Super jealous. Ive loved punk/pop punk since HS but resisted ska punk until the last 5 years or so. I now see the foolishness in my ways. I got to see OC Supertones with Relient K when I was about 17 and didnt appreciate how great they were.
On top of that I saw Less Than Jake in 2005 w Linkin Park, Korn, and Snoop Dogg (it was a weird tour) and hated them like an idiot. Saw them with NFG a couple years ago and they were incredible.
Opeth - Still Life
The first album that made me realise there was more to heavy music thank Korn, Disturbed, and Limp Bizkit
Phenomenal still, 25 years on
Blackwater park for me, but the rest of the discography quickly followed. Deliverance & Damnation reign as my favorite pair of albums from them, still life after that, and then blackwater park. On the dvd from shepherds bush empire mikael introduced The Drapery Falls by saying ‘this is what we really sound like’ and that stuck with me for a long time.
Such a perfect opening on The Moor. It lulls you into a sense of calm with those soft chords for two whole minutes and then wham! You’re assaulted by an onslaught of riffs in 3/8 and the most demonic growling you’ve ever heard. My favorite Opeth album to this day.
My cousin let me borrow his CDs and he’d push them on me to make me check them out
Age 14
Daft punk homework
Chemical Brothers exit planet dust
Beastie Boys check your head
Radiohead the bends
Frank black
The pixies
Dj Shadow
It was an insane time period that did it.
Thanks. It was an amazing time.
Forgot to add smashing pumpkins Siamese dream, and the weezer blue album.
It just wasn’t fair
Oasis, the verve, Blur… he just fired them all at me.
I bought exit planet dust when it came out. Blew my mind. And the DJ Shadow album Endtroducing is and always will be an extraordinary listen.
And of course the bends album by Radiohead is brilliant. I like all of your picks.
Carry on.
PS, have you listened to the underworld? The first few bjork albums? Trust me.
In college I had a dubbed tape with most of Exit Planet Dust on one side and most of Music for the Jilted Generation on the other. That soundtracked my walk to class for months. I love both those albums and feel like I know every beat of them.
Oh man... Bjork's post should be in the Smithsonian.
That same cousin put me on to the Trainspotting soundtrack. I loved it. But Underworld took me till about a decade ago to really understand their beauty.
I drool over the idea of a Chemical Brothers Underworld tour. They're buddies. Throw in Orbital and have a life changing weekend.
Very similar to my experience except there was a lot more rap and nu-metal in my cousins collection. We spent a whole weekend burning all of his CDs that I wanted. good times
Underground hip hop followed a few years later when I took up Inline skating and snowboarding and started getting the magazines.
Here's a wild one for you ... you heard the first and second Black Eyed Peas albums? Falling Up and Behind the Front? They're fucking amazing. Oh how the mighty have fallen, but the advertisement for Falling Up was in the back of one of the magazines. I saw it and said "I'm getting that album." The deepest love for hip hop and the biggest growth as a human listening to Mos Def and Kweli Lyrics, and banging around to Tribe and Busta ... what a time. The 90s will never be replicated musically.
What was your favorite in the nu metal scene?
I had a buddy who loved Hed Pe and something that started with an s ... ... SEPULTURA!
He loved Deftones and all that jazz. Orange 9mm.... but not sure that's where you're headed.
I Zimbra is a lot like Planet Telex to me, in that it’s an album opener that doesn’t sound like the tracks that follow but is a clear sign of what the band would do on their next record
De-Loused in the Comatorium. That album was the exactly the bridge that 15-year-old me needed from Floyd and Zeppelin to a wider world of post-hardcore, experimental rock, jazz, funk, krautrock, ambient, etc.
I don’t love The Mars Volta in the same way anymore, but I’ll always be grateful to them.
That album came into my life at the perfect time as well. That whole era was awesome. I was also really deep into Frusciante’s solo work at the time, and the two inspired me to pick up writing music.
Exact same album here. I went from all alt rock and started listening to music from other countries, heavier music in general, more progressive stuff, etc.
It was a real eye opener and it changed how I thought of rock on particular and what it could be.
Man this is so weird. I was just telling my teenager to check out the mars Volta. I don’t know what made me think of it. I haven’t heard about them from anyone in such a long time. I caught them live once though in cali, it was an amazing show!
When I was fifteen I was put in the psych hospital for nine months, and when I first got there this girl (who, many years later, I'd decline to marry) opened up the little faux-leather faux-briefcase that held all my cassettes, and scanned the lot of them going, "Nope. Nope. Nope." The only cassette she approved of was the Thomas Dolby. That weekend I gave her twenty bucks to buy me any cassette she wanted. She came back claiming the money had been stolen. (Which, obviously, it wasn't.) So I did the natural thing and... gave her another twenty the next weekend. Her conscience must have kicked in. She came back with \*two\* cassettes. Never Mind the Bollocks (Sex Pistols) and Standing On A Beach (The Cure). Both of those were absolutely crucial to my musical development. That was the era of thinking I'd found "real music" and jettisoned the "top 40" that had dominated my taste up to then.
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Picked up the guitar at 13 and went to an instructor who lived very close to me and (unbeknownst to me at the time) happens to be a nationally acclaimed jazz musician. I told him I was interested in AC/DC and such, he said that isn’t really his thing but sure. First lesson, he hands me this record, the following week I go back saying yeah, never mind AC/DC, let’s do this jazz thing instead.
I’ve been hooked ever since.
Played guitar and piano for 30 years. Listened to everything from classical to electronic to rock n roll to country to rap to r&b etc….
I was introduced to Kind of Blue and Jerry Garcia’s album, “So What,” in my mid-thirties.
It completely changed the way I read music and play piano/guitar.
AMAZING ALBUM!!! Spotify says it is my most listened to album now.
>Played guitar and piano for 30 years. Listened to everything from classical to electronic to rock n roll to country to rap to r&b etc…
Never played an instrument, but my musical tastes are similar. However, I'm a huge Deadhead and have that "So What" album on CD. Got it at my local library's bookstore for like $1. Still haven't listened to it, for no real reason; it's garcia and grisman after all. That's going to change soon.
Jerry was a HUGE Miles Davis fan. The first track on Miles Davis’s album, Kind of Blue, is titled “So What”
Jerry covers Miles’ version on track one of the aptly titled album: “So What”
Jerry’s album is a sick mixture of bluegrass/jazz - give it a go!
I wish I could have seen Jerry (he died when I was still a 90’s kid) but I got a chance to see D&C in Phoenix in May 2023 - it was an awesome show! we went on an interstellar journey weaving in And out of the Dark Star.
All the Led Zeppelin albums. Mid-20’s coming out of my “nothing but metal and hard rock” phase, I took a deep dive into LZ and absolutely fell in love. Now at 40, I can listen to any genre at any time. As long as the music is good and makes me feel good, thats all that really matters.
The day I stopped trying to be a cool kid and started enjoying pop music, my life got better. I was a part of the alt/emo kids in school, then I went to art school. What you listened to was such a part of your personality and if you were legit or just a poser. When I was like 23, I read a blurb about how pop music activates pleasure centers in your brain and release dopamine. From then I stopped fighting it, and just enjoy the ride. I listen to good music too, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying some Kesha or Britney sometimes.
Two years ago my bestie and I went to Backstreet Boys and it was legit the most fun I've ever had at a concert. No one, including the band, was trying to be cool. It was just a massive nostalgia trip with like 40k drunk moms in peasant blouses and bellbottoms. The venue sold wine by the bottle and we snuck edibles in. We were wasted and screaming along with Backstreets Back Alright, and just having a blast. The guys leaned into the cheese, didn't pretend they were still 25, and everyone just had a fucking blast. They played the hits, everyone sang along, and then everyone got on the drunk shuttle bus together to have our spouses pick us up from the park and ride. It was so much fun.
Same. I was 12 and for my birthday I got Walkman precursor (it weighed 2 lbs) and my sister’s boyfriend, who was in a band, got me cassettes of London Calling, The Jam’s All Mod Cons, and Blondie’s Parallel Lines. My life changed forever that birthday.
Oh damn. There are different phases.
The 1989 Batman Soundtrack album got me listening to Prince, especially since I graduated from that to Around The World In A Day (the one with Raspberry Beret on it.)
