l i l e p h y t e


March 25th, 19:21 | A brief history of my musical taste in four and a half exes

Going through and archiving entries from my old diary, something I meant to do a long time ago. Naturally, I can't help but read through as well. I remember back then checking while reading, every few months, to see if my "voice" had changed in my writing, if I had grown, or at least changed in my manner, and topics and such. I've got the first four months down now, and compared to how I write, say, now, it is different. Very much so. I can't really explain it. The change is as much in the way I wrote as in what I wrote about. For one thing, my stories revolve far less around the guy I'm dating (I think?). The other is in the tone of writing itself. In my really early entries, I wrote almost as though I were seeking approval from some invisible reader. As though my journal entries were being marked. Very strange.

Something that makes me a little sad is the freedom I wrote with though. Real names. Real places. I wrote with wild abandon back then, in terms of people. I can't even imagine being that free, now, in my naming of people. Ah, to be new to this "internet journalling" gig and be unwary again.

Another interesting trend I noticed was that you can tell when there was a break or change in my boyfriend coming up by paying attention to the music I was listening to predominantly. No, seriously. I shit you not. If you've had a brief glance through my exes, I can relate that to major musical "revolutions" in my taste. Behold:

    Pre-MusicianEx, I listened to mostly classical, opera and showtunes. I was finding my own in Veruca Salt and other girly stuff that chan listened to (Jann Arden and such), but hadn't really found anything quite mine yet.

    Upon making his acquaintance, he totally broke me into what I call "garage rock": Weezer, old-school Sloan, Pavement, all that good stuff. This was also the start of my slide into "interesting/underground" stuff, with Figdish, Primus, and eventually Neutral Milk Hotel and Godspeed You Black Emperor! through his friend, who, incidentally, was responsible for my induction to the temple of Trent (in the form of NIN).

    Anyway, after that, with my fascination in all things mysterious and MathieEx-related, started my chase after industrial and other hard-rock-ish stuff. Lots of angry, angsty music here, the most notable ones being Ohgr, Stabbing Westward, and also when I rediscovered The Cure. To his credit, my love of some of the older Smashing Pumpkins stuff was entirely due to MathieEx. Say what you will, but some of his taste was fucking great. So, this trend carried through till about December of my frosh year.

    Since we were taking Lindy Hop lessons together, SpinelessEx, kind of created a minor revival for swing music, which re-awoke my love of jazz. Around this time though, I also started on the Angry Girl Rock (starting with Letters to Cleo) and consequently (through the medium of Save Ferris) the punk. This was helped in great part by Boy's influence (those punk covers of oldies are frickin' addictive). We were but friends back then though.

    In summary, though, during my rebound phase, my musical tastes were kind of all over the place. Sometime around StalkerEx I seriously got into Bjork. ("Army of Me" and "5 Years" in particular come to mind.) I had pretty much crystallized on the softer, poppier punk and girl-rock, though, along with some jazz by the time I hit it off with RecentEx.

    He was a devoted U2 fan (I can't stand them for some reason), but also heavily into the Gershwin-era jazz, and Tea Party. So that took off (a great benefit to my bellydancing, I'm sure, all that Tea Party), along with Classic-style rock. Good stuff.

    Which brings us to today, where we see lilephyte with a fuckload more punk than anything else in her playlists, but still a goodly portion of other types of music too. Lilephyte who is with Boy, who loves punk. (And who is also the reason I got into the sappy French pop, for the record.)


So there we have it. Good times. This isn't to say I never to listen to anything else. I mean, I spent most of yesterday night on a "Bring back the 80s!" spree (seeing me shakin' it to punk covers of "Baby Got Back" and "Ice, Ice Baby" about ties with me lip-synching to Pat Benatar for the most ridiculous image you can pull out of the suburbs). I'll always be forever finding and exploring random music. It's just about following the major trends. If you ask me what I listen to, my first answer is usually "pretty much everything". My second one is almost always "mostly punk". Yoi?

I hope to get the rest of my old journal archived by the end of the week. As much as I like having it available... that Me doesn't really exist anymore. And I hate to think I'm 'causing problems for Andrew, so I expect she'll disappear soon. Soon.


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