My Musical Journey Through the 2000s

As I was born in 1989 and music has been a crucial part of my life since I was a baby (see my earlier post Momma's Mix-Tapes for more on that), I have now lived through two entire decades. The 1990s for me meant going to see Beck and the Flaming Lips a lot, watching music videos (on a TV set, even - imagine that!), and discovering my love of video game music. Kraftwerk's Computer World was one of my favorite albums as a little kid, I got my first personal boombox as a gift along with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time soundtrack by Koji Kondo. While my music-listening in the 90s was fueled by my parents' influence and interest in Japanese culture, the 2000s eventually presented a huge, dramatic change for me.

In the early 2000s, I was still wound up in primarily Japanese tunes, and even more so as my interest in Final Fantasy developed (Nobuo Uematsu's soundtrack to Final Fantasy IX even made it on my best albums of the decade list) and I discovered Japanese pop music, Gackt, specifically. I listened to such music almost exclusively up until around 2002 and 2003, when I took it upon myself to start listening to the radio and all of my parents' albums in full. This project began because I was writing a screenplay at the time and wanted to make a soundtrack to go along with my plot...and had no "Western" music to accompany it. I think one of the first CDs I bought myself was Alicia Keys' Songs in A Minor, and I was mad about Eminem up until the unspeakable disappointment that was/is Encore. Some of my most important discoveries around this time were The Doors, Danielle Dax, and The Strokes (yeah, it was my mom who had bought Is This It), plus I had read Blender's interview with my then-idol Elijah Wood that focused on his interest in music; this alone led me to hear The Stone Roses, Smashing Pumpkins, The White Stripes, and a load of others that he'd mentioned.

In December of 2004, I very fortuitously watched a live performance of The Killers on MTV (Hard Rock Live in Orlando). I went completely mad over the lovliness of Brandon Flowers how excellent they had sounded live (I'd heard "Somebody Told Me" as a single earlier that year and didn't care much for it), to the extent that Hot Fuss was one of my birthday presents and I joined The Killers Network message boards right away. It was on these message boards that, through looking up the bands that appeared in user signatures and avatars and following listening suggestions that opened up a brand-new world of music-listening. Most importantly, this is how I heard of The Libertines, The Fall, Joy Division, and remembered that I liked The Smiths (I was only familiar with "How Soon is Now" from The Wedding Singer...yes, really), all bands I would become obsessed with shortly after.

Later 2004 and early 2005 is when I began copying my mom's tapes to the computer, re-listening to music I hadn't listened to regularly from hearing it around the house or in the car as a kid, like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Adam and the Ants (totally coincidental that "&" is a constant in the three!). This is also when I started to get particularly mad about making my own mix playlists, which has continued on to this day. I started buying more and more music in early 2005 and this is also when I happened upon Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. For one reason or another, I entrusted myself with the task of listening to all of them. Today, I am about 70% of the way there, stopping to listen to "non-list" music and composing my own, and this list is the primary reason behind me first hearing a cavalcade of artists from Buddy Holly to Can. Since I did not have high-speed internet at the time, I relied on using Napster Free to stream these albums at a lower bitrate. Through their recommendations in the sidebar, depending on what I was checking out at the time, I found Television and Nico. The internet had officially become my primary tool for locating  music...though not much of it was new. 2006 was a depending of the pattern, punctured by my first gig in ages: Dirty Pretty Things with Scissors for Lefty at Amoeba Records in San Francisco (and another gig at Slim's immediately after).

2007: an intensely important event happens. I get high-speed internet - I get a Last.fm profile the very next day. I had been lusting after a Last.fm account ever since I had seen the recently-played widget in forum signatures all over the place and seen the wondrous tag radio in action at a friend's house. Chart-statistics, genre/theme tagging, and music music music? Count me in! It wasn't long before I was networking with like-minded music-listeners and discovering more bands, especially fabulous independent music. In March of 2008, I at last put up a compilation of my own independent music and set about tagging and promoting it. July 2008: enter A Future in Noise, this here music blog started originally as a place to hold my random thoughts about music and perhaps the occasional review, but then I started to make more and more connections on Last.fm and elsewhere and before I knew it, a whole team had formed (there's 8 of us now)! December 2008 was when AFIN was approached by MOG, which has been a lovely and quiet beneficial partnership, traffic-wise and also to keep me inspired to go on writing!

2008 was, to me, an explosion of fantastic new music. Perhaps it was because I was tuned in to music blogs, Last.fm, and word-of-mouth more than ever, but I noticed a definite turning-point here (see my original Top 10 Album Picks for 2008 post) where it seemed there was so much truly great new stuff to hear that it was impossible to listen to it all. I listened to more music in 2008 than I had ever before in my life - apart from perhaps this year! - plugging along with the Robert Dimery book, ending up on Rate Your Music to catalog all my listening, making connections, finally obtaining an iPod....and becoming sort of obsessed with thenewno2 and seeing Adam Green in concert.

2009 I taught a workshop on the History of Rock Music, which was quite fun and I was glad to be able to share my music discoveries with a class of students that were appreciative towards it. This is also when it has been most apparent that many of the "old ways" of the music industry are not necessarily valid; this is a changed atmosphere, there are new rules (hence my Keeping Watch on the Music Business articles). The way to promote music is to make connections and pitch to those who may listen to music similar to yours, not blindly blasting generic press releases all over the place and spamming comment boxes. The way to sell music is to make what is purchasable more exclusive and special, maybe throw in some extras for good measure. I like a physical copy as much as the next person, but I want it to be meaningfully packaged, and most importantly, REALLY GOOD!!! It seems everyone is strapped for cash, and the last thing I personally want to spend my money on is a regrettable album.

2009 has been my favorite year of music-listening in the 2000s. According to RYM, I've heard in the neighborhood of 1,000 singles/EPs/albums (my mind is reeling from this figure), and found several new-favorite-bands (The Horrors, Natural Snow Buildings, and the Manic Street Preachers - who interestingly each figured in this year's top three 2009 albums!). I also have come about expanding the AFIN universe to include Vulpiano Records (my label which will officially launch quite soon), our Music Videos Tumblr (nearly 200 followers already!), and VISIONBLURRED (a Manic Street Preachers / The Horrors links directory - wow, I really did go nuts over them, didn't I? especially after that Manics gig!).


A lot happened to me in the 2000s. I graduated. I got my first job. I'm moving out tomorrow. It's my 20th birthday in just a few days. I have a hard time explaining just why I love music...perhaps it's because the routines of normal life seem so much more fascinating when you've got a soundtrack going in your head to accompany all of it. I still think I'm the same person as ever, just with the intent of expanding my musical horizons as far as they will go, and finding every fantastic band and song that exists, as far as my lifetime permits. That may sound dramatic, but it's the truth. And I'm glad you all are reading along as it's happening.

Here's to a brand-new decade of musical fabulosity yet to come!