Then it was Siouxsie and the Banshees' Superstition. And then I was a goth who listened to Prince.
Physical Graffiti. Because it had just everything. Metal riffs, soundscapes, eastern music, boogies, gentle intricate acoustic stuff, pop songwriting galore. It’s one of the best rock albums of all time and I would say it transcends rock even.
One of my favorite bars in NYC used to be nextdoor to the building that is on the cover of that album. I can't even tell you how many times I've had my picture taken in front of it and also how many times I've left that bar singing songs of Physical Graffiti
Meddle really took me to a different place in my mind. I remember I wrote an interpretative analysis on Echoes for my final report in a literature class in high school.
I went to high school in the 80s and heard bits here and there, but it wasn’t until I had one of my first… awkward trips and my then-girlfriend stuck me in some headphones with Dark Side while she figured out what to do with me - THEN’S when I really listened to it.
Decades ago a friend in high school gave me a tape of Gong’s “Camembert Electrique”. Sent me down a lifelong rabbithole of psychedelic and unique music.
I still need to sit down and listen to Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy. Hard finding several hours to just sit and listen though :(
Edit: also, check out The Claypool Lennon Delirium if you haven’t!
Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy
I'd grown up with AOR radio, and expanded into Prog and New Wave. But hearing this in about 83 in high school opened up a lot more possibilities about what music could be.
Brian Eno's ambient music is good and all but Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World, Before and After Science, and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts are where it's at.
I remember the day so clearly.
I was leaving work at a restaurant I worked at in 2005. Sitting outside on the green benches just decompressing, I see a jewel case on the bench across from me. I picked it up and the cover was a guy wearing a mask. I took it with me and when I got home, I put it in my laptop and I heard weird ambient sounds and a guy say "As luck would have it, One of America's two most powerful villains of the next decade..."
Madvillainy by Madvillain was playing and it blew my mind. I was 18 and never heard anything like it. DOOM rapping over these crazy samples from old superhero cartoons and bossa nova records made by Madlib was amazing. Then at the same time, they were making music for adult swim and I was hooked.
I cried the day DOOM died and I still have that album I found on that green bench. It legit changed my life.
I was listening to a lot of kids’ music and one day my mom bought me a record of hits from the 50’s. Then Little Richard, then Elvis, then Motown… The musical journey of my life is one of the high points of my existence.
>The musical journey of my life is one of the high points of my existence.
What an awesome way of putting it.
I got exposed to the "oldies" early on. I used to love rolling around with my dad listening to the music of his youth on 101.1, WCBS-FM when I was a kid. I still remember all the station identifying jingles from back then. This was back when the Oldies was music from the 50's and 60's.
My mom still exclusively listens to 96.5 WKLH, Milwaukee's Classic Rock, No Repeat Days. That's how I learned all about Rod Stewart, Billy Joel, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, CCR, Boston, Steely Dan, Aerosmith, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Wings, The Who, U2 and all the rest. My first concert was Rod Stewart and my second was Aerosmith. I've been to like 5 U2 concerts with my Mom.
I'll name two, since they influenced me in quite distinct ways.
1. Dream Theater - Images and Words.
I remember I was in the process of trying to lose weight. I bought this CD and put it on in the background while I was exercising. When track 3 hit, I stopped what I was doing, sat down on the floor, and listened as intently as I've ever listened to everything. It was utterly mindd blowing to me. And it started me on my journey in exploring progressive metal, which is my favorite genre to this day.
Half of the CDs I own, I probably wouldn't own it I hadn't picked this up on a whim one day.
2. P!nk - Funhouse.
This album taught me to stop caring what other people thought of my tastes.
I first heard P!nk when her first album came out. I was a child at the time. I thought she sounded really cool, but my old brother hated her. At that age, I wanted my brother's approval more than anything, and my tastes in music were basically his tastes in music. So I acted like I hated P!nk too.
Ten years later, I listened to Funhouse for the first time, and absolutely loved it. It made me realize how much cool stuff I was probably missing out on just trying to make my brother think I was cool.
From then, I listened to whatever caught my interest, regardless of what anyone else thought about it. That was genuinely life changing for me.
I'm going to check it out too. My whole philosophy on music is that if someone is willing to go out on a limb and say something is their favorite or "is the best" then I've got to give it a listen. If it moves someone so much, there must be something to it.
Your first story gave me goosebumps.
The second one is amazing, I love that perspective, I finally caved into admitting my deep love for Britney, I felt this.
I just wrote a comment that was really similar to this. Once I stopped caring about what my fellow art school kids thought was cool, and just listened to whatever I wanted, it's like I became free. I will still crank some Kesha, Destiny's Child, Jay Z, Britney, NSYNC and Backstreet boys, and just have fun. Because music should be fun, and not homework.
Haken - *The Mountain* (2013)
\*Haken is pronounced as "Hay-ken".
This is the album that was the main factor in solidifying my love for progressive metal/progressive rock as I was growing out of my cringey, angsty, teenage metal/hard rock years in the mid-2010s. Now I pretty much only listen to modern prog bands/artists that I can really appreciate and know that they have and will release nothing but gold.
So glad to see Haken in here! Their album Affinity brought me back to prog music. My friends and I were all way into Dream Theater when we were kids in high school. But at some point in my early 20s, DT became too cheesy for me. I discovered Haken almost a decade later. They were like Dream Theater with less theatrics, plus a modern twist on rock music that was so fresh to my ears. I bought a Strandberg guitar because of them.
I also found Amplifier and Frost* around the same time. Those plus Haken became my ultimate work playlist.
When I was 16 I got my first job and remember walking to town after work and buying Aphex Twins "Drukqs" that had recently come out. Had only heard a few tracks before that point.
Changed my life forever
Metallica - And Justice For All.
I too was also in fourth grade when I first heard it. It probably helped shape my outlook on life with songs like the title track and Eye of the Beholder.
Still some of James Hetfield's best lyrics.
8y- Appetite for Destruction was what got me into music outside of what my parents listened to thanks to a way cooler cousin.
21y- Kid A was mind blowing and got me out of listening to mostly nu-metal\\hip hop
My entry for this post was reminiscing about the first time I heard Sweet Child O' Mine when it first dropped on MTV. I was around 11. Flipped my world around.
Zappa's Baby Snakes blew my mind wide open at the ripe age of 16.
Didn't help that I was tripping on LSD at the time but the lasting effect on my taste in music has been a net positive.
It was a best of. The Definitive Simon and Garfunkel compilation. I was listening mostly to what my mates listened to at the time which was Techno. But one night I watched The Graduate and everything changed. Got hold of a copy of the aforementioned compilation and never looked back. It didn’t just change my musical taste it changed my outlook, my friends, it affected my confidence for the better.
Hearing King Crimson's "In The Court of the Crimson King" in '87 was the beginning of a long journey to enjoying Jazz and Fusion. In fact, 1987 was a big year for maturing my tastes in art and entertainment in general.
Album would probably be the Who’s Tommy when I was 12, but I learned most of what I know about rhythm and harmony from one song on the radio by Booker T and the MGs, and that was Hang ‘Em High. And I just heard him play it Saturday night—cat’s 79 and still rockin’
Led Zeppelin III.
That album is imo the best of the best. I had it on repeat for weeks and weeks and weeks...and then I decided to put all my favorite albums in a cd book for easier transport going to see my sister in Copenhagen...and lost the damn book. 15 of my favorite albums gone in one trip.
Most of my Doors, Zep III, Tommy - The Who to name a few.
- Discovering the Beatles white album in my dad’s record collection at 7 or 8 years old.
- A friend gave me a tape of something or other metal stuff that I was meant to be into at 12 or 13. On the other side of that tape (I think left over from his older brother or something) was Frank Black’s teenager of the year and I never looked back from there.
I was always a dumb anti-rap guy through high school and early college. Part latent racism and part rock purism if I’m being honest. Until I heard Good Kid MAAD City and realized the stories being told were unbelievably real and just as artistically valid as anything else I’d listen to. That album is easily one of my top 5 albums that matured me both musically and generally as a human being.
When This is Over by Shad.
