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Home PageMy name is Miguel Terol, I'm 36, and I live in Valencia, Spain. I have studied Computer Science at University (Software Engineering Dept.), and I've been working for 16 years now. While I still was in 2nd course at University, I started working for a software company, where I spent the next 8 years working for: 5 years as an analyst-programmer (working with BASIC, and later C language), and when I finished my tenure, I was promoted to programming director, for another 3 years. Then, I switched jobs, and found my current position, more than 8 years ago.
I started listening to music at the age of 14, when I discovered The Beatles, my first love. After buying all their albums, I discovered ELO and Supertramp. Then, I continued with Wings, The Knack, and other similar pop-rock acts. One day, I found an album by Jimi Hendrix, 'Axis: bold as love', and bought it. I was shocked, as I'd never imagined to hear anything like that. Now Jimi is the artist I have more albums by, in my collection, than by anyone else. I continued to expose myself more 'new' things: John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers, and many of their spinoff groups, such as Cream, ... Then, one day I bought and heard a Peter Green album, 'Little dreamer'; since that day, I love all the music the GREAT Peter Green has created (keep on doing it, Peter!!!), as well as the blues, mostly "electric white blues". The path was clear from that point on: Fleetwood Mac (the original lineup, with Peter Green), Ten Years After, Taste, Eric Clapton, Keef Hartley Band ...
At the age of 16, I found some new friends who liked good music too, and we started to exchange albums. I discovered the groups that have stayed in my heart ever since: Uriah Heep (Hello, Heepsters & Heepsterettes!!), Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Genesis (while with Peter Gabriel), Camel, Quicksilver Messenger Service ...
Since then, I've tried to widen my range of music: Neil Young, David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joni Mitchell, Al Stewart, The Police, Elton John, T.Rex, Dire Straits, Jefferson Airplane, Freddie King, J.J. Cale, Robin Trower, Rainbow, Whitesnake, and literally, hundreds, too many to mention.
Another friend gave me some fusion albums, and I discovered groups like The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Jean-Luc Ponty, Billy Cobham, Larry Coryell, and the genius of Jeff Beck. I also like jazz, mainly guitar or piano trios (Jimmy Raney, Oscar Peterson, Geri Allen, Wes Montgomery), although I wouldn't call myself a jazz expert. I also like Billie Holiday a lot.
In the hard'n'heavy camp, I've also made a lot of fantastic discoveries, including some of the finest guitarists I've heard in my life: UFO (with Michael Schenker), Scorpions (with Uli Jon Roth), Thin Lizzy (with Gary Moore and Scott Gorham, not forgetting one of the finest singers, the late and missed Phil Lynott), Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne (with Randy Rhoads & Jake E. Lee), Van Halen, Vandenberg (with Adrian Vandenberg) ...
Then compact discs were invented, and, in the beginning, it wasn't easy to get CDs of the artists I've mentioned. Fortunately, many of them are now available in this format. But many of my favourite albums I have only on vinyl, but someday I'll be able to get them all on CD (an expensive task, I realise).
More styles I like and enjoy nowadays: folk and folk rock (Magna Carta, Renaissance, Fairport Convention, Pentangle), soul (Sam Cooke, James Brown, The Supremes), pure rock and roll (Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis), British sixties pop (The Kinks, Small Faces, Hollies, Manfred Mann, The Sorrows, The Searchers), American seventies groups (Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steve Miller Band, Santana, Steely Dan, Eagles), more groups from the seventies (Status Quo, 10CC, the fantastic Procol Harum, Be-Bop de Luxe, Man, Alan Parsons, Traffic), power pop of the eighties (The Motels, Greg Kihn, Donnie Iris, Scandal, Taxxi), another ones I don't know how to categorize (Angra, Dream Theater, Stratovarius), and new age (Nightnoise, Steve Kindler. And my favourite in this style: I love Enya, she's VERY special to me).
It would be easier for me to answer the question: which ones don't you like? The answer is short, I enjoy many styles of music, but I don't like techno or dance music (except a very few artists), and now it saddens me to contemplate the new style of recording and production heavy metal music has recently embraced: I don't like samples or recordings, I love musicians, not machines, so I'll always prefer a real drummer to a drum machine, and I want to hear real guitar players, not pre-recorded riffs.
My last choice? These days, I particularly enjoy guitar albums by Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and some other players, such as Vinnie Moore, Carl Verheyen, Joey Tafolla, Eric Johnson, Jeff Watson, Steve Morse, Andy Timmons, Tony MacAlpine. I know they don't all play the same style, but I mean the overall 'feeling' of these albums, guitars, guitars, and more guitars... Great! They follow the path that was started by the great Jeff Beck.
My biggest hobby ambition has always been to write my own rock encyclopedia project (my nickname is "Dreamer", so I don't surrender...), and I started to write my own manuscripted pages around 1980, collecting and annotating all that I read or heard. But I had to abandon this task in 1984, due tl the studies and work taking a higher precedence. Since then, I've been accumulating hundreds of magazines, as well as books, encyclopedias and newspaper clippings. All the material is still dispersed, but with the aid of my new computer, I think that things will be better now (fingers crossed!). Maybe someday I can complete this project, who knows ...
Since the beginning of the Internet revolution, I found it easier to get info about some, let's just say, 'not-too-famous' groups and musicians, because I've been happy to notice and observe many 'crazy-heads' like me, who really love music, musicians and music history. I hope to find some of these fans through this site; so please, if you have the same interest as me, please, please, please, send me an e-mail message at mterol@gva.es
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Page created by Miguel Terol on: 22/October/1997. Last modified on: 15/March/2000.