The fourteen years, eleven months, and three weeks, beforehand.

December 25th 2012 marks the ten year stretch of me playing guitar. I got my first guitar on Christmas 2002. So I felt like writing some sort of thing about how I got into music, the important parts of it and all those memories that no one else cares about.

The earliest music I can remember hearing was when we would drive up to my grand-parents cottage in Saint-Adolphe-D’Howard as a child. On those late Friday night drives, my father would usually be playing tapes of Harmonium, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel. My mom would play Celine Dion, Julien Clerc, Lara Fabian and Joe Dassin, but I remember those more for the weekend afternoons coming back from skiing. I know that even as a child I found that listening to the Celine Dion albums a couple times on the way home was painstaking. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her voice, it was more that I was getting sick of hearing it. My favorite song of hers has always been “To Love You More”. Of course I was exposed to Passe-Partout songs as a kid and various different campfire songs at all the summer camps I went to, but those never had any impact on me.

My paternal grandfather’s favourite singer was Joe Dassin and I remember hearing story from my grandmother how he cried when Dassin died. I wasn’t all that knowledge with whom Joe Dassin was as a child but I definitely heard his greatest hits on radio and in the car.

As a child, I had a Fisher Price tape player.

My dad had small collection of vinyls and tapes, and I started checking out his tapes in the mid-1990s. I remember coming across Cat Stevens and John Cougar (two people with animal names!) and Eurythmics and The Pretenders. Songs like “Don’t Get Me Wrong”. It was when my parents bought my sister Catherine and I each a Sony Walkman with radio (mine was blue, hers green), that those tapes came to be listened to on my own, often falling asleep to them, a habit I kept to this day. I recall that the original earphones that came with it were really good and comfortable but as we were kids, we did not take care of them and they eventually broke. Our parents bought us non-Sony replacements and I remember being disappointed by their quality, that they felt cheap in comparison.

Later, I received a Talkboy for Christmas one year, and started recording material from radio and interviewing people, wanting to be a radio DJ or something. [people used to shoo me away and tell me that I was annoying when I tried to interview them or include them in my recordings. my mother discouraged me from using it and told me to leave people alone. remembered this as I listened to a George Carlin interview during which he mentioned a similar hobby as a kid with a tape recorder and receiving encouragement and praise from adults and locals when he would interview them and make recordings]. With this toy I would also accidentally record over some of my dads tapes, something I was terrified about for days.

Music in school was really the thing I hated the most. I hated going to that class because I couldn’t sing and I had no imagination. During choral practice, my voice was buried and mixed with everyone else’s and I think that’s the only reason I never found out until much later that I really couldn’t sing. We had choral shows like all elementary schools, and it was never interesting to me. During music class, we had to learn to play the recorder, everyone in school was required to buy one. There were always the few kids in the class who’s parents had bought them the better brand; black ones with all the accessories to clean and polish it, in a nice box case. But like the majority, I had a plain beige one, in a felt bag and I didn’t care at all about it. Other instruments we often played were xylophones (almost as often as the recorder), and for full class orchestration we had cymbals, triangles, tambourines, rhythm sticks and vibraslaps. There was also a full drum kit in the room and a midi keyboard that the teacher used to always talk about; “if you buy a keyboard, buy one with midi on it”, which I could never understand what he meant by that.

Our music teacher Giles used to pick out a student to sit in on the drums once in a while. On one occasion, I was selected. That was a big deal. You only got to go up once to the drum. I can’t remember if I volunteered or if I was picked out, but when I finally got behind the drums and sat on the stool, I got stage freight. Everyone was staring at me and I was wide in the open. The class started playing their parts and I was too shy and clueless to find anything to play at all. I just kept staring at the others who were staring at me and I kept getting comments thrown at me like “just play anything”, “just do it”. The teacher quickly stopped the song and kicked me off the drum, in what seemed to be a very humiliating moment. He sat down behind the drums and blasted out this hard rock beat that had us all clapping for him.