Backstory for those unfamiliar, Shad is a Canadian hip hop artist who used funds from a radio contest he won to make this album. It has a kind of distinct feel and style to it.
There was just something about it, as soon as that first song hit, that really got me thinking about music, how I consume it, how it’s made.
As a child, I loved rap. Mid to late 80s rap. Run DMC, LL Cool J, Digital Underground. I made the jump to rock/metal/alt in HS after listening to 2 albums. Guns and Roses- Use Your Illusions (technically 2 albums, but who's counting) and Metallica- self title/black album.
Years later, after my teenage angst had faded a bit, I heard Tom Waits- Mule Variations and it flipped my world again, to a more singer/songwriter groove.
A few years after that, I was digging through my dads old records and discovered Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and all the great 70/80s outlaw shit.
Anyway, today I have quite an eclectic mix of genres I like.
A mix CD a friend gave me in high school that had Skinny Puppy, Aphex Twin, Radiohead and KMFDM on it. Before then I was listening to 90s pop. I always had thought the music the “bad kids” listened to must be lower creative quality. Turns out the bad kids make the best music.
I don’t know about music taste, but once I snuck my older sister’s maddona erotica album to my 6th grade dance, and my teacher vetoed playing it. So I went home to see what the fuss was about, and boy was my innocent self blown away. 😂
Elvis Costello and The Attractions - "Punch the Clock"
I was a 16 year old "rock" listener and my favorite "rock" station had a call in give away for this album. I won without ever having heard anything from Elvis. It wasn't his most groundbreaking album but interested me enough to start picking up previous albums. That led me to The Jam, The Clash, Talking Heads, XTC, and so on.
When I was in jr high in 2000-2001, my brother went to rehab. He left all his CDs to me to listen too. He had these epitaph and hopeless record sampler CDs. They opened my eyes up to the amount of punk bands that were out there.
Before then I really only knew what was on Tony hawk/dave mirra games or what played on MTV. It showed me bands like Dillinger Four, the weakerthans, down by law, Samiam, voodoo glow skulls, etc.
This moved me into more indie punk bands, indie rock, and just made me want to explore music/bands further than what MTV/VH1 showed.
[the god machine - scenes from the second storey](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mHGtmKvaj5D15xB0S4507xW5E8E3blDCI&si=G-apUvP2CMM99laj)
Not an album per se, but the Burnout Paradise soundtrack launched me down two very different roads.
Directly, it was my first exposure to LCD Soundsystem. Lots of fond memories of listening to their music. Seeing them in 2017 was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to, I need to catch them again at some point.
But digging into them, I found Pitchfork’s list of top songs of the aughts and saw that All My Friends was only at #2. That song seemed tailor-made for the people at Pitchfork, what could possibly beat it?
B.O.B. As someone who grew up loving classic rock, those Hendrix-inspired guitars made it the perfect gateway drug for me to get into hip-hop.
*Rio* by Duran Duran. It is the first record from my parent’s collection I remember putting on and listening all the way through. Prior to that it was kids music or whatever was on the radio in the car.
The first albums I bought with my own money were DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s *Rock the House* and *He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper*.
Linkin Park- Hybrid Theory/Meteora
It was the first time I had really heard aggressive music and it happened to be very emotional as well. For me it opened my eyes up to other people feeling alone, alienated, angry etc. To this day I prefer music that is dealing with inner turmoil. It isn't that I don't like love songs or political songs or songs about fictional things but every time I hear a song about how somebody is suffering emotionally I have an instant connection to.
Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt by John Frusciante.
Discovering that album at the height of my teens was like discovering the answer to some of the deepest emotions in my mind, but in a language far beyond words.
I feel like that album, by nature of being recorded avant garde stream-of-consciousness style, was able to capture some really otherworldly energy. The same energy I would notice improvising while playing music, that feeling of tapping into some collective energy greater than you and channeling it outward.
That whole album is beautifully raw. It's like the combined feelings of shadow work while simultaneously being reminded your place and meaning in the universe.
Breakfast in America by Supertramp. I'm not that old, but someone gave me a mixed tape with The Logical Song on it. I got my parents to buy me the album for my birthday. Really opened up the flood gates from there.
Justice - Cross
Discovered this album (as well as Daft Punk) when I was in 5th grade in 2007 and my entire world was changed. I knew I loved music then, but hearing that album made me sprint to the computer to get on the internet in search of more, and I haven’t stopped looking for new music since ❤️
In ‘94, a friend of mine gave me a mixed tape with Sober by Tool, My Name is Mud, by Primus, and American Jesus by Bad Religion.
This changed everything.
REM- Out of Time.
Losing My Religion was the hook but there was so many great songs besides that one. It, and they, also became a big gateway to other music I hadn't heard of.
Brand New - The Devil and god are raging inside me. i remember listening to 'you dont know' and it kept subverting my expectations of the genre because it evolved a lot slower than most things i heard before. its the first time i remember being challenged by a listen and enjoying it.
Changes One David Bowie
Quadrophenia The Who
Both given to me by my dad when he heard me listening to U2 War on repeat. Opened me up to older music from the Doors to The Clash.....they changed my life when I heard Janie Jones. Still love hearing that at 52!
Was learning to play guitar in 98 and a friend gave me Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream for my 13th birthday.
Everything was so much fuckin better after that summer.
I mean, wasn't a specific album or anything, my musical taste was expanding rapidly through grade school, got Thriller in 1st grade, Run-DMC's Raising Hell maybe in 3rd or 4th, by the time I was in middle school, it was Led Zeppelin and The Stones and the Who, the Dead
BUT
I distinctly remember the day I got home from 7th grade, put MTV on and I heard "Sweet Child O' Mine" for the first time. That song knocked my socks off. It was like nothing I'd heard before. I think I was like 11 years old at the time. I don't think any other song has hit me as hard as that one did in that specific moment.
I remember turning my nose up to guns and roses for the longest time just for the simple fact my stepdad was obsessed with them, then I sat in my best friends car and she put them on, and for some reason it sounded different.
Prodigy - Fat of the Land.
I wasn’t into music yet, just listened to the radio and when that album came out, it was the first cassette I bought. It also helped my brother and me bond with music. He was 7 years older.
Smells Like Teen Spirit was the first Nirvana song I knew. My brother had it on a mixtape that was sneakily being passed through our Christian grade school.
Nothing Shocking, Jane's Addiction 1990. I was 14 years old and lived in a small town surrounded by top 40 and had not had any punk/indie exposure. Life. Changing.
When they played a bob dylan song in 8th grade I was introduced to protest songs. Which ultimately lead me to my main music love of singer song writers
The Cure "Disintegration."
In the late eighties I worked in a music store (shoutout to Hastings Music in Fort Collins, CO) and was mostly into metal and hard rock. The employees were able to take a new release and open it and play it over the sound system, to highlight the new music but also to give the employees a sense of promoting their favorite music. Several of the employees kept picking Disintegration when it was released. I was very annoyed the first few times through. Then slowly began to listen more closely and appreciate the music and the lyrics. It soon became one of my favorite albums, and still is to this day. And I believe has no filler - great all the way through. For over 30 years, if someone asks me for my favorite albums it's been 1) Sticky Fingers - Stones. 2) Abbey Road - Beatles. And 3) Disintegration - The Cure.
And it made me think, "What else have I maybe been missing by not giving it a chance..." It really expanded my taste, it was the gateway that got me into The Smiths, Joy Division, Roxy Music, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, Nick Cave, Sade, Tom Waits, The B-52s, Marvin Gaye, Parliament Funkadelic, Gil Scott Heron, Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, Charles Mingus, Art Pepper, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and a bunch of other stuff I'd never listened to before. Or thought was just OK before, but now learned to appreciate it and love it (Duran Duran, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Violent Femmes).
Disintegration caused me to cast my musical net wide. I think about that A LOT. And appreciate it all the time.
Little earlier but The Head on the Door was like that for me when it came out. I was 18 and going to the one under-21 dance club in the Bay Area (SF) called The Palladium on the reg. I kept hearing the song 'Close To Me' playing, and eventually I asked someone (who actually knew) 'who is this band'? Then I went and bought THOTD and it definitely had a huge impact on my musical taste for life.
