[Rob Instigator]

My Life With Music - Part I
by Roberto Instigator

In all the years that I have been buying music I have progressed in a steady direction. I have no idea where I am headed with it, or whether I will one day stop and find myself with no urge to purchase anything new. I hope that never happens. What I am sure of is that there is an almost unbroken chain of bands that can be traced easily, with minor deviations into what were, at the time, curious new sounds or groups.
Let me start at the beginning. Besides the many kiddie records that were bought for me by my folks, I grew up listening to the music of my parents. My mother had what could best be called a love of bland, innocuous music. Not that it wasn’t good, but it was inoffensive and middle-of-the-road She grew up with eight older brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico who handed down their records and singles as they got married or “outgrew” collecting music. Her favorites were acts like Paul Anka or The Platters. Of course she also listened to the local Puerto Rican Salsa and Merengue music.
The earliest memories I have are of Saturday mornings in Puerto Rico listening to my mom’s vacuum drowning out whatever BeeGee’s, or Tony Croato (Puerto Rican folk singer famous for his nationalistic cries for Puerto Rican independence, and soft folk ballads) record was on the turntable. My parents had a lot of music. My dad loved music too but he was more into the Puerto Rican stuff than the pop stuff my mom liked. My mom thinks the Beatle’s best work was done before Revolver. Dig?
Those early days of music blaring from my parent’s stereo ingrained music into me. I can sincerely say that I owe my love of music (as well as books, and arguing) to my parents. When we moved to Houston, Texas in 1981 my folks had to leave behind many of their records. In essence they started from scratch. Me too.


The first of the milestones in my love of music occurred just a few months after moving to the United States. We were living in a brand new apartment complex called Brookstone. The place was so new that half of the buildings had not yet been finished. Around August of 1982 a friend of ours came running up to us from his apartment. Xavier, my brother, and I were busy trying to pull up a sewer drain so we could see what was inside. This little kid came over and started talking about some guy who had gone into his apartment and put something on the television. It turned out to be a cable box, the kind that no one has anymore. It consisted of a brown and black unit with rows of black buttons. We had no idea what Cable Television was, but it seemed that they were going to install these in all the apartments. This little kid told us there was music on the TV. We ran home hoping to see the new Cable. You gotta realize that at this point my little brother and I knew very little English, and were, respectively, 6 and 8 years old.
Of course the cable-man had not yet gotten to our apartment, but within the week we had our very own cable box. The first thing I discovered was MTV. This was back when MTV used actual disc jockeys they had hired from across the nation to host as VJ’s. In other words, these guys knew how to talk about music and knew of the musicians without having to be fed every single line like the idiot talking dolls they have now. There were five Video Jockeys: J.J. Johnson, the only black on-air personality on MTV for years and the one VJ I found funny most often, who looked like the oldest of the bunch, Nina Blackwood, a bleach blonde who was stuck doing mostly late-night shifts, Mark Goodman, a guy who looked kind of like Juan Epstein’s older brother and seemed to know the most about music and the bands, Alan Hunter, a skinny blonde guy that was the original host for the first heavy metal segment on MTV, “Hard 30”, and Martha Quinn, the VJ who lasted the longest on MTV, and the one I had a crush on.
These five VJ’s were IT. They had to take long shifts on a sparse set, just talking about the bands and music, and introducing the videos. I feel MTV doesn’t give enough credit to these five dudes who put MTV on the map. Many other shows had music videos through the years, Night Flight and Friday Night Videos for example, but those lacked the personalities of these 5 guys. I would sit and watch the videos one after another.
The earliest videos I remember include The Buggles “Video Killed The Radio Star,” which happened to be the very first video aired on MTV. I loved that video. The song kicked ass and seemed to me very strange with its weird sounds and new wave tone. Another one I remember vividly from the first few months of watching was the Art of Noise video for “Fish Heads.” That video actually creeped me out, because those damn fish heads were so dirty and stank-looking.
The videos they showed in that first year on the air were a mix of hard rock, classic rock, disco, and new wave clips. I would watch them whenever I managed to get control of the Cable box. It was the best. There was always a new video and they were all so strange. From Missing Person’s and their whitewashed clip of “Words” to The Talking Heads and their fantastic videos for “Burning Down the House” and “Once in a Lifetime,” it was a time of inventiveness. Bands who wanted to make a video had little choice since the record labels were not going to lay down a lot of cash on an untested medium. It was almost naïve, since videos were, and always have been, intended as commercials for the albums, and there was very little attempt at creating “art.” The best they could hope for was that it showed the band in a favorable light and somehow reflected the theme of the song.


At that time I was just soaking it all in, but I was drawn to the new wave and hard rock videos the most. I sucked up the music for a couple of years straight from the MTV and without buying any actual recordings. So, when my bro and I found ourselves at the Wal-Mart with our dad, and heard him ask if we wanted to buy a cassette, I first felt that giddy rush of possibilities and choices that I love to this day. I looked for one of the bands I had heard on MTV. After browsing for a bit, I grabbed the first Def Leppard album, “On Through The Night,” even though I had never heard any of the songs on it. At that age, 10, I couldn’t tell the difference between that album and “Pyromania,” which was the new one at the time and the one which contained the songs I HAD heard. Xavier had grabbed Twisted Sister’s “Stay Hungry,” mostly because Dee Snider looked so damn crazy (to an eight and ten year old) holding that giant, meat-covered bone and dressed in hot pink and black tatters. This was my second musical epiphany. I realized I could buy music and listen to it for myself whenever I felt like. No more waiting for the videos!
When we got home I was disappointed by my purchase. I didn’t realize why it sounded so different from the “Rock of Ages” and “Photograph” I had heard on MTV. (poor production, derivative riffs, monotonous singing yell) I still listened to it every day though. It was MINE. My brother seemed to have gotten the better deal. His cassette contained “I Wanna Rock” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” I had heard these songs and liked them because I understood their simple message and they Rawked. I can say honestly that neither of these albums is an exemplary choice or worthy of pride, but they were the first two albums we had picked ourselves and we listened to them like they were “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and “Daydream Nation” combined. They constituted my tentative first steps into what would become my main music for the next few years, dumb Heavy Metal, and also set in motion my love for music collecting. By that time, my family had moved to a rented house a few blocks away from our first apartment.