When did you know that music was your passion?

Ed Sullivan Show. Feb of 1964

I think I was around 6 when I really found myself (and was teased by others) always in a rocking chair near the radio and it was probably Wings and Fleetwood Mac aswell as other "pop" radio that I got hooked on. Later my step dad by example taught me how to really just sit and listen (imagine that!) and it never stopped, add that to a geekish love of electronics and I was screwed forever!

When I was around 6 or 7 years old I had this fascination with the inner workings of older electronics. I'm 51, to put this in perspective. I would dis-assemble old tube radios and such to see what they were made of. I thought those big old caps where the greatest things. I'd take them apart, and collect the resistors and caps, and I'm drifting.... This lead me to actually listening to the equipment, and trying to figure out how they all work, which eventually lead to listening how the sound was better in some, and worse in others, and why, etc. I found I liked to listen to good sounding gear, which started me down this road. I could never get enough of just listening to the radio.
A friend of mine lived across the street from the park we used to play softball at. He would put his JBL L-100's up in the windows and crank it while we played ball. We all grew up with music playing continuously. Wow, great memories...

Three things: 1. Summer vacations spent at my uncle's house in Ann Arbor MI, discovering his Beatles albums and he letting me play them on his "stereo" ! with some big 10" woofers and BASS! (which we had nothing of the sort at our house. OH what fun.
2. Seeing the movie "Yellow Submarine" on TV around 1973 when I was 12 years old, BLEW MY MIND. Psychadelic Peter Max type animation and Beatles music. I was hooked; went out and bought my first beatles album, Revolver.
3. Around 1975 or so picking up a Radio Shack catalog and musing over the raw driver section wondering what a 15" woofer would sound like... about the same time picking up a JBL catalog and "wow"-ing over the L200 and L300 and raw driver section... thus begining my facination with speakers.
4. okay okay I said 3, but... after the Beatles quickly moved on to Chicago, Elton John, CSN, Steely Dan then more progressive's like Yes, King Crimson, ELP, Camel, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Rush, Santana.. then around 1977 discovered jazz fusion with the likes of RTF, Weather Report, Jean Luc Ponty, etc... full blown Jazz nut by 1980 or 81... began attending symphony and buying classical throughout the 80's. These days it's Coltrane, Miles, Duke, Louis, Stan Getz, you get the idea.

When I was in the womb, my mother was an amateur opera singer.
When they slapped my rear end I didn't cry, but started to wail 'Carmen'. Apparently.