Transcript
Cori Fox: welcome to the podcast today we are talking about our musical backgrounds we've got Carol, we've got Susan, we've got Cori. Guys, who wants to go first?
Susan: You. You go first.
Cori Fox: Me? Oh shoot! I wasn't even prepared!
Susan: you're late You're leading this crazy train.
Cori Fox: My mom... My mom was kind of a hippie, although she'd probably cringe at me saying that, but she was, and she played guitar and she had the long hair and all, you know, everything, peace, love, protests, all that stuff. but
Cori Fox: my earliest memories were of my mom playing guitar and she'd play a couple of songs to lull me to sleep and i still love these songs they're still so close to my heart and i sing them to my kid when I put her to bed so that's how I started with my love for music but then it you know it evolves over time she'd play Elton John for me and of course Elton John he's one of my core memories But...
Cori Fox: High school is really where I started to take off. Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine. Nine Inch Nails, Tool, all those early 90s bands are in my DNA.
Cori Fox: And. I think. All the music that I love is just kind of an expression. of My love for those bands. And it just kind of perpetuates over time.
Cori Fox: After high school, there were two. boys that introduced me to a whole lot of music and I took that. and here we are now fugazi was one of them and lots of indie rock built to spill
Cori Fox: I really have to credit those guys for their influence on me, but. i took over after. We split. And here we are today. Now we've got a podcast talking about music with my friends.
Cori Fox: How cool is this?
Susan: It's awesome.
Carol: All right. Who knew?
Cori Fox: Yeah. i know I know.
Carol: I actually have a lot of parallels too.
Cori Fox: Let's hear it, Carol.
Carol: So... My mom... Had the long hair. played guitar. She... told me once that she probably would have been a hippie but then she went the religious route instead so There's that.
Carol: But she also played accordion, which I loved to play with when I was a kid, all the little buttons and stuff, you know.
Cori Fox: ob
Carol: which actually I have it now, so.
Cori Fox: Do you play it?
Carol: I want to learn
Cori Fox: Hmm.
Carol: but i just got it last year when she was moving out of her house so I was like mom, I want that.
Cori Fox: Yeah.
Carol: It's... Just as a little side note. She got it in the 50s from somebody that was a door -to -door salesman. for these little it's a smaller type accordion for like a teenager or something so and it's blue sparkly it's beautiful So anyways, obviously my mom was into music and then I have a brother who's three years older than me. So...
Carol: He was playing trumpet in school. When I got to fourth grade, I started playing flute. So we both went all the way up through high school in the band. And he also introduced me to David Bowie and the Stones.
Carol: and Stuff like that. So I had that influence of him. and Then... Cori, you can probably relate to this too. Did you listen to KROQ?
Cori Fox: Oh yeah.
Carol: Yeah. And Rodney on the rock. So. I learned a lot of cool music when I was in high school, like Love and Rockets and The Cult. I remember, I can still remember the first time I heard the songs by them on the radio when he was introducing them. and
Carol: junior high it was probably the last year junior high or first year of high school I finally went to my first concert so that was in 1985 and I saw Tears for Fears and so that's when the whole concert thing went off and in 1986. my boyfriend at the time. was He worked at a record store in Anaheim. Anaheim Hills.
Carol: and Yeah, so he introduced me to so much music and he had like this huge record collection. And so I attribute a lot of my taste of. learning all kinds of new stuff from him, just like with you. and Yeah.
Carol: it kind of takes over your life, you know.
Cori Fox: Oh, oh yeah. ah What a great time to have seen Tears for Fears.
Susan: Right.
Carol: Yeah! Yeah. it was It was awesome. We we went to the Hollywood Palladium.
Susan: wow
Carol: Me and like four of my girlfriends from school. and Got a ride up there from some I don't even know who drove but I think we got a ride from somebody's parents All the way up to Hollywood.
Cori Fox: you
Carol: but
Cori Fox: That's a long drive.
Carol: Yeah, and a different time, you know, you can drop off your teenage daughters have fun See you later.
Susan: For sure.
Cori Fox: Yeah in Hollywood.
Carol: In Hollywood.
Cori Fox: Yeah. not Not today, no way would I drop my teenage son. Kid off.
Carol: Right.
Susan: Yeah, human trafficking wasn't even a thing that...
Carol: Right.
Susan: You're worried about.
Carol: Or we just didn't hear about it, you know?
Susan: Yes.
Cori Fox: Right.
Cori Fox: Right. I forgot.
Carol: But yeah.
Cori Fox: I forgot about you made me think see this is why I wanted you guys to go first is because I forgot that I was in band. Band was highly influential in high school as in marching band.
Carol: Uh -huh.
