• before those MTV2 motherfuckers took over, there was a little thing called the box. The channel was all music, practically 24/7---unless you had the non-cable channel, cuz then at noon there would be miss cleo ads and chinese soap operas or something. the box was a source of endless childhood nostalgia. backstreet boys, nsync, mya, usher, bone thugs n harmony, spice girls, eminem...the list goes on! Stuff like the box need to come back. What happened to actually playing non-stop music videos, is that unpopular now or something?
• becoming a green day fan. i can honestly say that up until 2005, i didn't really listen to rock that i, honestly, thought was for white people (i was just out of sixth grade---cut me some slack). boulevard of broken dreams was really big that summer, and from there i loved green day, and that alone had me open to appreciating music acts from different genres.
• joining geekstinkbreath.net. this is a green day forum (named after a single on the band's fourth album, written about taking speed). on this forum i naturally learned a shit ton about green day from other people---including info about the band's early records, which i loved even more than (at the time) american idiot. though now i will say that american idiot is a pretty fucking good album. anyway, i also learned about other bands too, namely punk bands like the clash, ramones and sex pistols. i was once crazy addicted to this website, but stupid clique-y shit and overused irony and my lessening fanaticism for the band made me abandon the site for many months, eventually forgetting my account password. (oh! this website is also where i've read some of the best fanfiction ever written. if you ever check out the website, look up "no one knows" and "a ballad for beulah" in the stories archive.)
• jack.fm was the radio station i started listening to after discovering green day. some sixties, seventies, lots of eighties and nineties. here i became acquainted with the likes of nirvana and pink floyd (of course, didn't know it because jack doesn't have djs and i never knew what the hell i was listening to.
• the summer before eighth grade was seriously the most important summer of my life, regarding music. this was when i discovered the website last.fm. their global tags and artists radio did fucking wonders for my life. i cannot even convey how much music i was introduced to in that summer. the specials, big d and the kids table, atmosphere, the doors, the who, jimi hendrix, desmond dekker, reel big fish, jefferson airplane, janis joplin, basically all things ska, all things "classic rock" and some jazz and hip-hop sprinkled in here and there. man, i became a music lover. for the first time, i passionately loved a song that wasn't even by green day.
• the true oldies station is always playing on my radio, nearly 24/7. i heard about it on the internet somewhere and tuned in, and it was at first like "whoa! this music from the fifties!". but those fucking oldies man. the mccoys, the zombies, all those motown groups, that merseybeat shit, other british invasion shit. i just learned about american pop history, PERIOD. and my love for doo-wop is practically unequaled. i love this radio station so much.

for a while, around eighth grade and freshman year i had this big classic rock kick, "oh modern music sucks now the sixties were the best decade ever" blah blah blah, and i still believe this to a certain extent. but with age i've become much more open-minded about music. there's contemporary stuff out there for everyone, you just have to look for it. I try not to knock people's music tastes (at least not to their faces) because to each their own, right? But one band I just can't condone is Nickelback. Sorry, Nickelback fucking sucks. End of story.