exceptional student, and I was a bad student in some classes. I loved architectural drafting class, but I didn't care much for anything else. I had never been much of an athlete. As a kid I'd done brief forays into soccer, baseball, and basketball; but nothing ever stuck. While at Wise Wood, I joined both the track and cross-country teams. I got to really enjoy both short and long distance running. During every other gym class we had the option to run about 5, 7, or 8 kms. I ran the max distance every single class and was one of only 2 to do so. I also did the 100m and long jump. I was never great at it, but I enjoyed it. Unfortunately I pulled a muscle pretty bad during a practice once, and never really got back into it.

For my last year of high school I transferred to Lord Beaverbrook High School. I don't really remember why I switched. I think I was just generally unhappy with school and wanted a change. I started out strong. I was taking calculus, physics, chemistry, English, math, and I think art as my one optional class. Anyway, I ended up dropping art, calculus and physics. I failed Chemistry and just barely passed math. By the middle of the year I realized that I needed more credits to graduate, so I signed up for two music classes. I took Concert Choir and Jazz Choir. Luckilly for me, this was something that I was good at and that I enjoyed. I had long since abandoned all hope of being 'cool,' so that wasn't really a problem either. As an extension of the choir classes, I ended up forming an quartet. I was the second tenor. We had just a couple of minor gigs, but it was tons of fun. A highlight for me was performing at Pike's Place in Seattle during a school trip.

In the summer of 1995 I just barely graduated from high school. I had scored in the 99th percentile on my ACT test, so I figured I was smart enough for university; but I wasn't sure at all what the future would hold for me. Would I get into politics? Would I become a competitive skier? Would I become a lion tamer? Stay tuned to find out!