Thanks to how beautiful, fluid, and complex posts can look here on Steemit, we decided to take a minute to share what has influenced us to create what we do together as "Petals And Thorns". It's a fun way to tip our hat to the things we grew up with (not too mention Steemit doesn't throttle youtube like almost every other social media does... ahem.) It feels like a great way to share and curate these things that we hold dear.
The obvious place to start: one of our own videos.
Petals And Thorns - "Method To The Madness"
Johnny: When we first met up, it was on the old (and good) MySpace. Mia had a tagline on her profile that read: "I want to be a singer. I long for the stage. My favorite bands are Switchblade Symphony and Garbage." Those being two of my own favorites as well, I was sold. So let's start the curation there.
Mia: The first album I heard by Switchblade Symphony was "Serpentine Gallery", and I absolutely fell in love with all the mysterious melodies and sounds that make me think of gothic gardens and haunted castles.
Johnny: I first heard of Switchblade Symphony as a teen in the 90's. I used to hang out on AOL, mostly in music chat rooms, trying to find music out there that I had not heard before, or that had not been given proper exposure like that of the mainstream money grinding machine that was FM radio and MTV. When you were on AOL you didn't have a profile picture, you just talked to random people, the most information you had to go on was their profile information, aka "likes" etc. I was friends with one random girl who seemed cool and liked cool things, I can't quite remember her screen name, rainbow something or other. She was nice to me and we chatted about music. In her profile info she mentioned really digging a band called "Switchblade Symphony". Back then, in the dial up stone age era, there was no YouTube or Spotify or any of the other things that have completely destroyed the economics of music. You had to, get this, GO TO THE GODDAMN STORE AND BUY THE CD *IF YOU COULD EVEN FIND IT, in some cases which was also true in this case, WITHOUT EVER HAVING EVEN HEARD THE FREAKING MUSIC ANYWHERE FIRST! After lots of searching, I used some christmas money and found their second release, "Bread And Jam For Frances." I was instantly head over heels, it was great! I really had no idea just how much it would influence me in the long run, and to that I owe a disembodied dial up person on AOL whose picture I had never even seen, and whose name I cannot even remember. It's very strange in the face of the way things are today, I would love to find her somehow and tell her thanks for that. I have to wonder if she would like "Petals And Thorns"?
Switchblade Symphony - "Clown"
Mia: The band Garbage had a strong influence on me. I remember being captivated by Shirley's raw and sultry vocals. I saw that she was a "bad girl" breaking all the rules for women in the music industry, and doing it in a very bad ass way!
Johnny: Shirley, Butch, and company really pushed the boundaries with the mainstream and proved that the computer really truly is just another instrument to play.
Garbage - "Only Happy When it Rains"
Johnny: Next up is Type O Negative. Easily one of my favorite bands growing up. I saw them live a good half a dozen times. Excellent musicianship and production. The four dicks from Brooklyn brought a goth flavor to the 90s that only they could. Having not heard a lot of Type O before we met, I shared a lot with Mia when we first connected. This obviously led to her own fandom of them. Shortly there after, this led to a very strange and profound psychic dream that she had in which Peter Steele shook our hands, smiled, and gave us his blessing. A mere two days later, the news broke that he passed away. RIP Pete!
Type O Negative - "Love You To Death"
Mia: I discovered the band Delerium in high school. It pulled me through some tough times by giving me an escape into a magical place. I listened to the albums "Poem" and "Karma" almost daily for months at a time. My favorite thing was to dance and spin to the entire albums.
Johnny: When people meet up to create music, there is (or most certainly should be) a cross pollination of influences. We traded CDs back and forth. One track that grabbed me almost instantly was from Delerium, a group I had not heard of but that she had been a fan of for a long time. Her favorite track became mine as well. Both of us going through tough times in our personal lives, this was one of those songs that just stabs you in the heart.
Delerium - "Innocente"
Mia: I started listening to Tori Amos when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I loved to sing with her and for me "Little Earthquakes" and "Under The Pink" were profound albums to me.
Johnny: Hard to ignore, the beautiful voice of Tori Amos resonated with everyone in the early 90s. More than the everyday coffeshop nonsense that permeated the era, Tori can play the piano blindfolded upside down with her toes while writing and singing from the heart about vulnerability and honesty.
Tori Amos - "Crucify"
Johnny: Paradise Lost is one of those really strange situations for me, in that their album "One Second" is easily in my top 10 favorite albums of all time but I haven't really followed anything else they have done. I might go so far to say that it is one of the most influencial albums to the music of Petals And Thorns. My cousin, who tipped me off to them by getting me this album for christmas one year, came to one of our shows and exclaimed, "Hey that was really good! I hear a lot of Paradise Lost in that!"
Paradise Lost - "One Second"
Johnny: In one of those strange moments of flipping through CD books, the twin peaks soundtrack popped up. Mia exclaimed, "Whoa that's from Twin Peaks?! I love Julee Cruise! I didn't realize it was in Twin Peaks!" A coincidental influence on both sides.