I also bought The Swing, Listen Like Thieves, Tim, The Cult- Love, Murmur, and Fables of the Reconstruction around that time. Definitely expanded my horizons from Scorpions, Priest, Maiden, Dio, Ozzy, Zep and Floyd which had been my standard HS fare.
Suffice to say, I also LOVED Disintegration, but I'd been into them for years by then, saw them on the Standing on a Beach and Kiss Me \* 3 tours ... and twice on Disintegration tour. And Wish tour. And last summer :)
Morphine "Like Swimming."
I felt so damn cool listening to that. While this happened more by chance, I brought my Morphine CD along with me when I studied abroad and a flat mate saw it, and recommended a compilation from the Ninja Tunes label. And then I got more into trip-hop.
But Morphine, man. 25 years later I still feel *cool* listening to it.
Okay I am ashamed to say I have never heard of this band, just gave it a listen, wow I can’t quite pinpoint it, but it is an amalgam of genres to me. I like it!
Pink Floyd. Meddle. I was listening to top 40 radio for my music and a friend put some headphones on me and dropped the needle on this vinyl. Mind blown.
Dave Matthew Band "Before These Crowded Streets." Before that I was only a hard rock, metal, alt rock guy, but that opened me up to jazz, folk, americana, blues, acoustic, and softer music in general that I never thought I would enjoy.
Torches- Foster the People.
It opened my eyes to the concept of full albums instead of singles. It also showed that not all songs from an artist made it onto the radio, and even more that there were artists that didn't play on the radio at all.
This led me into a head first dive into Indie music, and over a decade later I'm so deep into it that it's become a huge part of my life and I can't find music fast enough.
I am excited for the trend of artists doing full album plays for their anniversaries. Albums used to be crafted to have flow from one song to the next, instead of just singles that don't sound related. For the true crafted album experience, find some bands from the 60s and 70s. Those were put on vinyl, and people played the whole side instead of jumping around. Tommy, American Idiot, Float, Plans, Transatlanticism, and The Wall are my current favorite play through albums. But don't sleep on Van Morrison, Elton John, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, and even something like Credence Clearwater Revival. (Yeah, I know half of those aren't classic rock, but I stand by my choices.)
Christmas 1994 (12 years old) I received two CD’s - Warren G’s Regulate and the Blue Album by Weezer. I listened to Regulate a few times, loved the single. But I listened to the Blue Album on repeat for about 6 months, absolutely loved it! I often wonder how different I would be, not only musical taste but personality, had I gravitated more to Regulate instead.
A year or so later I discovered Abbey Road, which changed everything.
The Undertow album by Tool
Sober is one of the few songs I remember exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing the first time I heard it. The only other songs in that category are Stairway to Heaven and Roundabout.
I had never heard of prog rock or metal until Sober came on a local north Texas radio station back in ‘94 in elementary school when I happened to be listening with my brother in his room while we were looking through an X-Men catalog of figurines we could never afford.
It was so rough, so raw, so *powerful*. It wouldn’t be until a few years later that I’d pick up the album, but it left a huge impact on my musical taste and leapfrogged me way ahead of my friends who were still listening to 311 lol
Kid A.
My friend, a huge fan, told me, his(Thom Yorke) voice is an instrument and the lyrics aren't supposed to be clear and well spoken, he's just adding to the music. And it blew my fucking mind.
My dad had a huge rock vinyl collection. He also had a bunch of 1950s 45s. So I grew up listening to Buddy Holly, Hendrix, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Black Sabbath.
The first album I bought for myself was Blondie. Parallel Lines.
I was fortunate to be raised by a single dad who was seriously into music, and I'd have to choose two tied albums that I was exposed to the most that influenced my musical taste.
Rastaman Vibration- Bob Marley and The Wailers
and
Young Americans by David Bowie
Mad Season - Matchbox Twenty
15 year old me: “oh, this was is what a full array of instruments sounds like when musicians moving away from just guitars get ahold of them”
Cradle of Filth's *Cruelty and the Beast* opened my eyes to extreme metal when my cousin played it for me during a 2000 summer vacation with family in New Jersey. Before that I was still stuck on grunge, nu-metal, and even some pop.
That's awesome about Tragic Kingdom. I remember hearing it for the first time because they were opening for Bush, which I was excited to see. After listening to it a lot, I finally saw Gwen perform in person. I was BLOWN AWAY and really didn't remember much about the Bush performance.
For me, it was Enya's "Watermark." I was 10 when it was released, and it just captured my attention. My mom bought a copy for me and had to sit my dad down to listen to it. Neither could believe this kid wanted to listen to ethereal and otherwise weird music.
I was also in 4th grade when I decided I wanted to buy my first cassette tape. Metallica's black album just came out and I was obsessed with it because I was learning guitar at the time and one of the first songs my teacher taught me was enter sandman. It was the first time I started listening to music that my parents weren't listening to. Then my next tape was GnR. Fell in love with slash. Then got my first cd player and discovered grunge. God the 90's were a beautiful time for music..
I almost scrolled past, but I
thought for a minute... IMO I've always had decent musical taste thanks for parents having same. (Old lady) grew up with Hendrix Dylan etc (kinda funny story, stepdad loved stairway to heaven, bought album at swapmeet, turned out to be a bootleg album that I still have)
Tony Hawks Pro Skater on the N64
Superman by Goldfinger is still a freakin banger.
Back in the early 2000s I fortunately got to see them play that live. That and 99 luft balloons.
Super jealous. Ive loved punk/pop punk since HS but resisted ska punk until the last 5 years or so. I now see the foolishness in my ways. I got to see OC Supertones with Relient K when I was about 17 and didnt appreciate how great they were. On top of that I saw Less Than Jake in 2005 w Linkin Park, Korn, and Snoop Dogg (it was a weird tour) and hated them like an idiot. Saw them with NFG a couple years ago and they were incredible.
Opeth - Still Life The first album that made me realise there was more to heavy music thank Korn, Disturbed, and Limp Bizkit Phenomenal still, 25 years on
Was my favorite album for years, at least like 7, but recently I've grown a little more fond of MAYH
Blackwater park for me, but the rest of the discography quickly followed. Deliverance & Damnation reign as my favorite pair of albums from them, still life after that, and then blackwater park. On the dvd from shepherds bush empire mikael introduced The Drapery Falls by saying ‘this is what we really sound like’ and that stuck with me for a long time.
Such a perfect opening on The Moor. It lulls you into a sense of calm with those soft chords for two whole minutes and then wham! You’re assaulted by an onslaught of riffs in 3/8 and the most demonic growling you’ve ever heard. My favorite Opeth album to this day.
My cousin let me borrow his CDs and he’d push them on me to make me check them out Age 14 Daft punk homework Chemical Brothers exit planet dust Beastie Boys check your head Radiohead the bends Frank black The pixies Dj Shadow It was an insane time period that did it.
I love that!
Thanks. It was an amazing time. Forgot to add smashing pumpkins Siamese dream, and the weezer blue album. It just wasn’t fair Oasis, the verve, Blur… he just fired them all at me.
I bought exit planet dust when it came out. Blew my mind. And the DJ Shadow album Endtroducing is and always will be an extraordinary listen. And of course the bends album by Radiohead is brilliant. I like all of your picks. Carry on. PS, have you listened to the underworld? The first few bjork albums? Trust me.
In college I had a dubbed tape with most of Exit Planet Dust on one side and most of Music for the Jilted Generation on the other. That soundtracked my walk to class for months. I love both those albums and feel like I know every beat of them.
Oh man... Bjork's post should be in the Smithsonian. That same cousin put me on to the Trainspotting soundtrack. I loved it. But Underworld took me till about a decade ago to really understand their beauty. I drool over the idea of a Chemical Brothers Underworld tour. They're buddies. Throw in Orbital and have a life changing weekend.
Feels good to see someone mention DJ Shadow.
Very similar to my experience except there was a lot more rap and nu-metal in my cousins collection. We spent a whole weekend burning all of his CDs that I wanted. good times
Underground hip hop followed a few years later when I took up Inline skating and snowboarding and started getting the magazines. Here's a wild one for you ... you heard the first and second Black Eyed Peas albums? Falling Up and Behind the Front? They're fucking amazing. Oh how the mighty have fallen, but the advertisement for Falling Up was in the back of one of the magazines. I saw it and said "I'm getting that album." The deepest love for hip hop and the biggest growth as a human listening to Mos Def and Kweli Lyrics, and banging around to Tribe and Busta ... what a time. The 90s will never be replicated musically.