Outside of school, I didn’t know much about actual music playing. The only person in my family that I knew played any instrument was my uncle Marc Julien who had a piano in his house, but I never saw him playing it. My cousin Eve Julien used to play it. The only other instrument I had ever seen outside of school and my recorder was an electric organ that my maternal grand-parents had in their basement. The basement was filled with so many things that made me spend the majority of my time there, exploring. My grandfathers extensive tool collection, his pipe collection, two large fridges, one filled with juices and drinks, the other filled with snacks, specifically Vachon cakes because he used to own canteen trucks. Bags of action figures and boxes of books and encyclopedias, a separate room full of suitcases from my grand-parents worldwide voyages, a ping pong table and my uncle Dan’s old miniature electric racing car track. The organ itself was only half working, or maybe I was just really that illiterate in music that I couldn’t get the second keyboard to ever omit a sound.

 

Either for Christmas of 1994 or Easter of 1995, my cousin Francois gave me a grey blow up guitar, which was the first of four that we had in our collection. I carried it around everywhere on the weekends and I remember having it in the van driving up to the cottage, I believe. We stopped at a gas station and I noticed that it was leaking air. I was very, very sad about it and I think that we just threw it out. Little did I know that we were soon to be getting three more inflatable electric guitars, though they never replaced my sentiments for the original one. I may have also gotten a purple one at one point.

Dark grey/silver was first
maybe a dark purple one second
white one third.

My sisters were part of the generation that got overwhelmed into the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls. All through out 1997 and 1998, Montreal was playing their songs on radio, TV, and shows were sold out. My sisters of course got their tapes, and when Spice World came out on VHS, I heard it playing in the background at least once a weekend. We also got a New Kids on the Block cup collection (I have no idea where from, maybe some gas station or cinema giveaway). We also had a third one, not pictured, that was tall and purple with a thick black stop perforated for a straw; a real summer beach cup.

In 1998 I came across some of the first music that I would seek out for myself. I had a Sony Dream Machine ICF-C120 clock radio, and used to have CKOI radio station wake me up every morning before school, and sometimes even set it for automatic shut-off at night so I could fall asleep to it. The few singles that influenced me the most during this time was Les Colocs’ “Tassez-vous de d’la”, Madona’s “Secret”, Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on the Sun”, Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” and The Offspring’s “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy). I was in fifth grade and I wanted The Offspring song really bad, so I asked one of my best friend at the time, Michael André Holuigue, what band played that song, and to his (un)knowledge he said “I think it’s Will Smith”. We were in fifth grade, and we were nerds. We knew nothing about music at all, so I as far as we knew, it was true. The only other musical encounter that Michael and I had would be a constant reference to someone fat (I think) that walked by us, he would sing Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”, even if I had never heard the song. And we’d often say “Can’t Touch This” to refer MC Hammer. That weekend of spring 1998, my mom and I went to the Fairview Mall to a record store, where two black guys were chilling in there. One average looking guy behind the counter and what looked to me at the time as a seven-foot tall bouncer looking fat man with his arms crossed, waiting by the wall of albums. I went up to the cashier and said “Do you have Will Smith?”, he pointed to me to go to the other guy, and he reached up to the top and gave me a cassette of “Big Willie Style”. I cannot imagine what those two guys must have been thinking about me when they sold a ten year old white nerd a rap tape. I went home and popped it in my dad’s stereo in the basement and started skipping through the songs hoping to find “Pretty Fly”. I realized quickly enough that it wasn’t on the tape. But somehow the music started growing on me, and I found myself listening to the tape many times over. How was I supposed to know that rap music was horrible for me? And I didn’t understand a single word of English anyway…

One of my dad’s co-workers gave him (for us) a CD-R filled with various computer things, notably a 3D Home design software (we used to call it 3D Home but research seems to be telling me that such a program does not exist). The CD also had two songs on it, one by The Wallflowers, another Smash Mouth’s Walkin’ In The Sun. But I didn’t actually get to hear these until years later because our home computer did not have a speaker. I only got to hear those songs in 2000 after my father bought a new family Gateway computer.