Mia: The first time I heard Julee Cruise was on a mini van road trip with a family and friends. It was dark out and this song and album "Into the Night" was playing. Her music feels very nurturing to the dark night of the soul. Years later, I came across a kitten that was dying from malnourishment. I played the entire album for her as I cradled her in my arms. I'm tearing up now typing this, as my sweet Lexi is now 12 years later sitting in my lap.
Julee Cruise - "Into The Night"
Johnny: Next up is the band "Lestat". Another mid 90s treasure, and instant influence. My friends and I would play the table top game "Vampire: The Masquerade" with Lestat on in the background. I never in a million years would have imagined that 20 years later we would open for them!
Lestat - "Endparty"
Johnny: Oingo Boingo is one of those bands that is just hard to ignore. The brain child of the infinitely talented Mr. Danny Elfman. Another instant influence. His rock band was a darker, more honest twist to the seemingly infinite 80s synth pop of that era.
Mia: I love Oingo Boingo! Danny Elfman is so theatrical and he and the whole band are so multi-talented. I definitely am inspired by how Danny executes his vocals and dramatics.
Oingo Boingo - "Just Another Day"
Johnny: I found out about The Birthday Massacre from the old MySpace. Before I came across Mia, I would search through people's profiles to try to find similar minds, (which led me to her). But before that, on people's profiles, there were PROFILE SONGS! That's right, you could have a song play on your profile. In fact, it autoplayed. This was INCREDIBLY GREAT for the spreading of music. The general sheep of the internet don't like work (clicking on things) and in this way you would hear things that you would never hear in the throttling places of today like FACEBOOK and every other social media that found it's way to bend bands over and screw them for ridiculous amounts of money to get exposure. So I found this band from someone's random profile and instantly felt influenced. I'm very grateful they got through before MySpace fell and the giant PAYWALL went up, or I may have never heard of them.
Mia: Johnny showed me "The Birthday Massacre" and I was an instant fan. I love how their music mixes the dark and heavy with the sweet yet spooky.
The Birthday Massacre - "Video Kid" (live from Show and Tell)
Johnny: When I was about 12 my mom said to me, "Hey this band from Cleveland is getting big, you should check it out." So I eventually saw the video from NIN for "Wish" on MTV. I said to my mom, "Yeah I dunno. Why is he wearing girls clothes? Ummm..." And so it goes, I met a girl who lent me the first album, "Pretty Hate Machine." The honesty and angst in regard to living in a world gone absolutely mad as well as top notch creativity and musicianship instantly resonated with me. NIN would become one of my biggest influences. Years later I would find out that the music shop Mr. Reznor worked at while here in Cleveland was about two blocks away from my mom's house. As it goes, it is no longer a music shop, transformed now into a payday loan store or a chinese take out place or something.
Nine Inch Nails - "Head Like A Hole"
Johnny: I was late to the game with KMFDM, but not too late. I got to see them live with their original line up (including En Esch and Gunter.) Easliy one of the most memorable shows of my earlier concert going days, almost a primer for "this is how it's done." Here is a band that just does not care about your social bullshit norms. They do what they do without giving two shits about what you think, force feeding societies own hipocrisy right back into your ears while saying, "everything you have been told is bullshit." And they are right.
Mia: KMFDM is a packed with energy and angst! The blending of electronic with those riveting guitars gets my blood moving. I especially like vocals done by Lucia Cifarelli. I also love what's behind the music with KMFDM. Their lyrics are revolutionary!
KMFDM - "Megalomaniac"
Johnny: It seems fitting to serve up a band that KMFDM hates next, for balance sake. Depeche Mode. Incredibly thought out and masterfully composed 80s synthpop. While this is more of Mia's pick than mine, Depeche Mode is undeniable.
Mia: My mother was a huge fan, so I heard Depeche Mode all throughout my childhood and well into adulthood. My favorite album, is definitely "Violator"'. This music I can dance to with no end.
Depeche Mode - "World In My Eyes"
Johnny: It would be impossible to create this playlist without including Faith No More. Original, artistic, and honest, Faith No More has been incredibly influential to me musically over the years. "Raise a cup and let's propose a toast, to the thing that hurts you most."
Faith No More - "Last Cup Of Sorrow"
Johnny: When I was 16, I had the overwhelming awesome opportunity to meet and greet with these four incredible ladies after a show in a small club in Cleveland. This was easily one of the earliest moments in my life that computed to, "I should do a rockish type band with a chick singer."
Drain STH - "I Don't Mind"
Johnny: The honest expression of the classic TOOL / APC is unignorable. Maynard was the master of conveying the awful truth that we humans make this planet difficult for each other with our selfish self centered idosyncrasies. Thank you for the honesty Mr. Keenan.
Mia: Tool is so powerful. Johnny got me into them and with already being a huge fan of A Perfect Circle, I fell instantly in love with them.
