My LAME Back-pages

Here's an idea yanked from aairplane.

I've always been an unlikely music dork. I was jealous of all the pot-smoking kids in bands in high school 'cause I was too busy being in two orchestras and doing private viola study. As for history and bands and the history of Factory Records... I just don't have the kind of retentive mind to subscribe to the various canons of modern music history. I'm a Nintendo and cable TV kid, I don't like linear narratives unless the employ a good dickin'.

Childhood

1982 - I'm born and completely unaware of Hall & Oates, Joan Jett or The Go-Gos.
1985 - Receive Mini-Pops tape at Petro-Canada gas station. Play it in my Fisher-Price tape recorder. Decide it's poo. The indie snobbery begins here.
1986 - Obsessed with the Little Shop of Horrors motion picture OST.

Tweens!

1988 - Tragic NKOTB phase. I thought their music was fun and all the other 3rd graders were into it. I remember Tanya B had a sign that said "I WANT TO HAVE YOUR BABY JOE!". She had two babies by 18.
1991 - The older hipster sister of a family friend leaves her mix tape in my ghetto blaster. It's some DJ mix and I get my first taste of M/A/R/R/S, Public Enemy and The Eurhythmics. High on anti-Political Correctness my fucked-up bisexual closet case Catholic red headed step Dad tells me to "turn off that nigger music". So I found some headphones and listened the shit out of the tape. It was like porn for me. I'd like to thank him for that.
1993 - My Barenaked Ladies phase. Remember they were a big deal in Canada at the time. And frankly I thought they were cool because Steven Page looked like me. I start playing the Viola.

Teens!

1995 - Music explodes into my life. The whole Halifax cod-rock thing is happening with Eric's Trip/Elevator Through, Sloan, Superfriendz and other bands making fun fun power-pop. Lots of Seattle seeps into my life too. I start to go to indie-kid shows at the Bowl-o-Drome and Transit Union Hall.
1996 - I start collecting MP3s off IRC/FTP and playing them on "WinAmp". My collection exceeds a couple hundred megabytes. It's nuts. I start to get into obscure stuff, at the time, like The Black Dog, Aphex Twin, Square Pusher, other Warp records stuff.
1998 - I go to my first music festival, Edgefest '98, and experience marijuana in brownie form from Martin's older brother. It made the crap opener bands go by quicker. I survey the crowd and decide rather quickly that at this juncture in time Punk Rock is for retards in mini-vans.
1999 - The height of indie-dork snobbery. Listening to obscure bands because they're obscure. Grabbing obscure records because they are. I probably can't remember any of the bands. Going to lots of shows. Lots of suck-ass indiedork shows with boring bands.

20-Something Hipster Dork Phase

2001 - My first time on stage as NFOTXN playing silly IDM originals and remixes on my brother's Thinkpad. There are stoned kids on the couch loving it. Some dude calls out all my James Brown samples.
2002 - I move to Scotland for 7 months and decide to just listen to stuff I like. I get back into Beck with Sea Change, The Rapture and all that DFA shit. I dispose of more income than ever before on records. 120kg of records that I have to pay to ship home in 2003.
2003 - It's shit-together time. I get my job at Local Unionized and subsequently the Library. I believe this is the year that somebody awesome gave me their old iPod 1G.
2004 - Start playing in Squirrel Cage occasionally. This is a necessary outlet. Start doing mixes on my blog.
2005 - Do the first nfotxn.com podcasts. People seem to like them! Wow. It's neat to have that feedback.
2006 - Actually become a member of Squirrel Cage and subsequently re-name ourselves LASERFIST.
2007 - Gonna do some laptop stuff, mostly DJing as nfotxn. Cutting the LASERFIST record with Mike Ford. Listening to whatever the fuck my weird 21st century spaghetti network for friends, blogs and experiences throw at me.