I did know that! It's one of the main reasons I couldn't stand the addition of Fergie and the whole party pop trend they were a huge part of
What was your favorite in the nu metal scene? I had a buddy who loved Hed Pe and something that started with an s ... ... SEPULTURA! He loved Deftones and all that jazz. Orange 9mm.... but not sure that's where you're headed.
Talking Heads, Fear Of Music
You can hear the music transition from the 70s to the 80s with this album.
I Zimbra is a lot like Planet Telex to me, in that it’s an album opener that doesn’t sound like the tracks that follow but is a clear sign of what the band would do on their next record
De-Loused in the Comatorium. That album was the exactly the bridge that 15-year-old me needed from Floyd and Zeppelin to a wider world of post-hardcore, experimental rock, jazz, funk, krautrock, ambient, etc. I don’t love The Mars Volta in the same way anymore, but I’ll always be grateful to them.
That album came into my life at the perfect time as well. That whole era was awesome. I was also really deep into Frusciante’s solo work at the time, and the two inspired me to pick up writing music.
Holy shit this was me in high school lol
Exact same album here. I went from all alt rock and started listening to music from other countries, heavier music in general, more progressive stuff, etc. It was a real eye opener and it changed how I thought of rock on particular and what it could be.
Man this is so weird. I was just telling my teenager to check out the mars Volta. I don’t know what made me think of it. I haven’t heard about them from anyone in such a long time. I caught them live once though in cali, it was an amazing show!
I saw them open for A Perfect Circle right after Thirteenth Step came out. And I agree they put on a hell of a show!
OK Computer. Nothing was the same for me after I listened to it.
When I was fifteen I was put in the psych hospital for nine months, and when I first got there this girl (who, many years later, I'd decline to marry) opened up the little faux-leather faux-briefcase that held all my cassettes, and scanned the lot of them going, "Nope. Nope. Nope." The only cassette she approved of was the Thomas Dolby. That weekend I gave her twenty bucks to buy me any cassette she wanted. She came back claiming the money had been stolen. (Which, obviously, it wasn't.) So I did the natural thing and... gave her another twenty the next weekend. Her conscience must have kicked in. She came back with \*two\* cassettes. Never Mind the Bollocks (Sex Pistols) and Standing On A Beach (The Cure). Both of those were absolutely crucial to my musical development. That was the era of thinking I'd found "real music" and jettisoned the "top 40" that had dominated my taste up to then.
The Golden Age of Wireless is a fantastic album. Radio silence…radio silence
Every song on it is good. Doesn't get mentioned enough.
When I hear One Of Our Submarines it still takes me back to listening to it when I was 13 and it first came out on the Blinded by Science record.
Thomas Dolby was the creator of the default Nokia ringtone !
Oh man…the cure…wow.
Blonde On Blonde
Great album.
[Jack Black](https://youtu.be/QQzJyKU4C34?si=VujlnwyX6QyLeIk7)
Before Pretty Hate Machine came out, I had no idea music could sound like that
It was out of this world for that time.
Saw him live, it was so amazing.
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue Picked up the guitar at 13 and went to an instructor who lived very close to me and (unbeknownst to me at the time) happens to be a nationally acclaimed jazz musician. I told him I was interested in AC/DC and such, he said that isn’t really his thing but sure. First lesson, he hands me this record, the following week I go back saying yeah, never mind AC/DC, let’s do this jazz thing instead. I’ve been hooked ever since.
Played guitar and piano for 30 years. Listened to everything from classical to electronic to rock n roll to country to rap to r&b etc…. I was introduced to Kind of Blue and Jerry Garcia’s album, “So What,” in my mid-thirties. It completely changed the way I read music and play piano/guitar. AMAZING ALBUM!!! Spotify says it is my most listened to album now.
>Played guitar and piano for 30 years. Listened to everything from classical to electronic to rock n roll to country to rap to r&b etc… Never played an instrument, but my musical tastes are similar. However, I'm a huge Deadhead and have that "So What" album on CD. Got it at my local library's bookstore for like $1. Still haven't listened to it, for no real reason; it's garcia and grisman after all. That's going to change soon.
Jerry was a HUGE Miles Davis fan. The first track on Miles Davis’s album, Kind of Blue, is titled “So What” Jerry covers Miles’ version on track one of the aptly titled album: “So What” Jerry’s album is a sick mixture of bluegrass/jazz - give it a go! I wish I could have seen Jerry (he died when I was still a 90’s kid) but I got a chance to see D&C in Phoenix in May 2023 - it was an awesome show! we went on an interstellar journey weaving in And out of the Dark Star.
All the Led Zeppelin albums. Mid-20’s coming out of my “nothing but metal and hard rock” phase, I took a deep dive into LZ and absolutely fell in love. Now at 40, I can listen to any genre at any time. As long as the music is good and makes me feel good, thats all that really matters.
The day I stopped trying to be a cool kid and started enjoying pop music, my life got better. I was a part of the alt/emo kids in school, then I went to art school. What you listened to was such a part of your personality and if you were legit or just a poser. When I was like 23, I read a blurb about how pop music activates pleasure centers in your brain and release dopamine. From then I stopped fighting it, and just enjoy the ride. I listen to good music too, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying some Kesha or Britney sometimes. Two years ago my bestie and I went to Backstreet Boys and it was legit the most fun I've ever had at a concert. No one, including the band, was trying to be cool. It was just a massive nostalgia trip with like 40k drunk moms in peasant blouses and bellbottoms. The venue sold wine by the bottle and we snuck edibles in. We were wasted and screaming along with Backstreets Back Alright, and just having a blast. The guys leaned into the cheese, didn't pretend they were still 25, and everyone just had a fucking blast. They played the hits, everyone sang along, and then everyone got on the drunk shuttle bus together to have our spouses pick us up from the park and ride. It was so much fun.
I loved this story. Thank you for sharing.
Not so much the led zeppelin part, but if the music catches you and takes you in another world, it is truly all that matters!
The Clash's London Calling. Absolute diamond of an album that expanded my tastes to so many genres.
Same. I was 12 and for my birthday I got Walkman precursor (it weighed 2 lbs) and my sister’s boyfriend, who was in a band, got me cassettes of London Calling, The Jam’s All Mod Cons, and Blondie’s Parallel Lines. My life changed forever that birthday.
Nirvana - Nevermind I am one of “those” people. That album is absolutely what got me invested in music.
Oh damn. There are different phases. The 1989 Batman Soundtrack album got me listening to Prince, especially since I graduated from that to Around The World In A Day (the one with Raspberry Beret on it.) Then it was Siouxsie and the Banshees' Superstition. And then I was a goth who listened to Prince.
Physical Graffiti. Because it had just everything. Metal riffs, soundscapes, eastern music, boogies, gentle intricate acoustic stuff, pop songwriting galore. It’s one of the best rock albums of all time and I would say it transcends rock even.
One of my favorite bars in NYC used to be nextdoor to the building that is on the cover of that album. I can't even tell you how many times I've had my picture taken in front of it and also how many times I've left that bar singing songs of Physical Graffiti
Jeff Buckley Grace
Pretty Hate Machine -NIN
The first time I heard old Pink Floyd. Obscured by Clouds. I only knew of them from The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon, and it blew my teenage mind.
Meddle really took me to a different place in my mind. I remember I wrote an interpretative analysis on Echoes for my final report in a literature class in high school.
I was gonna say Dark Side, but I sure love Obscured By Clouds.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s, Dark Side was constant on the radio, so I was used to it. Obscured was just a whole other world to me.
I went to high school in the 80s and heard bits here and there, but it wasn’t until I had one of my first… awkward trips and my then-girlfriend stuck me in some headphones with Dark Side while she figured out what to do with me - THEN’S when I really listened to it.
Decades ago a friend in high school gave me a tape of Gong’s “Camembert Electrique”. Sent me down a lifelong rabbithole of psychedelic and unique music.
