If Only I Had It Earlier

(Image from Discogs.)

People often talk about how great older siblings are, how they guide your through life's difficulties & give you a head start when it comes to cool stuff, like music.  But though I have five - five! - older siblings, I got very little guidance from them about life.  & what's more, the music they liked was basically what they heard on the radio, which I too could hear on the radio, & there was very little revelation in their tastes.

But what if they had been cooler?  What if they had been listening to punk, if they had liked bands like the Velvets & the Stooges, if they had gone deeper with psych or funk or prog?  What would it have looked like for one of my brothers - all of whom consider themselves music lovers - to give me a Can record & tell me to listen to it?  It never happened.

Sometimes I daydream about it, though, about one of them caring enough to not receive music passively through the radio.  I imagine one of them noticing something about me, about what I was going through, & telling me, at the age of fifteen, you know what you need?  Check out this record by the Modern Lovers.

It seems to me that I discovered Jonathan Richman by accident.  Sometime in 1992 - when I was twenty-four - I checked out the Rhino best of comp from the Fine Arts Library at UT - & while it focuses mostly on Richman's more positive, often childlike side, it does have three tunes from that first record.  Which intrigued me.

& maybe I sought it out immediately?  I don't remember.  But I do know once I got it, I thought to myself, "Holy fuck, I could've used this when I was fifteen."  I was enamored of the record that on my first radio show, back in 1994, I began every show with the song "Girlfriend."  A girlfriend, yeah, that's something that I could understand.

In many cases, I've approached things way later than anyone else.  I have friends who had cool brothers who shared music with them.  I didn't.  I had to rely on those friends, & on my own excursions to the record store, to discover music that would ultimately mean the world to me.  Even if I got there too late.