I still wanted to find who sang “Pretty Fly”, and by chance one day after school the song came on in the school bus. My bus driver was known for blasting hip songs all the time. She used to play Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman”, Manfred Mann’s “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”, The Temptations’ “My Girl”, Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, Real Joy’s “La danse d’Hélène” (on which the sex part was overdubbed by another verse), Ini Kamoze’s “Here Comes the Hotstepper”, Éric Lapointe’s “Nimporte quoi”, Les Frères à ch’val’s “Mon Voisin”, and many other classic rock tracks. Some kid was signing along to “Pretty Fly” and I asked him if he knew who sang it and said that his older brother listened to it and had the album. I asked him to make me a copy of the tape. I can’t remember if I gave him a tape or if he had one. On that weekend, he dropped by my parents’ house to drop off the dubbed tape of Americana. I remember asking him if he wanted any money for it and he said “sure”. I went to my room to get some coins and asked how much he wanted, $1, $2? He said give me $2. I quickly found out that the tape his brother dubbed had many songs overlapped and incomplete, I suppose the tape was too short to fit them all. But at least I was able to listen to that song that I had been searching for.

I already had a Sony Walkman by then, because I remember listening to Americana on our school trip to Quebec City. I remember sitting in the lobby or some bus station or hotel, or other places we were visiting, and all I wanted to do was listen to that tape. I kept having to take off my ear phones to hear what the guides/teachers were saying. And I remember that “Staring At The Sun” was cut.

this was earlier because: Bus wth rock music playing. Covered ears asked I don’t like rock music, what do you like and said Julien Clerc.

Big Wille Style came out in November 1997
Americana came out in November 1998

My sisters and I started a band in 1999 called Les Rocker’s. (I’m guessing spring 1999, It had to be after Big Willie Style came out because I named myself “Smit” and also after Pretty Fly for a White Guy came out because we played that song over the stereo). We had gotten real-size rubber blow up guitars in a package for Christmas from one of my cousins Francois Bourdon who worked for an event company. I had gotten a couple in the last years, notably a purple and black one and a silver one, before getting a white one that year, and my sisters two identical red ones. We only had three so my youngest sister used a tennis racket. At one point we used jumping balls and other boxes to create a drum set and we performed for my parents and visiting family, while lipsycing to The Offspring.

I think that I was “playing” drums on the bouncing balls when we covered Pretty Fly, and Liz and Cat were up front with the red guitars and makeshift microphones (possibly made up on using various taping equipment and cables I had collected over the years). I’m not sue that Marie took part in the cover band, and she may have just posed with us later on when we took the pictures. I don’t think that we had a name when we covered Pretty Fly when my grandmother Pierrette came to see us. I remember that when we were done playing, my grandmother asked us to play it again, to show her support. But after we did it a second time, I asked if they wanted us to do it again and my mother said it was enough already.

I think that the name Les Rocker’s was added to the back of the picture later on as kind of a joke, or maybe to document an inside joke that we were posing as “rockers”. We probably joked around the house with those nicknames occasionally and wrote them on the back of the picture for prosperity.

 

It was after I moved to New Jersey in October of 1999, that I started to get into music heavily. It took about a year for me to start getting into CDs. I spent most of 2000 listening to Z100 and the shit they fed the general public. It was the same songs every night; Britney Spears, N ‘Sync, Shaggy, The Jerky Boys. All this pop bullshit was getting to my head. I was forgetting the rock I was introduced to in the 90’s.

My sister Elisabeth had gotten a pink double deck cassette player with two attached mics. My sister Cat and I used to pretend like we were DJs and bring all the tapes from the house, all the radios and whatever electronic equipment from around us and set it up to look like we knew what we were doing. We used to record what we did, but I don’t think we ever enjoyed listening to ourselves. [wrote about this in my journal, first time we did it was on May 24, 2002]

Fanny’s birthday is March 6. Since the 6th of March was on a Monday in 2000, I would have met Jeremy the weekend immediately prior to that on Saturday, March 4th or Sunday, March 5th, 2000.

My best friend Jeremy Roux was responsible for getting me into rock once again, but he was also bringing me more rap. The first CD I ever had was one he burnt for me. We only had one radio that played CDs and it was my mom’s pool radio, but it didn’t play CD-Rs.