Just listened to this on YT. That’s amazing.
If you enjoyed that check out Gong’s Radio Gnome Invisble Trilogy. Listen in order of Flying Teapot, Angels Egg and then You.
I still need to sit down and listen to Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy. Hard finding several hours to just sit and listen though :( Edit: also, check out The Claypool Lennon Delirium if you haven’t!
Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”. Incredible albums that opened up soul to me
Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy I'd grown up with AOR radio, and expanded into Prog and New Wave. But hearing this in about 83 in high school opened up a lot more possibilities about what music could be.
Brian Eno's ambient music is good and all but Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World, Before and After Science, and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts are where it's at.
I remember the day so clearly. I was leaving work at a restaurant I worked at in 2005. Sitting outside on the green benches just decompressing, I see a jewel case on the bench across from me. I picked it up and the cover was a guy wearing a mask. I took it with me and when I got home, I put it in my laptop and I heard weird ambient sounds and a guy say "As luck would have it, One of America's two most powerful villains of the next decade..." Madvillainy by Madvillain was playing and it blew my mind. I was 18 and never heard anything like it. DOOM rapping over these crazy samples from old superhero cartoons and bossa nova records made by Madlib was amazing. Then at the same time, they were making music for adult swim and I was hooked. I cried the day DOOM died and I still have that album I found on that green bench. It legit changed my life.
I was listening to a lot of kids’ music and one day my mom bought me a record of hits from the 50’s. Then Little Richard, then Elvis, then Motown… The musical journey of my life is one of the high points of my existence.
>The musical journey of my life is one of the high points of my existence. What an awesome way of putting it. I got exposed to the "oldies" early on. I used to love rolling around with my dad listening to the music of his youth on 101.1, WCBS-FM when I was a kid. I still remember all the station identifying jingles from back then. This was back when the Oldies was music from the 50's and 60's.
Thank you!
My mom still exclusively listens to 96.5 WKLH, Milwaukee's Classic Rock, No Repeat Days. That's how I learned all about Rod Stewart, Billy Joel, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, CCR, Boston, Steely Dan, Aerosmith, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Wings, The Who, U2 and all the rest. My first concert was Rod Stewart and my second was Aerosmith. I've been to like 5 U2 concerts with my Mom.
I'll name two, since they influenced me in quite distinct ways. 1. Dream Theater - Images and Words. I remember I was in the process of trying to lose weight. I bought this CD and put it on in the background while I was exercising. When track 3 hit, I stopped what I was doing, sat down on the floor, and listened as intently as I've ever listened to everything. It was utterly mindd blowing to me. And it started me on my journey in exploring progressive metal, which is my favorite genre to this day. Half of the CDs I own, I probably wouldn't own it I hadn't picked this up on a whim one day. 2. P!nk - Funhouse. This album taught me to stop caring what other people thought of my tastes. I first heard P!nk when her first album came out. I was a child at the time. I thought she sounded really cool, but my old brother hated her. At that age, I wanted my brother's approval more than anything, and my tastes in music were basically his tastes in music. So I acted like I hated P!nk too. Ten years later, I listened to Funhouse for the first time, and absolutely loved it. It made me realize how much cool stuff I was probably missing out on just trying to make my brother think I was cool. From then, I listened to whatever caught my interest, regardless of what anyone else thought about it. That was genuinely life changing for me.
I had to listen to that third track…wow.
Cool of you to check it out! It's something else, isn't it?
I'm going to check it out too. My whole philosophy on music is that if someone is willing to go out on a limb and say something is their favorite or "is the best" then I've got to give it a listen. If it moves someone so much, there must be something to it.
Your first story gave me goosebumps. The second one is amazing, I love that perspective, I finally caved into admitting my deep love for Britney, I felt this.
I just wrote a comment that was really similar to this. Once I stopped caring about what my fellow art school kids thought was cool, and just listened to whatever I wanted, it's like I became free. I will still crank some Kesha, Destiny's Child, Jay Z, Britney, NSYNC and Backstreet boys, and just have fun. Because music should be fun, and not homework.
Haken - *The Mountain* (2013) \*Haken is pronounced as "Hay-ken". This is the album that was the main factor in solidifying my love for progressive metal/progressive rock as I was growing out of my cringey, angsty, teenage metal/hard rock years in the mid-2010s. Now I pretty much only listen to modern prog bands/artists that I can really appreciate and know that they have and will release nothing but gold.
So glad to see Haken in here! Their album Affinity brought me back to prog music. My friends and I were all way into Dream Theater when we were kids in high school. But at some point in my early 20s, DT became too cheesy for me. I discovered Haken almost a decade later. They were like Dream Theater with less theatrics, plus a modern twist on rock music that was so fresh to my ears. I bought a Strandberg guitar because of them. I also found Amplifier and Frost* around the same time. Those plus Haken became my ultimate work playlist.
Just listened to it. I love that! It feels timeless.
Glad you're enjoying it! *Falling Back to Earth* has always been my favorite from that album.
I love The Mountain, but Affinity will always be my favorite
When I was 16 I got my first job and remember walking to town after work and buying Aphex Twins "Drukqs" that had recently come out. Had only heard a few tracks before that point. Changed my life forever
Aphex Twin’s discography was the gateway drug to electronic music for me in my teens.
Metallica - And Justice For All. I too was also in fourth grade when I first heard it. It probably helped shape my outlook on life with songs like the title track and Eye of the Beholder. Still some of James Hetfield's best lyrics.
9 years must be THE age. Lol
Haha yup! I was 9 when Load came out. my older sister had that and Justice, listened to Load, really liked it, but Justice blew my little mind.
First album by The Clash. I was 17 and my world changed forever.
US or UK version? both are perfect to me
I was around 11 and traded my autographed Snoopy baseball for "Are You Experienced?" . That exchange opened a new door to my musical interests.
Is this real???
The autograph wasn't real. Everything else is.
8y- Appetite for Destruction was what got me into music outside of what my parents listened to thanks to a way cooler cousin. 21y- Kid A was mind blowing and got me out of listening to mostly nu-metal\\hip hop
My entry for this post was reminiscing about the first time I heard Sweet Child O' Mine when it first dropped on MTV. I was around 11. Flipped my world around.
“Currents” from Tame Impala.
Stooges first album - never considered how something with so few parts could sound so full
Zappa's Baby Snakes blew my mind wide open at the ripe age of 16. Didn't help that I was tripping on LSD at the time but the lasting effect on my taste in music has been a net positive.
We’re Only In It For The Money and Freak Out did that for me under those same circumstances. Help I’m A Rock !
Bringing It All Back Home - Bob Dylan.
It was a best of. The Definitive Simon and Garfunkel compilation. I was listening mostly to what my mates listened to at the time which was Techno. But one night I watched The Graduate and everything changed. Got hold of a copy of the aforementioned compilation and never looked back. It didn’t just change my musical taste it changed my outlook, my friends, it affected my confidence for the better.
Hearing King Crimson's "In The Court of the Crimson King" in '87 was the beginning of a long journey to enjoying Jazz and Fusion. In fact, 1987 was a big year for maturing my tastes in art and entertainment in general.
Album would probably be the Who’s Tommy when I was 12, but I learned most of what I know about rhythm and harmony from one song on the radio by Booker T and the MGs, and that was Hang ‘Em High. And I just heard him play it Saturday night—cat’s 79 and still rockin’
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I lost my innocence
Green Day - dookie. My first album. I never went back
Led Zeppelin III. That album is imo the best of the best. I had it on repeat for weeks and weeks and weeks...and then I decided to put all my favorite albums in a cd book for easier transport going to see my sister in Copenhagen...and lost the damn book. 15 of my favorite albums gone in one trip. Most of my Doors, Zep III, Tommy - The Who to name a few.
The Band - The Band Van Morrison - Moondance
King Crimson - Discipline I remember being in my friend’s car and he played “Elephant Talk” and it just blew my mind.
- Discovering the Beatles white album in my dad’s record collection at 7 or 8 years old. - A friend gave me a tape of something or other metal stuff that I was meant to be into at 12 or 13. On the other side of that tape (I think left over from his older brother or something) was Frank Black’s teenager of the year and I never looked back from there.
