Bassnectar on his history, posted via bassnectar.net A quick run down of my musical life: When I was in junior high I began discovering music that struck me, as opposed to music that felt familiar (like my parent's music). This was mostly Metallica (the first song I heard of theirs was "Enter Sandman", so this was after they had already become "mainstream" and blown up), NWA (which I memorized completely verbatim), and Nirvana (again my introduction to them was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" their 'breakout single' which all hardcore Nirvana fans I am sure despised and griped about) but for me this music was raw, pure, and extremely riveting. I gravitated towards anything heavy, and fell headfirst into the local underground scene, which was full of freaks, lunatics, and overall playful, strange, creative people. I begged my parents for a crappy guitar, and after three quick lessons I formed a band with my best friend, and we set out to lose ourselves in heavy metal. ...show more

Bassnectar on his history, posted via bassnectar.net A quick run down of my musical life: When I was in junior high I began discovering music that struck me, as opposed to music that felt familiar (like my parent's music). This was mostly Metallica (the first song I heard of theirs was "Enter Sandman", so this was after they had already become "mainstream" and blown up), NWA (which I memorized completely verbatim), and Nirvana (again my introduction to them was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" their 'breakout single' which all hardcore Nirvana fans I am sure despised and griped about) but for me this music was raw, pure, and extremely riveting. I gravitated towards anything heavy, and fell headfirst into the local underground scene, which was full of freaks, lunatics, and overall playful, strange, creative people. I begged my parents for a crappy guitar, and after three quick lessons I formed a band with my best friend, and we set out to lose ourselves in heavy metal.

To this day I do not know THE SLIGHTEST musical theory, I don't understand notes or chords or anything like that... I taught myself to play by basically remixing the songs I loved best, or combining riffs from different songs. Or I would take a hook (like the opening guitar in Black Sabbath's "Ironman") and play it at various alternate speeds, trying to change up the feel but maintain the essence. About this time, my Uncle Joe (who has always been a bohemian world traveller) started bringing me hand drums and teaching me beats.

He would leave me with cassette tapes of brazilian Samba and Batucada beats. As I learned to play the drum, my ability to keep time with my band mates improved significantly. The music I was into became progressively more and more hardcore, and as I began turning away from Religion and mainstream American culture, my friends and I descended into an obsession with the darkest, heaviest music possible. Death metal, Black metal, doom, grindcore... ...show less