Cori Fox: Just being a part of that unit. And the sound and the percussion, this is why I love percussion. Oh, man. And just how it rattles through your body and you're just one cohesive unit just creating something beautiful together. Oh.
Cori Fox: That was really what it is.
Susan: You know... As a punk rock kid in the 80s, I always made fun of those kids in marching band, but of course my son was on drumline and marching band, and I credit that with, like, he clearly didn't get his organizational skills from me.
Cori Fox: Mm hmm. Yeah, I know.
Susan: He got it from marching band, but, like...
Cori Fox: Hmm. Yeah.
Susan: I just, I was so impressed with, like you said, it's it's a hundred people out there moving like one unit. It's just absolutely amazing.
Cori Fox: Yeah. It is.
Carol: Yeah.
Susan: And I still go to like the DCIs.
Cori Fox: it is
Susan: finals and stuff we just went a couple of years ago at the DCI i finals up here it was amazing I love it it's my favorite thing to do
Carol: Nice.
Cori Fox: I would go with you I would love to see that.
Susan: Oh.
Cori Fox: It's been so long.
Susan: We'll have to go sometime.
Cori Fox: Yeah, yeah.
Susan: It's amazing. oh i miss it like the high school i can hear the high school down the street sometimes i can hear their drums practicing and i'm like oh
Cori Fox: I love that sound.
Carol: Oh wow.
Susan: It's probably weird for a 56 year old woman to just wander in to watch a. marching band practice when they know absolutely nobody there. I'm not sure about the legality of that, but I miss it so much. I just miss watching it.
Susan: What did you play in Marching Band, Cori?
Cori Fox: In marching band, I was on the flag line. And then during concert season, I played trumpet.
Susan: oh wow
Carol: Oh, that's awesome. Awesome.
Cori Fox: Yeah. So I got the best of both worlds. Although I will say. Those trumpet players were not welcoming of me. They did not like the flagline chick coming in.
Susan: Oh, I bet.
Cori Fox: Who's this chick? You know, which was so I mean, i was I was such a shy kid. So me entering that world of. what our band instructor called the... he called the trumpet line the prima donnas i mean they He was kind of a jerk, but yeah.
Cori Fox: So it made high school. I don't you know, my sister and brother. dropped out of high school before me. Maybe that was my fate had I not had marching band.
Carol: well
Cori Fox: Yeah.
Susan: Yeah, it's kind of amazing.
Carol: that's cool
Cori Fox: So enough about me. What about you, Susan?
Susan: Well, my experience is not like any of yours, really. but So i was I was a menopause baby. So my mother was born in 1930 and had a whole ass family before I was even born.
Cori Fox: Wow!
Susan: So my siblings were 18 to 23 years older than me. so And already moved out and on their own.
Cori Fox: wow
Susan: But my mother, had she not become pregnant at 17 or whatever, who was going to be a rising torch singer, right? She had this beautiful soprano voice. And her brother, who was five years younger, he actually was on a radio show. when He was in his late teens, early 20s. And this is in like, you know.
Susan: late 40s you know so radio was the thing But he was a ah wonderful tenor singer, and they just there's music throughout my entire life. i can't I'm sure my mother sang me these operettas.
Susan: I still have a thing when I hear Ave Maria. It just stops me dead in my tracks.
Carol: oh
Susan: So she must have sung that to me when I was a child. but
Cori Fox: mm -hmm
Susan: And my whole family sings. So, like, before the elders start. started dying off when the whole family used to converge probably it hasn't been since maybe 1990 that the whole family could get together for like a holiday but we would sing like five part chorus Christmas carols it was so much fun it was just amazing
Cori Fox: Wow.
Carol: Wow. That's cool.
Susan: And then we have my mother played the piano, but. only by ear. The only music she could read for the piano were guitar tabs, which I still have not figured out how that works. Cause I can't, I don't know.
Cori Fox: Interesting.
Susan: And so, but she made me take piano lessons. So I very begrudgingly. In my youth. Went and took the piano lessons, but she also wanted me to be like a... Singer. too she won She was like the Lucy Ricardo for my childhood.
Susan: stardom right so she was constantly taking me around to perform in places I'm very well known amongst the people I grew up with for singing all of the songs of Annie because I was almost cast in Annie before they went on strike.
Susan: So I was right at...
Carol: well
Susan: four foot ten and that was like the height limit for the frame and then the Screen Actors Guild went on strike for a year and I just I kind of was too tall. But that would have been cool because then I would have been probably with Tim Curry in that cast.
Susan: That kind of bums me out.
Carol: oh that yeah That would have been cool.
Cori Fox: Oh, that cast.
Susan: but
Cori Fox: Wow.
