Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.
In this series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.
Here are their love letters to records that forever changed their lives.
AViVa: Maggot Brain – Funkadelic
Dear Maggot Brain,
The first time I heard you I was 14. I have to admit, it had been a pretty rough year, on a lot of fronts. I was in the car with my dad, driving home one day and (as always) he controlled the music.
I was just sitting there, looking out the window as all the gumtrees blurring past in the dusky light. My mind wasn’t in the car; it was somewhere far away. I was brought back by that first strum of Eddie Hazel’s weeping guitar. It was like the gates had burst open and I could feel everything I had been holding inside. All my emotions, perfectly stacked up suddenly tumbled out of me like a monsoon. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk at all. All I wanted was your sweet melody to wrap me up in a blanket of sound.
I thought that was it, that it was over between us. Then one day I found a record in Vinnies… or was it Salvos? It doesn’t matter, I found you again. That screaming face stuck in the dirt. I paid the $2 and rushed home to get you onto my record player. And so it began again, “Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for ya’ll have knocked her up.” I sat down in front of my speakers and let it wash over me.
You did it again. Things I didn’t know I had locked inside me, suddenly unlocked.
This time I was alone, in the privacy of my own room, free to bare my soul to the music.
Now I know where you are, where to find you whenever I need you. Every time I listen it’s like falling into the arms of an old friend, an old lover, the universe. For that, I thank you. For being there for me, even when I didn’t know I needed you.
I could never say goodbye to you. No, this isn’t goodbye it’s just au revoir, until I need you again.
AViVA xx
AViVa will be supporting Tonight Alive on their headline run this month. More information here. Her latest single ‘BRN’ is out now. Listen here.
