[Thor Joachim Haga]

Thanks for that, James, if you’re still around. I definitely relate to what you say about your father. I have the same background, in a way. In fact, I did a thread on FSM in 2024 about parents and film music. Instead of making a new thread about it here, I thought I’d just post it in this thread — parents are also very much part of our ‘origin story’:

“I realize this might be too personal for some, and I also realize some of you may have had problematic relationships to your parents, but it’s an interesting topic, I think.

I can start off:

Both of my parents are still around. My mother (71) is interested in music, but none of which I have latched on to. Her greatest idol is Cliff Richard, whom she met once. My father (74), on the other hand, is a different story. I don’t have the best relationship to him on a personal level, but there’s no doubt that he has influenced my musical taste greatly.

I was born in 1977. As a tiny kid in the early 80s, I could overhear him play his classical records, and hated most of it. But in the mid 80s, when I was 7-8 years old, he gave me a bunch of cassettes that he had taped off of friends’ LPs. They became my first serious forray into music beyond children’s records. There was prog rock, jazz, pop, everything, really, but mostly from the 60s and 70s. They became my first passion. From those, I found my own favourites – Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Manfred Mann’s Earthband, Jethro Tull, The Alan Parsons Project, you name it.

Simultaneously, I discovered (on my own) electronic music and Jean Michel Jarre in the late 80s, plus those “LSO Plays Classic Rock” albums. Being attuned to long instrumental passages in these things (electronic music and prog rock), and getting used to the orchestral music I hated as a tiny kid, the pathway to film music and soundtracks wasn’t very long. I latched on to that ca. 1990, through the holy threesome of TWIN PEAKS, THE ABYSS and JURASSIC PARK. So via some roads, my dad is responsible for me being here on FSM in the first place.

He’s still a music buff (mostly classical and jazz, occasionally some rock), and also a HiFi buff with a High End system. He cleans his LPs (thousands of them) and plays them constantly, much to my mother’s dismay. I was never really able to influence him back; to get him into film music. Despite several attempts. But he’s open to it.

Anyways, that was my parent/music story, told as briefly as I could. I’d love to hear yours, if you want to share.”