music listening history

[billyporter]

what is your music history, specifically music tha first got you in to music? plus the 'special' big bands that have been in your life?

i have 3 older brothers and i often would listen to their singles on an old plastic, mono record player! it was the sixties.
stuff like the stones, beatles and traffic, they are 3 bands i can recall.
btw, even at that young age i knew the beatles were gods! ringo!!!

going forward a few years when i was probably around 12 years old.
my parents bought me a cheap stereo[plastic of course!]
the first record i ever got[was going to say bought but obviously my mum had the money to buy the records.] was double barrel by dave and ansill collins. its a reggae song and i love it[still], and i don't even like reggae!

i really liked the british glam rock music which was happening around '72 i think.
i got mainly singles back then, they were the big things to get. so i had stuff by the sweet, slade, bowie, t.rex, wizzard, alvin stardust, gary glitter, and other 45s i can't remember now.
the only albums i recall having then were slade alive and slayed?

i loved slade big-time, and still believe they were the best band of the glam period. unfortunately they get little respect unlike bolan and bowie.
i think part of that is because they wore incredibly ridiculous outfits and the guitarist had the kind of haircut that makes people want to punch him!
however years later they did start getting praise by modern musicians.
i think that because all those artists back then released so many singles they were thought to be just that, a singles band.
of course everyone knows that singles don't contain great music, don't we?

i liked slade because they sounded rough, as did noddy's voice. and you noticed the loud guitars.
they must of been the 'training ground' for me to end up loving hard rock.
i liked them in their golden period, i suppose.
coz i luv you up to, [and not including] the slade in flame film/album. they'd lost it by then and didn't sound the same to me.
take me ba'k 'ome is my favourite slade song.

a couple of years later:
one day i heard queen and they sounded so much different than any other group i had heard. that would of been 73 or 74.
one thing i liked about them was that they'd often surprize. all of a sudden they'd play a chord which you weren't expecting and it would sound 'wrong.'

the first 3 queen lps are my favourite, especially queen 2.
back then in the record shops they'd be in the heavy rock section.
with every new queen lp i listened out for brians guitar in particular. i prefer the heavy queen so i wanted lots of guitar solos. which i never really got!
i had all their albums for years but i've gotten rid of the game and hot space and recorded just the songs i like on them.[which weren't many!]
i never saw them live but i did see brian live many years later.

once queen had 'died' and weren't releasing music i became aware of a band mentioned in kerrang! magazine, king's x.
they were the magazine's band of the year. when a reviewer mentioned which artists influenced the band one name that popped up was queen. its only because of that, that i checked them out.
i had read that they sounded unique, and they were. they often put 'wrong' chords in their songs too. they'd do the unexpected.
plus they were a heavy band that could make catchy, melodic music.
their early producer described them as being a mix of sabbath, the beatles, hendrix, with a dash of james brown.

their peak has long gone unfortunately. like all bands that period doesn't last forever.
i still get their new albums but they don't surprize any longer. heard it all before. mind you they made a lot of records within that peak back then.

as i've gotten older i don't watch any music shows anymore or buy music magazines.[which i used to buy many.]
when i have seen a video its a case of i've heard it all before, plus image is the main thing with artists these days, especially for the girls.
the last band that turned me on was fleet foxes.

along the way i've had many other records by different artists.
one being jeff beck.
i was in a 2nd hand record shop in nz years ago, browsing. i saw the there and back lp which looked good. although i'd heard of jeff i hadn't heard his stuff.
i asked the assistant to play the record while i looked around the shop. as soon as i heard the first track i recall thinking, 'my god! this is the music i've been waiting all my life for!!!'
i was blown away and quickly went and bought it having only heard a couple of minutes of the opening song.

actually it was in the same shop that i heard the track 'letting go' by ufo. again it blew me away, it was fantastic, and i bought it.
after that i bought all their lps up to that point in time.

the other 'big' band for me was thin lizzy. i bought all their music as well.
my musical league table would be:

the beatles.[they are permanently at the top. seeing them makes me emotional actually! they are truly the greatest band of all time.]

just below them:

queen and king's x
a fraction below them:

thin lizzy.

then all the others.

 

[Jake T]

Great topic for a thread!
My father was a truck driver and country music lover so he hated long-hair and the Beatles. Of course I loved them, so I guess that launched me on the path to independence. He is gone now, but our relationship was never the same after the Beatles came along.

The Beatles - Help!

 

[Berserker]

My mom played Bob Marley, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Temptations, etc. so I grew up with a lot of positive music from her.

I have never owned vinyl.

My first tape was "We Sold Our Souls For Rock And Roll" by Black Sabbath.

First CD was Sublime self titled.

I have always loved rock music and got into rap when I was about 12.