The first CD song listing (had at least 10 songs on it):

1. No Doubt – Don’t Speak (April 1996)
2. Aaliyah – Try Again (February 2000)
3. Jay-Z – Big Pimpin’ (April 2000)
4. Limp Bizkit – Break Stuff (April 2000)
5. Eminem – The Real Slim Shady (May 2000)
6. Metallica – I Disappear (May 2000)
7. DMX – Party Up (Up In Here) (June 2000)

Possible other songs on the CD

• No Doubt – Just a Girl (September 1995)
• Puff Daddy – I’ll Be Missing You (May 1997)
• 3 Doors Down – Kryptonite (January 2000)
• Dr. Dre – Forgot About Dre (January 2000)
• Red Hot Chili Peppers – Otherside (January 2000)
• Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication (June 2000)
• Melanie C – Never Be the Same Again (March 2000)
• Kid Rock – American Bad Ass (April 2000)
• Vitamin C – Graduation (Friends Forever) (June 2000)

In December 2000/January 2001 I was visiting my godparents and they told me that for Christmas and my birthday they were giving a combo gift portable compact disc player. They wanted to give me a compact disc to listen to with it, so that I could use it right away, and asked which band I wanted. I was a big fan of Eminem by then so I asked for one of his albums. They asked me for an alternative (under pretense that “What if they don’t have it”, but it was most likely because they knew of his negative reputation), and I told them The Offspring, hoping to finally get “Americana” (which I did not know its title at the time). They went out and later that night I got a really awesome JVC Portable CD Player XL-PG31 along with The Offspring’s latest album “Conspiracy Of One”. I put it on right away and scanned through the songs trying to find “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)”. Once again I couldn’t find it, and at first I was rather disappointed. But in less than a week, I was hooked on “Conspiracy Of One”. During the Christmas dinner at my maternal grandparents’, I rushed to finish my food just to go listen to it again in the TV room. “Original Prankster” was also playing on the radio in Montreal, Cool-FM, and I was really proud of myself for listening to something so cool and recent!

The first CD that I bought myself was Limp Bizkit’s “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water” and it was the start of my CD collection. 2001 was really the year where I got into a great deal of music. From Jeremy I was finding French rap (Disiz La Peste’s “Le poisson rouge” always made me laugh, Saïan Supa Crew’s “X-Raison” was one of my favorites, Fonky Family’s “Art 2 rue” was some serious shit, MC Solaar’s “Cinquième as” was my emotional-filled album, and I would occasionally listen to NTM, IAM and Akhenaton but was never a fan), and some French rock like Noir Désir. From K-Rock and ClickRadio I was discovering Saliva, Kid Rock, Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill. And from my friend Andy Palladino I was discovery Green Day, Blink 182, Ozzy Osbourne, Dream Theatre, that guy seemed like an encyclopedia of music to me. He had so many CDs in his room and he always knew of something else to suggest me. I remember one time, Andy and I were sitting in my dad’s van coming back from a Boy Scout’s meeting, and hearing Limp Bizkit’s Rollin’ on KROQ, followed by Rage Against the Machine’s How I Could Just Kill a Man. Since Rollin’ was released as a single in September 2001, and How I Could Just A Man was released as a single in October 2001, it must have been in October 2001.

On our second family computer (I had burnt the first one trying to install an ethernet card in the video card slot), our trusty Gateway, we didn’t have a CD burner. I would listen to music on ClickRadio and record in on a tape, probably using my Talkboy. We received a free CD for ClickRadio, probably when we bought the Gateway computer, or maybe with an AOL mailer disc (they used to send software updates by mail). https://web.archive.org/web/20000619193843/http://www.clickradio.com/music_stations.html

On this computer I started using Napster, and I think the first thing I ever downloaded was Eminem. I used to rely on Lyrics.com to provide me the “accurate” discography of the bands. I think I had every Limp Bizkit and Eminem songs ever released when I was using Napster. I taped the whole Marshal Mathers LP on a tape before going to visit my grandmother in Florida.

Before playing guitar, I used to want to be a DJ. This was mainly influenced by Limp Bizkit and Quarashi. I came up with the name DJ Hack.

