How Did you Become a Nutter?

[Soundragon]

Bit of a silly question that may very well have been asked before, but I'm curious - how were you introduced to Stewart Copeland's music?

I imagine a lot of people will say The Police; if so, how were you introduced to their music?

For me it was Stewart's Spyro the Dragon soundtrack. Which, as it happens, I was introduced to when my cousins brought the game to my grandma's house on one of those demo discs. (I was very young at the time.)

Life got a little complicated and I lost all three copies of the game I had come to own. I had picked up music composition as a hobby with my iMac (G5 ) and was always looking for inspirations to my music. One day I remembered the old Spyro games, and got bitten by the nostalgia bug... severely. So the first thing I did was look up the music. Instantly it became my favorite. I got all the tracks I could and started listening to them. Over and over and over... and over. (I still am, by the way. ) Then I learned who did the music and I've been a nutter ever since.

A bit of an odd story but that's how I became a nutter. Believe it or not it's been about three years since I started listening to Stewart's music, and I don't enjoy it any less today. That's not to say I don't listen to other music (I like bands like Rush and John Mayer also) but Stewart takes up 89% of my listening time, 99% on most days.

So, how about you?

[redneckpride]

I was 8 and my daddy had gotten my mawma Outlandos d Amor (sorry if i spelled that wrong) at wal mart.
My mawma having liked that album alot started playing it all the time. So it kinda grew on me and well
when i was nine i google searched the police and found out who stewart, andy and sting were.
I listened stewart , and stings solo work and liked both. But then i found the Rhythmatist and koteja.
And well thats when i became a nutter at age nine.

[TheEqualizer]

Listening to MIAB and ELTSDIM on cassette and realizing, "No one else plays hi hat like that; not even close."

[conroy]

I think I was born that way But for me my gateway drug was Synchronicity when I was in the 8th grade back in 83/84. In particular, it was the the percussion in Walking in Your Footsteps and Synchronicity II in particular that made me pay attention to Stewart. And I consumed all their other albums whenever I saved up enough money to buy them. Then after the Police broke up, I remember reading a blurb in TV Guide probably during the summer of '84 that mentioned Stewart was going to compose the score to the Equalizer. It mentioned Stewart's dad's CIA career and that became my blue pill. I've never been right since

[njperry]

I became a big Police fan with Synchocronicty in 1983, especially King of Pain. I started buying Stewart, Sting, and Andy cassettes once I got all 5 of the Police albums and was blown away by Klark Kent and the Rhythmatist. Been a big fan since then.

Welcome Jenna Belinda to SC.net!!!

[ltwoman]

Welcome, JB!

[smax]

stewart was the first musician i was aware of.......the police were my band.

late 1980, my 11 year old brother stole a tape of zenyatta from a party, immediately felt guilty and gave it to me, his 6 year old younger brother.
five years later, still only 11, i've got the other albums on tape and vinyl. playing them on my enormous wooden record player with built in speakers and annoying record stacking middle bit.
i meet a boy in the park and teach him how to do wheelies on his bmx bike. i have an ET extra burner BMX which i think is very cool. my new friends' mum is a drum teacher. my freind is just learning. he and his mum take me into their music room which has a huuuuuuuuuuuuge kit in there. His mum plays along to police songs.i'm blown away and deafened. she told me the drummer was very good and immediately lost me as she tried to explain why. my freind also had Klark Kents album. after a short while we both had the 10" and all the singles. They were the songs we listened to.

i start to understand that music is made by people who write songs and play them.
my freind explains to me how you count in music by talking through the start of invisible sun with me ("so why doesn't he count to 8 if there are eight bars in the introduction?" "because he doesn't count the last two" "why not?", "dunno").

then, kinda randomly, my mum said that she knew someone who was selling a bass guitar and that she would buy it for me if i wanted it. i was cluless but jumped at the chance. i might look like that bloke i had plastered all over my bedroom walls (even down the thin side of the door!) i had no amp so i'd lean against my wooden wardrobe which would amplify the sound and i'd play along to adverts.

i remember being given the new dream of the blue turtles in hospital when i'd broken my leg and my brother had to explain that it was not the police. i don't think i cared. i was 11 and my leg hurt.

in my late teens and 20's playing and touring in bands i stopped buying gordo's stuff, partly cos i was busy and was only listening to my bands or dance music but mostly cos gordo in his 40's was not resonating with me playing in noisy bands and getting wasted (was still busily indoctrinating anyone i knew about the police who everyone was dismissing while dissing sting)........ i grew up and returned to the band and caught up with what they'd been doing, ironically my fave gordo stuff now is the mid 90's stuff i'd missed at the time (i may get fruit thrown at me for this but 'this cowboy song' and demolition man 93, are my fave sologordo moments).

i came here in 2006... i had no idea then that there were other fans of the band still around. it was such a joy to discover, the internet wasn't just invented for porn and shopping, well i never.
then ES:TPIO came out, i went to a screening, met stewart, then tourzilla happened and i knew what it was like to be on the end of stewart's finger. the rest, as they say, no one cares about.