Tool - "Stinkfist"
Mia: A Perfect Circle, "Mer de Noms" was a big album for me in high school. I listened to it daily. I couldn't get enough of Maynard's powerful vocals. Another album that helped me through tough times.
A Perfect Circle - "Judith"
Johnny: One of my first guitar heroes was Kurt Kobain. Mainstreaming ugly honesty in the face of excess and partying in the early 90s, Kurt almost single handedly it would seem, turn the music world upside down. A question I often ask myself, how would have Nirvana have faired in this era where 2000 streams = 1 album unit? Having sold 75 million albums to date, an artist would need 1,500,000,000,000 streams to equal that (1trillion 500billion!) in the age of disposable music and the adhd flavor of the minute, pay to play era that we are now in. RIP Mr. Kobain. I am glad you made your mark and spoke your truth when you did! It would appear it is too late for anyone to do that again!
Mia: The genius of Kurt Kobain's music and vocals with such powerful hooks. This song is one of my favorites to sing along to.
Nirvana - "Heart Shaped Box"
Mia: Pink Floyd;..... so many memories! Another band I heard throughout growing up. Dark Side Of The Moon, is my favorite album. I like any song by them though.
Johnny: At first I did not take to Pink Floyd. It wouldn't take long for me to realize they were the grandfather's of honest music though. Inexplicably one of my favorites ever now.
Pink Floyd - "Brain Damage / Eclipse"
Mia: I absolutely adore Gary Numan! I especially love his newer music he's done. He has so many great albums spanning decades.
Johnny: Gary Numan has had a very interesting career. His last few albums have really really shone with a flourishing that is almost impossible for any artist to achieve some 30+ years into their career. If we could collectively pick an artist to open for on tour, it would most definitely be Mr. Numan.
Gary Numan - "I Am Dust"
Mia: Sean Brennan's music brings me chills. You can feel it especially in Silent Hill, which is one of my favorite movies.
London After Midnight - Let Me Break You
Mia: My mom was an aerobics instructor decades ago. I heard Tears For Fears so much during her work out routines. There are so many Tears For Fears songs that I like, it's hard to choose.
Tears For Fears - "Mad World"
Johnny: One of my earliest memories in life is sitting plopped down in front of the TV with MTV on and BOOOM, Peter Gabriel. I loved the video because it felt like a cartoon! But much later I would realize that it was such a resonating song and he a masterful artist. I'm sure the stuffy elder types who are boxed into their own cliches will violently disagree with me, but I feel like Mr. Gabriel had a big part of influencing what became the more modern industrial movement.
Mia: I heard a lot of Peter Gabriel growing up and especially this song. I too remember the video on MTV.
Peter Gabriel - "Sledgehammer"
Johnny: I'm sure many people will judge or question my validity from the next pick. Oh well, I can't deny or would deny that Korn had a big influence on me. I was a teen in the 90s who appreciates honesty in a world of lies and bullshit. If you have a problem with that then please move on. For me, this pick is one of those songs that expresses, "No, I can be who I am without your stupid social programming and bullshit premeditated opinions, go fuck yourself for thinking otherwise."
Mia: I am inspired by Jonathon Davis's passionate vocals. He puts his heart and soul into it and expresses painful feelings in such a dark and charismatic way.
Korn - "Here To Stay"
Mia: Ah.... The Doors. The music truly does open your doors of perception. Jim's lyrics are so poetic and the music is so damn powerful. "House upon the hill, moon is lying still, Shadows of the trees, Witnessing the wild breeze, Come on baby run with me, let's run....." (Not To Touch The Earth). By far The Doors is an all-time favorite band of mine.
Johnny: The original prophet and cautioneer of the impending apocalyptic society that was being created for modern man, Mr. Morrison and company are another one of the original honesty wielding bands. More than a party gogo band, Morrison had a real message about truth. Not to mention the absolutely masterful craftmanship of their music for the times. True pioneers. The word "gothic" was first used in conjunction with Mr. Morrison by a journalist reviewing a Doors performance.
The Doors - "L.A. Woman"
Mia: This song is the first song I rush to play during Halloween. Yes I have a killer Halloween playlist that I play every year. I love everything about this song!
Genitorturers - "Terrorvision"
Mia: Mary Fahl has one of the most powerful female vocals that I have ever heard and she is a big influence for me. A family friend played October Project for me when I was young.
October Project - Bury My Lovely
Johnny: Alice In Chains took the best of 80s metal, fused it with grunge, and dropped in a megaton of honesty. Undeniable in their influence, AIC still resonates today. RIP Layne.
Mia: Who doesn't love the haunting harmonies by Alice In Chains!
Alice In Chains - "Down In A Hole"
So that's it. There are many many more things that we like and listen to, but this sums up the collective pieces as to what we feel has influenced us to create "Petals And Thorns". Thanks for checking this out! Don't forget to do all the typical internetty things: vote up, like, love, comment, resteem, share etc etc etc!
Thank you!
Mia and Johnny
Petals And Thorns website: http://www.petalsandthorns.net/