I stayed with rap for a long time and am recently getting back into classic rock. Listening to deep cuts and live bootlegs and exploring artists I hadn't listened to like Budgie, Lucifer Was, Josefus, Iron Claw, etc.

Music is awesome and I am a sucker for the classics.

 

[Ace]

I got into classic rock when I was about 14. The first "classic" band I got into was Guns N's Roses. I remember buying the August 2007 edition of Rolling Stone because it had the classic lineup of GnR on it. It's still hanging on my wall today! I ventured into writing fanfiction at one point. Guns N' Roses fanfiction. I learned that writing isn't really my skill. But I still had fun doing it.
When I was 16 I got really into Kiss. Like, REALLY into them. I visited a Kiss forum daily, getting all the obscure demos and pictures. I have a huge folder on my computer of rare photos of Ace Frehley from the peak of my love for Kiss. To this day, I have a blog dedicated to pictures of Ace Frehley. Kinda embarrassing, but it's fun.
I got really into Led Zeppelin when I was 18, so not too long ago. Today I just really love a bunch of bands, mostly classic rock. I'm knows among my friends as "the one that really likes Zeppelin".

 

[LG]

Great story billyporter...

I'll be back later with a condensed version of my most important bands when I was getting into music.

 

[Taboo]

Cool thread!

I grew up listening to alot of classic Salsa, Merengue and Bachata music, because my parents are both from Puerto Rico and that's what they wuld play all the time. But as I was growing up (Age: 12) I started discovering and listening to alot of R&B, Rap/Hip Hop. I would listen to alot of Big Pun, Immortal Technique, Busta Rhymes, Nas, Missy Elliot, Mariah Carey, TLC and all that 90 to early 2000 stuff jeje. But as time went by (Age: 16) I started listening to ALOT of Spanish Hip Hop, Reggae, Soca and Reggaetón. It was good music, but then started getting really cheesy so I just don't listen to it at anymore. My love with rock music started when I first heard Bring Me to Life by Evanescence.. I thought it was the coolest song ever, the mix of soprano female vox, with the big strings and the hard riffs was a fresh and bombastic mix for me back then jeje... Thanks to them I kept on discovering a plethora of other Rock and Metal bands... It's also when I discovered my musical mommy, Tori Amos. It was love at first listen to be honest...Then from there I kept discovering all these other great female musicians from the 90s like Fiona Apple, Puala Cole, Sarah McLachlan, Plumb and Charlotte etc... and not too long ago I started getting into Classic Rock and Blues. It's why I joined these forums I think my taste in music has expanded very much over the years. I love me a bit of everything and I just love music in general

Spoiler

excuse my bad English

 

[zephead]

Awesome thread!

Not sure of the bands that I listened to as kids. I mostly listened to whatever was on the telly and top of the pops till I was 15-16.
It is only after I was 16-17, I developed my taste in the music. System of A down (SOAD), Green Day, Foo Fighters,RHCP were the bands I mostly listened to back then (I still do btw).
Then I started to listen to the classics like Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Stones, Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, GnR, Floyd, Doors and Thin Lizzy....
Now, I am sort of trying to explore the whole genesis of rock music from the 50/60s by going back to Chuck Berry, Cliff Richard and the blues and rock and roll preceeding them....and the journey still continues...

There is much more left to explore...............

 

[Taboo]

There is much more left to explore...............

Indeed

 

[Mr. Bob Dobolina]

Luckily for me, both my parents had varied tastes in music. My dad was the one who got me heavily into The Beatles. He knew a guy named Muntz who ran Muntz Stereo in L.A. Through him we had one of the early prototypes of a tape deck that could go from 4 track to 8 track with the flick of a switch. My dad bought me all the Beatles albums on 4 track tape. I listened to them constantly. I also watched the Beatles cartoon on T.V. Saturday morning T.V. is where I also discovered another of my favorite bands, The Monkees. In fact, television is where I got a lot of my musical knowledge. Saturday mornings it was The Osmonds and The Jackson 5 cartoons, American Bandstand and Soul Train. On Saturday nights it was the Real Don Steele Show. Don was a legendary AM D.J. in Los Angeles and he had a dance show on one of the local T.V. stations.

 

[Titokinz]

Hm, hard to sift through the medley of my childhood. I got back into classic rock as a teenager, remembering all of the classics that I heard as a youngin' from my parents. So, my parents definitely assisted in that region. Playing Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and all of the tunes I could remember from the radio engraved in my memory.

A large portion of me actually finding music a passion of mine was when I started smoking marijuana, and felt a deeper, more spiritual connection and appeal to sound. (Not saying you need it to feel that way, but that's just how it began with me). I started digging more into the oldies and found a lot of what I heard from my childhood. It was amazing getting to rediscover all of that, and even search further. I listen to a lot of that music today wishing I could hear it for the first time again. Now I'm just having fun finding my own niche within the wide variety of music available. There are endless treasures to be found out there.