It’s January 31, 2007 and I’m stuck in a musical rut. I enjoy pop music, but nothing in particular holds my interest for very long. Which, I suppose, is the nature of the pop music industry. When it’s good, it’s fun to listen to. When it’s not – and it almost always is not – it’s spirit-crushingly simplistic and boring. So I don’t listen to pop radio stations or watch MTV much anymore. Every now and then I’ll hear something that interests me. The most recent time this has happened was watching Justin Timberlake perform at the 2006 Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and my fiancée went and bought me the album for Christmas.
I do occasionally splurge on girly pop like Britney Spears (I have her first two albums) and Spice Girls (I saw them in concert), but it’s usually a phase I go through for a month every few years.
I hate the retro 80s movement. It’s stagnant and backwards-looking. Retro 80s pervades pop music these days; if it isn’t an 80s artist being replayed on the radio, it’s a new artist trying desperately to sound 80s. Also, my 80s were different than anyone else that I know – I was living in the third world, waiting for Reagan to invade whatever country I was living in at the time. Am I the only one who remembers how bad the 80s sucked?
My cultural heritage is heavy metal. The reason I got into metal was partly because of the technical demands of the music – it’s certainly more challenging than anything played by, say, Simple Plan. Just watch them try to play “22 Acacia Avenue” by Iron Maiden, and weep at the tragedy of it. I’ve tried getting into the new metal that’s out there, with some minor success, but I find it hard to keep track of. I’m just not as into it as I used to be.
So I find myself pretty freakin’ bored with popular music. Where do I go from here? I decided I’d start exploring classical music.
Ok! Now that I’ve decided to get into it, where do I start? Truth is, I don’t know. One of the big things holding me back from getting into classical music is that very question. I don’t know where to start. Do I get into it chronologically? Alphabetically? I don’t know much about the sub-genres of classical music, so I don’t know really where a good starting point is.
Well, I’m a metalhead, so let’s start with… Yngwie Malmsteen.
Yngwie is one of the gods of heavy metal guitar. The man can wail. He’s also a trained classical musician – I recall on one of his later albums he and the band break out the string instruments and do some sort of string quartet piece before rockin’ out with electric guitars again. His early stuff is particularly awesome – Black Star still sends chills into my brain.
Ok, minor delay while I listen to Rising Force… and I’m back!
Yngwie has said that his main influence is Italian composer Nicolò Paganini. So, let’s start with him!