Susan: I don't know if it was that long. I don't know. I know he was in ah Annie. i don't I think he was in the older one, though. I'm not sure. This would have been filmed in like 1981 or two, I think. but I mean, they I was down and they flew me from my little mountain town in Colorado down to Studio City on the soundstage to do all the, I mean, I was right up there.
Susan: But it was a horrible process. I hated all of it. I felt like show pony. I just.
Cori Fox: oh
Susan: I was singing all the time, all the time.
Cori Fox: um
Susan: And she loved it. It was a little tiny mountain town with maybe. I don't know, 300 people in the whole zip code spread out over hundreds of acres, you know, so she loved.
Carol: wow
Susan: The attention. I mean, it was kind of like. Uh, Performance Munchausen by proxy, I think, you know?
Cori Fox: Interesting.
Susan: Because she would just love having her. And now I live with a beast. They like to sing too. Anyway. So, but I grew up, ah you know, we didn't have cable TV. We only got two channels on the local mountain. TV and there was just literally nothing on outside of Little House on the Prairie. So I spent a lot of time playing the piano. My mother and I would sing and I probably knew.
Susan: every popular show tune to play and sing on the piano and that's how we spend a lot of our time but She... liked the attention of men, So there was a...
Susan: I'm going to just call him a hitchhiker in our life. That's not how she picked him up, but he kind of hitchhiked along in that era of our life.
Carol: yeah
Cori Fox: two Yeah.
Susan: He was a younger man, much younger than she was. We... I don't think he was old enough to drink, but that's for another story.
Cori Fox: Interesting.
Susan: Cori, you've already read my book.
Cori Fox: Oh.
Susan: You know exactly what I'm talking about.
Cori Fox: Mm hmm.
Susan: But he... was like a wannabe. biker guy i guess or something you know he always wanted to have a motorcycle and so he was kind of like that edgy flower child culture i think like easy rider sort of a thing but he had like looking back he had great taste in music so that's where i was introduced to like black sabbath deep purple elo like all of those things he had all of those albums and for a kid that I didn't even know how to operate a record player until he came around.
Susan: It like just blew me away. And I would, especially Black Sabbath, I'm like five years old. I'd put the headphones on and I just listened to Black Sabbath over and over and over again. I just absolutely adored it.
Carol: Nice.
Susan: And they actually took me to go see Black Sabbath at Deep Purple in 1976. I was six years old. I was probably, and it was before my sixth birthday.
Carol: Oh my gosh.
Susan: I was five. Got a contact high. It was at Cal Jam in Long Beach before we moved to Colorado. But I was like, I don't know. I i got to see Ozzy sing with Black Sabbath. So that's pretty cool, right?
Carol: That's pretty amazing, yeah.
Cori Fox: Wow.
Susan: So there was a lot of the performancey kind of stuff growing up.
Carol: Yeah, wow.
Susan: But then when I, you know, kind of. got my own legs underneath myself and I found my own way. My best friend and her sister. who I was dating her sister kind of introduced me to punk rock. And then that kind of, it started out as kind of like a fun pogo dance, kind of a punk rock thing. And then me and.
Susan: My friend, who was my girlfriend's sister. We just went full on hardcore into the underground scene in Denver. And I'm talking underground like. We saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers play in somebody's garage, you know, like.
Carol: Nice.
Cori Fox: wow
Susan: metallica was coming through town it was a great great scene and i just i saw some great bands it was you know Not all of us made it through that era. It was a lot of... serious hard partying for, you know, a bunch of Gen X kids that nobody's parents knew where we were ever or cared probably.
Carol: right right
Cori Fox: ah her
Susan: So I don't know. i And I have like... a soundtrack of different eras of my life. But I think probably the theme of my team year teen years were...
Susan: I mean, I loved Black Flag. I loved Dead Kennedys. What I loved about Jello Biafra so much was his political messaging. And he was right. He was right.
Carol: Right?
Susan: I just want to put it out there. And as a matter of fact, so's henry rolllins so ah I just want to put that out there.
Cori Fox: I'm adding that to the list.
Carol: agree
Cori Fox: I need to hear this because I don't know what you're talking about.
Susan: Oh my god!
Cori Fox: We've got to talk about that.
Cori Fox: I can't wait to talk about this. Okay, keep going.
Susan: Okay, so then... I think, i you know, my best friend I kept even after the relationship didn't work out long term with her sister. We're all great friends now. That's sort of, you get six degrees a lesbian, you just kind of.
Susan: collect each other you don't Bye. you know it's just a weird thing so we're all still friends but There was a summer when my best friend met some dweeby guy whose dad happened to be a police officer.
Susan: So we had free tickets to everything that summer at Red Rocks. Every.
