Sometime around 1980, 13 years old, purchased a used copy of Led Zeppelin I at my comic book store for one dollar. Soon thereafter picked up The Yes Album for the same price at the same place.
Early '80s, early teen years, spent listening to huge amounts of Led Zeppelin, Yes, Rush, and also stuff as ridiculous as Triumph.
Fall of 1984, age 17, thoroughly bored with the radio as I understood it, I was randomly flipping around the dial and hit the tail end of Sonic Youth's "She's in a Bad Mood" on Seattle's college station KCMU. Life forever changed instantly.
Later that year and into next (senior year of High School), purchased Bad Moon Rising, Let It Be by the Replacements, the first couple R.E.M. albums, and some lesser but still decent college rock like Rain Parade.
August of 1985 saw Sonic Youth at Gorilla Gardens in Seattle with Upright Citizens (German hardcore) and Green River opening. The crowd was mostly "death rock" (proto-goth) kids as that was the scene in Seattle at the time. First two bands were well received by crowd and I was blown away by Green River myself. Room full at start of SY set, which is basically Bad Moon Rising straight through including segues. Room empty except for about 5 people by the time they finished, my head burried in Thurston's monitor.
The rest of that summer included seeing shows by Tupelo Chain Sex, U-men, more Green River, and Malfunkshun.
Fall of 1985, went to Western Washington University in Bellingham. Immediately set out to get a radio show on KUGS FM and did, using the name Ricardo Wang I'd used in a garage band earlier that year for God knows what reason. Stayed up all night on the air playing noise rock, psychedelic stuff, and really just about everything (discovered Sun Ra around this time). Started smoking pot and taking copious amounts of LSD.
1986 - made friends with fellow KUGS dj Steve Turner who'd been the guitarist in Green River from before when I'd seen them. He hated the band at that point for being too "progressive". I used to borrow a lot of records from him for my radio show. Saw the first K tour in Bellingham with Screaming Trees, Girl Trouble, Beat Happening, and Mecca Normal. Lots of other amazing shows including everyone from Burning Spear to the Wipers. With all of the pot I was smoking, I got pretty heavy into undergroundish metal at the time too, especially Metallica who I continued to love until the boring black album. Not doing too well in school...
1987-1988 moved back to Seattle and started working for a living in a really lame print shop/art gallery in Pioneer Square. Really good time to be in Seattle musically though. Green River until they broke up, U-men until they broke up (including opening for Big Black!), Pere Ubu reunion tour, Walkabouts (a whole lot, they were one of my favorite local bands), Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth every tour except Sister (they played the Central Tavern weeks before I turned 21!), Live Skull, Butthole Surfers, Jesse Bernstein (I was doing my own live poetry thing at the time too and kept at that until the early '90s), Alice in Chains when they were actually a pretty decent club band (I never liked a single record they did), and of course Mudhoney after Green River broke up.
Towards the end of 1988 I went to see Skin Yard at Squid Row and there was this opening band Nirvana. There were like three people in the audience, me included. They were the most powerful underground metal band I'd ever heard, completely blew my mind. I decided I'd been rocked as hard as was possible and left before the headliners, saying to myself as I walked out the door, "That's the best band in the world, and nobody will ever know!"
End of '80s start of '90s: you know what happened in Seattle. I was at many shows before it all blew up and some afterward. My own tastes diversified and I saw people like Sun Ra and Allen Ginsberg live, though of course Mudhoney, Nirvana, Coffin Break and all the rest too. I got pretty heavy into Patti Smith and then Brian Eno records. I got married for the fist time to a girl I met at a Kildozer show (though she wasn't into them and had been dragged there by friends). Went with her to see the Grateful Dead and took way, way too many mushrooms leading to a major identity questioning trip while they played "Feel Like a Stranger". Continued doing the poetry thing, but usually with musician friends behind me, or weird cut up casette things I'd do.
1993 moved to Olympia to try to finish school at the Evergreen State College where they gave people degrees for the weird shit I did on my own. Immediately got on the air at KAOS FM where I would remain for ten years, now with a focus more on "experimental music" but really playing everything from Miles Davis to the Sun City Girls. Met Calvin Johnson through a friend who was sleeping with him after I'd been there about two months. Saw Bikini Kill, Huggy Bear, Azalia Snail, Godheadsilo, Irving Klaw Trio, Witchy Poo, Unwound, and really so many bands I couldn't begin to list them all. Then Cobain killed himself, and I formed my first active band That Stupid Club in honor of the news headlines (yes this was a bad thing to name your band in Olympia where many people had been his friends, live and learn). We played a sort of experimental post-grunge noise rock that never really connected with the indie rock scene of the day in Oly. Plus the name was instant animosity with some. My wife left me in 1995, which meant she left the band, but we became heavier for it. Also that year, I started the annual Olympia Experimental Music Festival, which is still going strong coming on #15.
Best divorce period live gig: Painkiller up in Seattle, without ear plugs!
Around 1997ish, after doing the vocalist in a rock group thing for a while to no acclaim, I decided to start a side project built primarily around my borrowed moog keyboard and other weird electronics. While walking through the parking lot of the night club Thekla, my foot accidentally kicked a discarded pine tree air freshener, and I said to myself, "Wow, a dead air freshener" which became the name of the band. I decided to make the cast of people in it non-fixed so we couldn't ever really "break up", and just get various friends I knew who were great musicians to play when they felt like it. 13 years later, and that's still pretty much the way it goes though now the members are spread over close to 300 miles.
I turned 30 that year, and Karp played my birthday party. I also became the Sunday night dj at Thekla spinning '80s music (ironically, mostly the new wave stuff I hated in the '80s, but the money and sex were really good...) I called myself DJ Dead Air as a spin off from Dead Air Fresheners and also because when I fucked up, which was a lot, I could claim it was all part of the act.
2002 was the year Thekla closed and I was suddenly washing dishes for a living in my '30s and it was also the year Unwound broke up which was essentially the last gasp of the legendary Olympia music scene. My girlfriend and I had quit drinking to pull our lives together and decided it was time to get the hell out of town, so we moved to Portland. Somehow we ended up in a house on Olympia Street and we ended up buying it from the landlords. There is no escape.
I've seen some great acts in Portland since moving here of course: Rocket from the Tombs, Melvins, Legendary Pink Dots, Sun City Girls (RIP!) with No Neck Blues Band opening, Sonic Youth a few times too. My wife and I were married in 2003 and played a Sun Ra song as part of the ceremony. Dead Air Fresheners continued to play and have gotten a surprising amount of local recognition we never got in Olympia.
I found KPSU in 2005 and convinced them to let me do my former late night KAOS show What's This Called? on Saturdays at noon. I'm still there.
Turned 40 in 2007 on stage with the Dead Air Fresheners:
photo here.