The role of childhood space in the development of musical taste

Well, I came of age right around the advent of grunge, and a few years later, gansgter rap. Being a Catholic-raised only child from the inner city and having no friends outside from school, I hung out mostly indoors with my mom, eating delivery pizza and watching TV. By the age of 7, I'd about had it with the dubbed Brazilian soap operas my moms tuned on and I needed to stake out some much needed privacy/space. I was always a sensitive and quirky kid; an escapist at heart. Living close to the beach also played a huge role in the tastes I would later develop. I wasn't a junior jock, but I did play basketball, and I had good grades and studied (at my mom's insistence), which set me apart from the other kids early on. At the tender age of 9, I was the only freak in my class, along with another buddy, who grooved to Salt 'N' Pepa and Snoop Dogg and talked about MTV in class. Early 90's MTV made a huge impression on my young mind with its schizophrenic programming. It helped shape my influences, as it was the only outlet we had at the time. Radio was crap, so otherwise I would've been deprived, truth be told, as my parents have never listened to much music. I had to find this out all by myself. By '93 (probably 11 by then), I was asking record store employees for A Tribe Called Quest singles, which they seemed to not be knowledgeable about, surprisingly enough.

Essentially, I looked out for that underlying sense of urban desperation in music; one that would provide me with empathy in its want to escape. Yet angst needn't to be the dominant trait in said tunage I treasured early on. As I've grown up and become increasingly frustrated with life in general, and developed strong claustrophobic feelings, yet withholding hope as is typical of my age, I've mellowed out some, and seem to be more inclined towards spacious, sometimes psychedelic textures and productions that BREATHE freely; whatever's evocative of wide open spaces. And purtier melodies.

I don't think childhood environment has anything to do with musical taste except in the sense that people often return again and again to music they heard when they were young. So if they grew up in the 60's that means one thing, and if they grew up in the 80's that means another. I'm grateful that my dad had a pretty exhaustive collection of music, but I can count the artists I like and heard through his collection on one hand.