When I got my own Gateway computer in 2001 (had to be 2001 because I had my own computer when I first got to the New York Military Academy), I was buying and burning CDs constantly. Making mixes for my family, and using Napster to find all I wanted. I was in a race with Jeremy at who would have the most mp3s of his computer, I think I reached nearly 8000, which was a lot back then for a 20GB hard drive. I took every CD from the house and all that my friends could let me borrow and ripped them into mp3s, just to see my collection growing. The thing that always took the most time was titling the songs properly, something Jeremy didn’t always take the time to do. For me it was every first letter of each word was capitalized, for him, only the first letter of the band name and song title. I also used to purchase CD cover layouts from BestBuy so I could print out the covers of the albums I was burning. This used to drain my ink cartridge. By this time Napster was gone, and after a quick run of Jnap and WinMX, Morpheus became the cool thing. However Morpheus went down rather quickly and Kazaa became THE program to use. Then later Kazaa+.

June/July 2003 in Paris, France: French néo-core (Team Nowhere: Pleymo, Watcha, Enhancer, Wunjo, AqME, Noisy Fate) and Noir Désir.

;

the New York Military Academy: slipknot

marie got a keyboard from carole et jaques

 

 

About getting into specific nu-metal and rap metal bands of the era.

Limp Bizkit (June 2000): This was one of the first bands Jeremy introduced me to and it was included on the CD-R he made for me in June 2000.

Korn: This may have been introduced to me by Andy, when I talked to him about the Family Values Tour and he lent me his 1998 CD. Although I feel like I already must have known both Limp Bizkit and Korn beforehand.

Kid Rock: I think that I discovered Kid Rock myself through ClickRadio; they had American Bad Ass. It may have also been on the CD that Jeremy made for me. Can’t be sure.

Godsmack: I think that I discovered Godsmack myself through ClickRadio; they had Bad Religion. I must have brought this to Jeremy’s attention because he became a big fan of theirs and was really into Awake. I prefered their self-titled album, which I asked for one Christmas. I later also got Awake. I purchased Faceless on CD when I was visiting Jeremy in France during the summer of 2003. Andy already knew Godsmack and told me about the trouble they had with a parental advisory.

Linkin Park:

Papa Roach:

POD:

Kittie:

Methods Of Mayhem: ClickRadio I think

Alien Ant Farm:

Crazy Town:

Disturbed:

Drowning Pool:

Orgy: family values

IncubusL family values? or did I know them from TV already?

Staind: family values or Jeremy?

Puddle Of Mudd: She Hates Me and Blurry on TV?

Rob Zombie:maybe from the End Of Days soundtrack? and Andy already had White Zombie CDs to let me borrow.

Rammstein: family values for sure
then when Mutter came out I was really excited. also saw them in xXx and I thought it was really cool.

Rage Against The Machine (late 2000): How I Could Just Kill A Man on WXRK 92.3 K-Rock while in my dad’s car with Andy. We would always listen to the station when my dad was driving. Also heard Rollin’ that same night I think. I also remember hearing Renegades Of Funk on the radio at the time.

Saliva (Spring 2001): Same with Saliva, I discovered them on my own listening to WXRK 92.3 K-Rock. Every night they would play more or less the same songs I think between 10 and 11, and I would wait just to heat Your Disease, which I really, really liked because it was very melodic. I got Jeremy into Saliva afterwards.

System Of A Down (August 2001): I remember discovering System Of A Down myself, hearing their new single Chop Suey! on the radio, probably on WXRK 92.3 K-Rock, and I also remember the evening when they announced they would premiere the new song. They were talking about playing this band’s new song later in the hour and I didn’t know who they were. The first time that I heard the song I wasn’t all that into it. I didn’t think they were bad but the music was a little too off-beat for me. But after hearing it more times it grew on me, and of course seeing the music video on TV. I probably downloaded and burned Toxicity to bring with me to military school. It’s my guess that Jeremy discovered them on his own at the same time (while I was away at military school), since they were getting a lot of airplay. Then when we met up one weekend, we discovered that we both really liked them and listened to Toxicity often. Andy already had their first album I believe.