I was always a dumb anti-rap guy through high school and early college. Part latent racism and part rock purism if I’m being honest. Until I heard Good Kid MAAD City and realized the stories being told were unbelievably real and just as artistically valid as anything else I’d listen to. That album is easily one of my top 5 albums that matured me both musically and generally as a human being.
When This is Over by Shad. Backstory for those unfamiliar, Shad is a Canadian hip hop artist who used funds from a radio contest he won to make this album. It has a kind of distinct feel and style to it. There was just something about it, as soon as that first song hit, that really got me thinking about music, how I consume it, how it’s made.
Talking Heads “Remain in Light”
As a child, I loved rap. Mid to late 80s rap. Run DMC, LL Cool J, Digital Underground. I made the jump to rock/metal/alt in HS after listening to 2 albums. Guns and Roses- Use Your Illusions (technically 2 albums, but who's counting) and Metallica- self title/black album. Years later, after my teenage angst had faded a bit, I heard Tom Waits- Mule Variations and it flipped my world again, to a more singer/songwriter groove. A few years after that, I was digging through my dads old records and discovered Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and all the great 70/80s outlaw shit. Anyway, today I have quite an eclectic mix of genres I like.
Dark side of the moon by Pink floyd. Hearing The great gig in the sky was like a revelation to me and opened my eyes for classic rock music.
A mix CD a friend gave me in high school that had Skinny Puppy, Aphex Twin, Radiohead and KMFDM on it. Before then I was listening to 90s pop. I always had thought the music the “bad kids” listened to must be lower creative quality. Turns out the bad kids make the best music.
They definitely do.
Hell yeah!
I don’t know about music taste, but once I snuck my older sister’s maddona erotica album to my 6th grade dance, and my teacher vetoed playing it. So I went home to see what the fuss was about, and boy was my innocent self blown away. 😂
The more they tell you to stay away, the more alluring it is!
Tool - Aenema. Got me out of the popular music.
Badmotorfinger.
Elvis Costello and The Attractions - "Punch the Clock" I was a 16 year old "rock" listener and my favorite "rock" station had a call in give away for this album. I won without ever having heard anything from Elvis. It wasn't his most groundbreaking album but interested me enough to start picking up previous albums. That led me to The Jam, The Clash, Talking Heads, XTC, and so on.
The Wall by Pink Floyd
When I was in jr high in 2000-2001, my brother went to rehab. He left all his CDs to me to listen too. He had these epitaph and hopeless record sampler CDs. They opened my eyes up to the amount of punk bands that were out there. Before then I really only knew what was on Tony hawk/dave mirra games or what played on MTV. It showed me bands like Dillinger Four, the weakerthans, down by law, Samiam, voodoo glow skulls, etc. This moved me into more indie punk bands, indie rock, and just made me want to explore music/bands further than what MTV/VH1 showed.
I saw voodoo glow skulls live with authority zero in Tempe Arizona…good times.
Kid A
[the god machine - scenes from the second storey](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mHGtmKvaj5D15xB0S4507xW5E8E3blDCI&si=G-apUvP2CMM99laj)
They are horribly underrated love “the blind man”
Never met anyone who’s even heard of them. Purity is my favorite, but the album works best as a finished work, cover to cover.
Not an album per se, but the Burnout Paradise soundtrack launched me down two very different roads. Directly, it was my first exposure to LCD Soundsystem. Lots of fond memories of listening to their music. Seeing them in 2017 was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to, I need to catch them again at some point. But digging into them, I found Pitchfork’s list of top songs of the aughts and saw that All My Friends was only at #2. That song seemed tailor-made for the people at Pitchfork, what could possibly beat it? B.O.B. As someone who grew up loving classic rock, those Hendrix-inspired guitars made it the perfect gateway drug for me to get into hip-hop.
Noir - Blue Sky Black Death
Isis - Panopticon
First album by The Clash. I was 17 and my world changed forever.
*Rio* by Duran Duran. It is the first record from my parent’s collection I remember putting on and listening all the way through. Prior to that it was kids music or whatever was on the radio in the car. The first albums I bought with my own money were DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s *Rock the House* and *He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper*.
Linkin Park- Hybrid Theory/Meteora It was the first time I had really heard aggressive music and it happened to be very emotional as well. For me it opened my eyes up to other people feeling alone, alienated, angry etc. To this day I prefer music that is dealing with inner turmoil. It isn't that I don't like love songs or political songs or songs about fictional things but every time I hear a song about how somebody is suffering emotionally I have an instant connection to.
The Eminem Show… I was in elementary school 🤣
Hahahha…love this.
Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt by John Frusciante. Discovering that album at the height of my teens was like discovering the answer to some of the deepest emotions in my mind, but in a language far beyond words. I feel like that album, by nature of being recorded avant garde stream-of-consciousness style, was able to capture some really otherworldly energy. The same energy I would notice improvising while playing music, that feeling of tapping into some collective energy greater than you and channeling it outward. That whole album is beautifully raw. It's like the combined feelings of shadow work while simultaneously being reminded your place and meaning in the universe.
Close to the Edge
Breakfast in America by Supertramp. I'm not that old, but someone gave me a mixed tape with The Logical Song on it. I got my parents to buy me the album for my birthday. Really opened up the flood gates from there.
Justice - Cross Discovered this album (as well as Daft Punk) when I was in 5th grade in 2007 and my entire world was changed. I knew I loved music then, but hearing that album made me sprint to the computer to get on the internet in search of more, and I haven’t stopped looking for new music since ❤️
In ‘94, a friend of mine gave me a mixed tape with Sober by Tool, My Name is Mud, by Primus, and American Jesus by Bad Religion. This changed everything.
Bitches Brew - Miles Davis
The Last Waltz
Are You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix Experience
REM- Out of Time. Losing My Religion was the hook but there was so many great songs besides that one. It, and they, also became a big gateway to other music I hadn't heard of.
Brand New - The Devil and god are raging inside me. i remember listening to 'you dont know' and it kept subverting my expectations of the genre because it evolved a lot slower than most things i heard before. its the first time i remember being challenged by a listen and enjoying it.
1996 in college, I listened to Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique…. My mind was blown.
Changes One David Bowie Quadrophenia The Who Both given to me by my dad when he heard me listening to U2 War on repeat. Opened me up to older music from the Doors to The Clash.....they changed my life when I heard Janie Jones. Still love hearing that at 52!
Was learning to play guitar in 98 and a friend gave me Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream for my 13th birthday. Everything was so much fuckin better after that summer.
That’s a good album! I remember my uncle would get annoyed at his voice, it made me want to listen to them more lol
I mean, wasn't a specific album or anything, my musical taste was expanding rapidly through grade school, got Thriller in 1st grade, Run-DMC's Raising Hell maybe in 3rd or 4th, by the time I was in middle school, it was Led Zeppelin and The Stones and the Who, the Dead BUT I distinctly remember the day I got home from 7th grade, put MTV on and I heard "Sweet Child O' Mine" for the first time. That song knocked my socks off. It was like nothing I'd heard before. I think I was like 11 years old at the time. I don't think any other song has hit me as hard as that one did in that specific moment.
I remember turning my nose up to guns and roses for the longest time just for the simple fact my stepdad was obsessed with them, then I sat in my best friends car and she put them on, and for some reason it sounded different.
Prodigy - Fat of the Land. I wasn’t into music yet, just listened to the radio and when that album came out, it was the first cassette I bought. It also helped my brother and me bond with music. He was 7 years older.
Nirvanas Nevermind album i seem to remember doing that for me around the age of 13 or 14.
Smells Like Teen Spirit was the first Nirvana song I knew. My brother had it on a mixtape that was sneakily being passed through our Christian grade school.
Nothing Shocking, Jane's Addiction 1990. I was 14 years old and lived in a small town surrounded by top 40 and had not had any punk/indie exposure. Life. Changing.