Carol: awesome
Susan: thing and that's where I saw Beastie Boys and Run DMC and I saw the Thompson twins there I saw Stevie Ray Vaughan there I saw and we just had like we could go backstage and I mean as a kid I didn't realize like oh my god I thought you know everybody has those experiences but
Cori Fox: ah
Carol: ah am
Cori Fox: Dude.
Carol: wow
Cori Fox: Right.
Susan: I saw Berlin.
Carol: right
Susan: I saw everybody
Carol: oh
Susan: Everybody that we listened to that I liked we saw. And it was just.
Cori Fox: Wow.
Susan: Amazing.
Carol: That's really cool.
Susan: Right. Yeah. So then I think as I, yeah as I got older, my early twenties, I really fell in love with tool tool also.
Cori Fox: Yeah.
Susan: had a hold on me. like Maynard James Keenan has a hold on my heart just like Jell -O does. He's right too.
Carol: yes
Cori Fox: Oh my god.
Susan: hu
Cori Fox: I don't even know. I mean, I know that name, but I don't know any.
Susan: I think he was a mayor or something, wasn't he, Carol, for a while? jellloby off
Carol: tried but I don't know that he got elected.
Susan: Yeah, I think he still lives in San Francisco.
Carol: Oh. Because wasn't that the time where he was going through the the shit with the poster?
Susan: Probably. Probably, yeah.
Carol: So yeah.
Cori Fox: What? What with the poster?
Carol: Corp - Cori needs to learn about that. so
Cori Fox: Yes, I do.
Susan: Yeah.
Carol: It wasn't...
Cori Fox: Okay.
Carol: It was in one of his albums. Which album was it? Do you remember Susan?
Susan: Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables, I think.
Carol: Was it that one?
Susan: I think so.
Carol: Okay.
Cori Fox: what
Carol: So he had... There was a poster inside the album. and it was geiger right itchy geiger itch art geiger And it's basically a bunch of penises.
Susan: Yes, yes Yes.
Carol: So...
Susan: And.
Carol: it That was like...
Carol: the time of like the pmrc and all that so it was vulgar he had like had to go to court and all all this crap.
Susan: yeah
Carol: So it was a big thing back then.
Cori Fox: oh
Susan: And then he also had issues with the record label. And I think somebody that had been in the band and then left the band. But I think they're touring again. I mean, he recently had a stroke. I don't know. I have a lot of useless information.
Carol: Right. Yeah.
Susan: And keeping up with what the punk rock icons of the 80s are up to.
Carol: Right.
Susan: Yeah, he recently had a stroke.
Carol: Yes.
Susan: They're re -releasing a bunch of stuff that they've remastered, which I just love seeing.
Carol: Yeah.
Carol: Yeah.
Susan: I just love seeing it.
Carol: Yeah.
Susan: No.
Carol: definitely entertaining, that's for sure.
Susan: Yeah, he really is. And Henry Rollins, too, I think.
Carol: yeah I love him.
Susan: you know Yeah.
Carol: Yeah.
Susan: Do you know who Henry Rollins is, Cori?
Cori Fox: Oh come on!
Susan: I'm just checking.
Cori Fox: Ah!
Susan: I'm not trying to insult you.
Cori Fox: april
Susan: You don't know what Jello Biafra is.
Cori Fox: ah
Susan: I'm just saying. how
Carol: ah five -year difference but we're just not sure.
Susan: Hold on. Well I feel like we you know. You are not living in the underground punk scene, probably.
Cori Fox: No.
Susan: or he has I feel like you kind of had to be there to really get keep all this in perspective.
Cori Fox: No.
Cori Fox: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Susan: it's
Cori Fox: No, well...
Susan: Quite frankly, it's amazing I remember any of it, if I'm honest. but I did not finish high school, if that tells you anything.
Cori Fox: And yet here you are with a master's degree, you badass.
Susan: Yeah. Yes.
Carol: Yeah, that's crazy.
Susan: Just honoree. Crazy.
Cori Fox: Just Henri is...
Susan: Crazy is what it is.
Cori Fox: Peace.
Susan: i I still don't count me out on law school. I still might do it, but.
Cori Fox: i I have no doubts about that.
Susan: I'm still carrying the rage from Jello Biafra in the 80s. I have to. do something.
Cori Fox: Oh, there's clearly going to be a part two and probably a part three. I cannot wait to hear more about this.
Susan: No.
Cori Fox: You guys have so much so much musical experience. like this couldn't this this is the perfect storm of the three of us you know Ah!
Susan: It is.
Carol: I think so, yeah.
Cori Fox: Wow.
Carol: Yeah, it's great
Cori Fox: OK, well, let's wrap this one up for now and then. Tune in next time.
