I was going to post this for the
"How did you get into Soul Asylum" thread but thought it would be better to post it here. Though the majority of my
article states how I got into Soul Asylum, I would really like to mention something that is very important to me which was briefly covered in my article.
I just wanted to basically expand upon on how important that
video clip is to me. What appears to be a simple 33 second clip (I spliced the video from 2 simllar segments into one so it's actually 49 seconds on the YouTube video) basically led me to explore many different genres of music, and not just the different genres (punk, rock, etc.) of Soul Asylum. Before ever hearing of Soul Asylum, most of the music I listened to consisted mostly of songs from the 50's and 60's. It seemed that I knew all the songs by heart (no, not Anne and Nancy Wilson's group
), and I think my time had come to move on and leave that era. I had moved on to listening more of the current airplay hits which mostly included a lot of hard rock, not to mention listening to 80's music which I could probably thank my older brothers and their fiends for (well I could
now say I know some songs by Heart... by heart
).
While I was listening to all the Soul Asylum songs while writing the lyrics for the discography section of this site, I was asking some of the following questions to myself, "What if I never saw that clip? Would I still be listening to 50's and 60's music as much as I used to? Who would my favorite band be now?"
That clip of Runaway Train was the first time I had ever heard anything by Soul Asylum, even their name was new to me. Over the 10 years that have passed, I now have heard Runaway Train numerous times on the radio. But again I wonder, would the song being heard over the radio have given the same effect on me as the video clip... this effect being me here writing this message (on a Soul Asylum fansite that I am moderating nonetheless).
I'm sure you get the picture (or in this case the video) by now and how it holds a special meaning to me. Without it, I don't know if I would have had the awesome experience of listening to Soul Asylum's music, or would have had the pleasure of making friends on the Soul Asylum forums and meeting many of you at the concerts over the years which I have immensely enjoyed.