Stadler, as we get older our taste and perceptions change. Tell me about your music history and how that has changed.
Also is your political views different from your youth?
Music: first record I ever got was Snoopy and the Red Baron on 7" single, but my parents were big into country (mom loved Elvis, dad loved Kris Kristofferson, both loved Big John Cash). Every Saturday my aunt would bring over a big stack of records, and we'd listen to country all night on my dad's kick ass Fisher sound system. I got into Billy Joel and the Bee Gees early, but most of my early listening was on WICC, an AM radio station in my area. Stuff like "Dream Weaver" from Gary Wright, "December, 1963" from Frankie Avalon, "Baker Street" from Gerry Rafferty. Then I got Kiss Alive II and things changed. My Mom got me the Beatles red and blue Capital albums and the Stones Hot Rocks when Lennon was shot (not sure why the Stones, but...) and I started to see that music was a process.
Then I heard Deepest Purple and all hell broke loose. From then it was Iommi, Malmsteen, Van Halen, Rhoades, and the NWOBHM. Maiden opening for Priest was my first real concert ever (not counting Sha Na Na). But then an odd thing happened: I saw a video of this weird band singing about cinema shows and fly's on windshields and stuff. I pretty much followed the metal and prog paths, and a bonus when they intertwined.
I followed that until I had a kid, and then things really changed. I watched her get so much joy from Hannah Montana and The Jonas Brothers, that I realized that there really WASN'T "good" or "bad" music, only music we liked. And it really opened my horizons. My iPod has four versions of Supper's Ready, and all of Taylor Swift's 1989. I have 150 Johnny Cash songs, and about the same number of Marillion songs. Justin Timberlake, and Demi Lovato.
Politics? I didn't get much into politics, until I took a history class at UConn, and he traced the Catholic Church through European history. Fascinating. But it really hit home when I started learning about my family (Polish, Czech, Russian) and how they tried to get out before the Revolution in Russia (some made it, some didn't) then again tried to get out around the late 1930's (some made it, some didn't; I lost several family members to Hitler's camps). I went to Germany in '98, and was literally stunned speechless by some of the things I saw (primarily at Dachau). I lost much of the conservative social things I had carried with me (Catholicism and northeast Republicanism can give you that) and started to identify with a more Libertarian point of view. Now, having a child (and a step grandson on the way) I can say that I've morphed to a more compassionate libertarian view. But my dad is what some would consider disabled (bad arthritis that hit right around the time I went to kindergarten) so I watched him work to the point of exhaustion for his family, even though he wanted nothing more than to lie in bed and not move. I have little patience for people that are easily offended or feel entitled or that they "deserve" something. I think, as Steve Hogarth says (well, he was being ironic, I'm not) "we get what we deserve". More specifically, I have evolved a lot, to the point that I don't think government should be in our personal lives at all. I'm pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, legalize pot (all drugs actually), etc.