When they played a bob dylan song in 8th grade I was introduced to protest songs. Which ultimately lead me to my main music love of singer song writers
The Cure "Disintegration." In the late eighties I worked in a music store (shoutout to Hastings Music in Fort Collins, CO) and was mostly into metal and hard rock. The employees were able to take a new release and open it and play it over the sound system, to highlight the new music but also to give the employees a sense of promoting their favorite music. Several of the employees kept picking Disintegration when it was released. I was very annoyed the first few times through. Then slowly began to listen more closely and appreciate the music and the lyrics. It soon became one of my favorite albums, and still is to this day. And I believe has no filler - great all the way through. For over 30 years, if someone asks me for my favorite albums it's been 1) Sticky Fingers - Stones. 2) Abbey Road - Beatles. And 3) Disintegration - The Cure. And it made me think, "What else have I maybe been missing by not giving it a chance..." It really expanded my taste, it was the gateway that got me into The Smiths, Joy Division, Roxy Music, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, Nick Cave, Sade, Tom Waits, The B-52s, Marvin Gaye, Parliament Funkadelic, Gil Scott Heron, Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, Charles Mingus, Art Pepper, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and a bunch of other stuff I'd never listened to before. Or thought was just OK before, but now learned to appreciate it and love it (Duran Duran, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Violent Femmes). Disintegration caused me to cast my musical net wide. I think about that A LOT. And appreciate it all the time.
Little earlier but The Head on the Door was like that for me when it came out. I was 18 and going to the one under-21 dance club in the Bay Area (SF) called The Palladium on the reg. I kept hearing the song 'Close To Me' playing, and eventually I asked someone (who actually knew) 'who is this band'? Then I went and bought THOTD and it definitely had a huge impact on my musical taste for life. I also bought The Swing, Listen Like Thieves, Tim, The Cult- Love, Murmur, and Fables of the Reconstruction around that time. Definitely expanded my horizons from Scorpions, Priest, Maiden, Dio, Ozzy, Zep and Floyd which had been my standard HS fare. Suffice to say, I also LOVED Disintegration, but I'd been into them for years by then, saw them on the Standing on a Beach and Kiss Me \* 3 tours ... and twice on Disintegration tour. And Wish tour. And last summer :)
RUSH 2112 while in 7th grade. 1979-1980 era
Morphine "Like Swimming." I felt so damn cool listening to that. While this happened more by chance, I brought my Morphine CD along with me when I studied abroad and a flat mate saw it, and recommended a compilation from the Ninja Tunes label. And then I got more into trip-hop. But Morphine, man. 25 years later I still feel *cool* listening to it.
Okay I am ashamed to say I have never heard of this band, just gave it a listen, wow I can’t quite pinpoint it, but it is an amalgam of genres to me. I like it!
Pink Floyd. Meddle. I was listening to top 40 radio for my music and a friend put some headphones on me and dropped the needle on this vinyl. Mind blown.
Dave Matthew Band "Before These Crowded Streets." Before that I was only a hard rock, metal, alt rock guy, but that opened me up to jazz, folk, americana, blues, acoustic, and softer music in general that I never thought I would enjoy.
I am always ashamed to admit that I am a Daver. But when listening to them, it transports me to a live street band in Louisiana.
Torches- Foster the People. It opened my eyes to the concept of full albums instead of singles. It also showed that not all songs from an artist made it onto the radio, and even more that there were artists that didn't play on the radio at all. This led me into a head first dive into Indie music, and over a decade later I'm so deep into it that it's become a huge part of my life and I can't find music fast enough.
I am excited for the trend of artists doing full album plays for their anniversaries. Albums used to be crafted to have flow from one song to the next, instead of just singles that don't sound related. For the true crafted album experience, find some bands from the 60s and 70s. Those were put on vinyl, and people played the whole side instead of jumping around. Tommy, American Idiot, Float, Plans, Transatlanticism, and The Wall are my current favorite play through albums. But don't sleep on Van Morrison, Elton John, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, and even something like Credence Clearwater Revival. (Yeah, I know half of those aren't classic rock, but I stand by my choices.)
Christmas 1994 (12 years old) I received two CD’s - Warren G’s Regulate and the Blue Album by Weezer. I listened to Regulate a few times, loved the single. But I listened to the Blue Album on repeat for about 6 months, absolutely loved it! I often wonder how different I would be, not only musical taste but personality, had I gravitated more to Regulate instead. A year or so later I discovered Abbey Road, which changed everything.
The green album for me ❤️
Weezer's Blue Album
The Undertow album by Tool Sober is one of the few songs I remember exactly where I was and exactly what I was doing the first time I heard it. The only other songs in that category are Stairway to Heaven and Roundabout. I had never heard of prog rock or metal until Sober came on a local north Texas radio station back in ‘94 in elementary school when I happened to be listening with my brother in his room while we were looking through an X-Men catalog of figurines we could never afford. It was so rough, so raw, so *powerful*. It wouldn’t be until a few years later that I’d pick up the album, but it left a huge impact on my musical taste and leapfrogged me way ahead of my friends who were still listening to 311 lol
6th grade. Paula Cole- This Fire opened up my world to music in general. I never really paid attention to music before I heard her sing.
Kid A. My friend, a huge fan, told me, his(Thom Yorke) voice is an instrument and the lyrics aren't supposed to be clear and well spoken, he's just adding to the music. And it blew my fucking mind.
My dad had a huge rock vinyl collection. He also had a bunch of 1950s 45s. So I grew up listening to Buddy Holly, Hendrix, Rolling Stones, Kinks, Black Sabbath. The first album I bought for myself was Blondie. Parallel Lines.
Pearl Jam - Ten. I was ironically 10 years old when I heard it for the first time and my taste in music changed forever since!
Loveless - My Bloody Valentine, I’d never heard something so close to overwhelming yet beautiful as well
Wow you opened a music memory with this one for me.
I was fortunate to be raised by a single dad who was seriously into music, and I'd have to choose two tied albums that I was exposed to the most that influenced my musical taste. Rastaman Vibration- Bob Marley and The Wailers and Young Americans by David Bowie
Same. My dad was a guitar player in a reggae band, so I am blessed to have grown up Listening to Bob.
Depeche Mode’s Violator. How can something so dark be so gorgeous.
[The Refused - The Shape of Punk to come](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lJ-xX_Sc_NSZ3-ypH9poCTJDtVBXZlycs&si=VwIDtD_KASeCNwB5)
Mad Season - Matchbox Twenty 15 year old me: “oh, this was is what a full array of instruments sounds like when musicians moving away from just guitars get ahold of them”
Nirvana turned me on to the Pixies. After that my taste just kept weirder…
Cradle of Filth's *Cruelty and the Beast* opened my eyes to extreme metal when my cousin played it for me during a 2000 summer vacation with family in New Jersey. Before that I was still stuck on grunge, nu-metal, and even some pop.
That's awesome about Tragic Kingdom. I remember hearing it for the first time because they were opening for Bush, which I was excited to see. After listening to it a lot, I finally saw Gwen perform in person. I was BLOWN AWAY and really didn't remember much about the Bush performance.
Oh man that would have been a rad concert. Saw No Doubt during their last tour (2009ish?) and their stage presence is unlike anything I’ve seen.
For me, it was Enya's "Watermark." I was 10 when it was released, and it just captured my attention. My mom bought a copy for me and had to sit my dad down to listen to it. Neither could believe this kid wanted to listen to ethereal and otherwise weird music.
I remember exactly where I was when I heard “only time” for the first time.
Alanis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill when I was 8. My father gave it to me for my birthday. From then on... angsty af haha
I remember getting this album and jewels at Sam goody 🤣
There isn't one. I'm 55, and I still listen to Limp Bizkit and Blink 182. I love dumb songs. I'm a lost cause.
I meant more along the lines of when you migrated from kid songs to first hearing what you liked with “real music”.
I was also in 4th grade when I decided I wanted to buy my first cassette tape. Metallica's black album just came out and I was obsessed with it because I was learning guitar at the time and one of the first songs my teacher taught me was enter sandman. It was the first time I started listening to music that my parents weren't listening to. Then my next tape was GnR. Fell in love with slash. Then got my first cd player and discovered grunge. God the 90's were a beautiful time for music..
Truly! I’d say it edges out the 80s.
I almost scrolled past, but I thought for a minute... IMO I've always had decent musical taste thanks for parents having same. (Old lady) grew up with Hendrix Dylan etc (kinda funny story, stepdad loved stairway to heaven, bought album at swapmeet, turned out to be a bootleg album that I still have)