Flaw (Fall 2001): Flaw was Jeremy. He and his family were over my parents’ house one evening and we were browsing the internet and listening to music when he said he wanted me to hear this new band Flaw that sounded like Linkin Park (which I never found the comparions to be accurate). They only had one single at the time, Payback, and we watched the music video on their website. I believe that I was a little dissapointed at first because I was expecting it to sound like Linkin Park, and of course it didn’t. But I must have gotten into them quickly because I ended up buying their CD Through The Eyes. I can’t recall if I downloaded it first though.

Marilyn Manson (Fall 2001): My parents had guests over one evening and I believe they may or may not have had kids. I was in and out of the living room (at the time it was next to the kitchen) and watching TV and the music video for The Nobodies came on. The song really hit something for me and I liked it immediately. I can’t recall exactly what happened, but I think that my dad came in and asked me to turn it off or change the channel. I think that maybe my sisters, or one of the guests’ kids were scared by it, or maybe it had to do with 9/11. I assume that I went on my computer and downloaded the song right away. Andy was already a fan and had several of his albums, so I probably ripped mp3s from him very soon afterwards. I also recall a weird vibe for me in the house at the time, and that was because I was already in military school, so it felt weird for me to be home on the weekends, knowing that I had to leave again. When I started playing guitar about a year later, Jeremy showed me how to play Sweet Dreams.

Quarashi (Spring 2002): I was suspended from military school and heard Stick ‘Em Up on TV and loved it. I remember trying to download the song, and others, before the album Jinx was out, and all of the files were corrupt or fake leaks with terrible static noise mid-way through. I ended up buying Jinx on CD later that year.

Deadsy (May 2002): I discovered Deadsy myself when I downloaded the new Family Values Tour 2001 CD on my sister Catherine’s computer, since my parents mother had confiscated mine. I loved their cover of Rush’s Tom Sawyer and I remember downloading their album right away, which came out that same month. Tom told me he had seen them play the year before at Family Values Tour.

Pleymo (Summer 2002): I think after Jeremy moved back to France, knew at least Tank Club when I was still in military school because I burned it on a mix CD and played it. I didn’t know the whole album then.

Slipknot (Fall 2002): Slipknot I discovered while in military school from my friend Wladika, probably in my 2002-2003 school year. He listened to death metal and heavier types of nu-metal bands, like Slipknot which, to me, compared to Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, was really heavy. He would listen to Iowa and I would try to get into it, but it was hard for me at first. Their single My Plague was the one that caught on with me because it had a melodic chorus. I then got my other friend from military school Vlad Adoniev into Slipknot and he came back one weekend with their self-titled album that he played all the time in the baracks.

Deftones (2003 June-July): Deftones was a band that I only discovered later on, in the summer of 2003, when I went to visit Jeremy in France. We both had only been playing guitar for a short time, him for maybe about a year more than I, and he had learned to play My Own Summer, and he showed me how to play it. That was the first time that I heard them. And I really liked the song, so I ended up buying Around The Fur.

Mushroomhead (2004): This was a band that my friend John Plungis got me into, probably in 2004. He had their album XX and would play it in his car while we drove around Edison and surrounding New Jersey. I caught on to Solitaire/Unraveling because it was very melodic. Then I got into the first three songs on the album, and quickly downloaded it and liked the whole release.

 

 

 

 

early 2004 Lacuna Coil “Heavens a lie” and Dimmu borgir “Progenies of The Great Apocalypse” spring 2004 Children of Bodom. Was just starting to get a glimpse of more extreme metal bands.

all the musical people in my family (marc and eve play piano), fania bass, piere guitar+keyboards and had an album, francois bass, dan acoustic guitar, marie had a keyboard, a flute, a guitar and sings. my grandpa had an organ in the basement. phil plays piano. cat later got a guitar

Macarena as a kid in school being forced to learn the dance and dance it in class.

 

Bruce Cockburn “Lovers In A Dangerous Time” at an LCBO store in Hawkesbury in July 10th 2013.

June or July 2015 watching SNL discovered a lot of early new wave bands, fell in love with Big Country. “In A Big Country” was amazing and I listened to it so often that night, and then the rest of their singles.