As I mentioned yesterday, I am pretty musically un-hip. A little background.

As many of you know, I grew up in a small town in Northwestern PA. It’s in the hills and pretty isolated. When I was growing up, I had access to about 3 radio stations: pop (top 40), classic rock, and country. Oh, and I guess there was an oldies AM station, too.

We didn’t get any stations from Pittsburgh or even Erie. If dad was driving the car, we usually listened to oldies. If mom was driving, country. They had a fair collection of albums…Fleetwood Mac, the Moody Blues, Alabama, Kenny Rogers, Neil Diamond…so what I listened to was what my parents listened to.

As you may have guessed from the title of this post, my case in point is Genesis. For all I knew, Genesis was always a three-piece pop act. And Then There Were Three was released in 1978, when I was four years old. I only know the name of this album because of Follow You, Follow Me, which might be my favorite Genesis song. I was semi-aware of Genesis througout my childhood, with hits like Misunderstanding, That’s All and Taking it All Too Hard, but they didn’t really make it completely into my consciousness until Invisible Touch in 1986, when they hit in a really big way. (I was twelve.)

And Peter Gabriel? I don’t think I even knew his name until Lloyd Dobbler held that boombox over his head to win back Diane Court. I was vaguely aware that there was a song called Solsbury Hill, which I liked, but I didn’t know who sang it. I certainly had no idea that there was any connection between him and the pop trio I knew as Genesis.

As a teenager, I was firmly entrenched in the popular music culture. I liked (or hated, as the case may be) what I heard on the radio. MTV didn’t make it to St. Marys Cable until 1988. College radio? No college to be found.

I didn’t listen to The Cure or Depeche Mode until they were way past their prime. I didn’t know bands like REM or the B-52s existed until they had radio hits. I thought Ice, Ice Baby was a cool song. (in my defense, I DID know he ripped off Queen.) I loved Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Poison. I owned copies of Gerardo’s Mo’Ritmo, Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl, and Tiffany’s self-titled debut. I can’t name a single Pixies song.

In the early 90s, I walked away from pop music almost entirely and listened to country. I enjoyed it–there was a lot of great songwriting coming out of Nashville during that time–but recognize that it wasn’t exactly hip.

In the past few years, since moving to Buffalo, I’ve greatly expanded my musical knowledge. With the help of Jen, I’ve come to love lots of cool Canadian music. I’ve discovered great local acts. Rand has brought dozens of hip indie bands and musicians to my attention.

Rand also recently sat me down and showed me some old Genesis concert footage, with PG in his various costumes. Ummm…

Ah well…maybe if I keep hanging around cool musically hip people I can cancel out the fact that I ever owned that Gerardo album. 😉