[luna_virgo]

I became a Police fan in junior high school. When I got Synchronicity in 8th grade, my favorite song on it was Miss Gradenko. At the time I didn’t realize Stewart wrote it. I bought all the Police albums out of order, so I didn’t get Ghost In The Machine until high school. For various personal reasons, by that time I was identifying with depressing lyrics, so Darkness was a big favorite. (Again, not knowing it was Stewart’s song.)

Of course, as Jemma noted above, Stewart had other, non-musical effects on teenage girls, and I was certainly not immune.

Fast-forward to last year: I just happened to catch part of Everyone Stares on Ovation, and it was like some long-dormant virus reawakened. (A good virus - sorry, best analogy I could think of.) I immediately had to get the dvd, which led to much reminiscing and googling and the discovery that Stewart wrote two of my favorite Police songs AND his dad was from my hometown. Extra cool points! So that led to book and music buying and eventually to sc.net and Nutterdom.

[Bry]

I became friends with a couple guys in my neighborhood when I was 10 (1980). We'd always be hanging out at one of our houses. One of my friends' parents had a big console stereo in the living room, and he'd buy everything on vinyl. The other friend had a Sony Walkman, and he'd buy cassettes. I think my vinyl friend got GITM first, and we'd sit on the floor in his living room mesmerized by it. From there we started collecting backwards, getting to know Zenyatta, Reggatta, and Outlandos. The Police rapidly became my favorite band. Each album took me to a different place in my mind. Ghost was dark and mysterious; Zenyatta was ethereal and mystical and Reggatta was like being on a thrill ride. When Synchronicity came out it was my "cassette" friend who got it first, and had to hide from us if he wanted a chance to listen to it.

We were just kids, and you can sell kids just about anything so I'm pleased at how well my childhood musical choices have held up. I have a technical appreciation for Stewart in addition to my primeval emotional reaction to his rhythms. The Police are a big part of my childhood and I can't thank them enough for the memories.

Meeting other nutters and signing the Flag as an adult was like a second childhood for me- plus, my wife has become a nutter. So, life is good and that's my story.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

Hey folks, this has been posted a couple times already...see here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7895

Just FYI - thought you might find the old thread interesting. DD

[luna_virgo]

Hey folks, this has been posted a couple times already...see here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7895

Just FYI - thought you might find the old thread interesting. DD

Thanks for posting that link for us new nutters. It's fantastic that this is such a long-lived, devoted forum. This is the only fan community I've ever joined, and I'm so glad I picked a good one!

[sockii]

[ETA - I checked Dive's link which I now remember ... and it looks like I never commented there first time around, so... I also say pretty much the same thing in here: http://vimeo.com/2947679]

I remember when Synchronicity came out; I was 11 at the time and borrowed a friend's cassette on the school bus one day and wasn't enamored. I was kind of bored of the songs that were all over the radio at that point. I was in the midst of my Duran Duran insanity at the time, anyway, so nothing was going to compare to them

"Dream of the Blue Turtles" was, truly, my gateway drug into The Police (yes, take that people who think I hate all things Sting). I remember hearing some of the singles from that album when it came out and it was so different from anything I'd listened to before, anything else I was hearing on the radio, I had to get the cassette. My mother bought it for me, and as she loves jazz she was even more entranced by it than I was. She preceded over the next week or two to buy every Police album on tape and we listened to them all with "fresh ears" with amazement at everything we'd missed. I was getting into the music, but the turning point was when a few weeks later she then picked up a VHS of "Around the World" for us to watch.

Oh em gee.

"He's superior to me because I'm less humble than he is. I'm an arrogant twat."

I don't know why but that just nailed it for this (at the time) 13-14 year old. I totally became Stewart-obsessed in my Police 'fannishness' after seeing AtW. I still can't even put in to words why. I hunted down on my own the Klark Kent stuff, and also the Rumble Fish soundtrack, and that was it. The music, the attitude, just everything hit the right nerve with me, plus I'd always wanted to learn to play the drums and loved the drums since I'd been about 4-5 years old (The Beatles were my first fandom and of course I loved Ringo most of all.)

I remember getting on the xmission Police mailing list back in the early 90s when I was in college, and flitting in and out of that list for years. I always kept following Stewart stuff but in the early 2000's I remember finding Ian's forum through the xmission list, and hanging out there a lot, and then eventually coming over here not long after Gio opened up sc.net as an official (and not just a fan) website.

So yeah, I go pretty way back in my on-line fandom geekiness

[policefan]

I read this

viewtopic.php?t=2809

and then I became a Nutter, as simple as that.

[Johnny O]

Darkness. Hi-hats. OMG! I was in.

[Soundragon]

I read this

http://www.stewartcopeland.net/forum/vi ... php?t=2809

and then I became a Nutter, as simple as that.

I can see why, that is an insanely epic story!

...I've had some similar ones. Not nearly as big as the Police, but still.