music listening history

[Sunny]

My folks always had music playing. Dad always loved blues and blues rock. Mum was (is) a big Led Zepp fan so us kids grew up listening to their music also Thin Lizzy, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, SRV, Stones, Beatles and Aussie pub bands and loads of others too many to mention.

 

[gcczep]

Early 70's as a wee child...intro'd to music by coming across Pop's Beatles and Ventures records. Intrigued by the music but not fully comprehending it yet. Folks took me to a screening of "The Concert For Bangladesh"... Not ready...was bored up the ying yang. Wanted to get the hell out to suss the new Spider-Man comic instead.

Late 70's...this long haired dude who looked like Wiley Wiggins from "Dazed And Confused" played "Kashmir" and "Custard Pie" off this dodgy one channel cassette player during recess. Whoa, what do we have here? Had the major jones for a classmate Tish Sloan who was the [insert current vernacular] back then. She played me her brother's "Physical Graffiti" LPs. THAT was it from there. I was hooked! They became MY band and still are to this day. The Stones followed... Deep Purple. Boston. Cheap Trick. KISS. No disco shoes... No pop stuff either.

The early 80's... My best friend Kevin told me he wrote a poem in English Lit for this girl and that he lifted the lyrics off Queen. Queen who? Queen what? Some foreign royalty? No..a band. Picked Up News, Opera and Races. These guys had flair. He also liked The Cars, The Police and the Floyd. They didn't shake the paint off the wall but I dug them too.

Late 80's... What's all this? Bands with hair teased up to here, lipstick, and glittery/flowery stage outfits. No...and I mean no! That changed as I got past those "visual" factors today. Guns 'N Roses save that decade for me. It was angry, unrepentant and dark. Loved them... Oh and went further back to check out The Doors. At this point, for some reason [maturity? Increased tolerance? Auditory relief?] I began to look at other musical genres.

What started rock and roll? Listened to Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. From there it was to The Allmans, Clapton, Thorogood and Stevie Ray Vaughn. It didn't stop there. Little Richard...Elvis...Buddy Holly. Got involved with a great gal who loved funk and dance music. I discovered that I can enjoy Prince not because I liked watching her shake her tush to it. It led me to the Ohio Players, Parliament, EW&F and early Commodores.

The late 90's... Soul and Motown was next though decades removed. Smokey, Otis, Al and Marvin. These cats could sing. Smooth like fine aged wine. I even dabbled into Classical though I could not completely focus on it. Still trying...

Flash forward. I can now listen to Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Throw in Harry Connick Jr. Still no to Dean Martin... I dig the pop tunes too...even find disco tunes "amusing" for the lack of a better word. Billy Joel isn't foreign to me anymore but Christie Brinkley gets some credit. Country? Not there yet inspite of a great pair of cowboy boots. I do find the music fun in a way. Rap? It's OK although I detest jewelry. Seriously, I like the beats but what's with the overdriven bass? After awhile, I'd rather listen to Marley and reggae.

My bedrock is still Zeppelin filled in the areas around them but not straying way too far like into Gregorian chants or something of that ilk.

Ever onward...

 

[billyporter]

i used to think pink floyd were very boring and their songs were too long! then i met a guy a couple of yrs older than me who loved them.
went to his place, he put on floyd, and i smoked cannabis for the first time!

i get it now!!!

my feelings about floyd and similar music completely changed, it was as if there was something before that i hadn't understood.
it was light and day.

as far as the old 50s artists go? i can take some of it in small doses. i do appreciate them though.
the only one that i can listen to and enjoy is chuck berry.
most of his tunes sound the same.[the ac/dc of his time!]

actually i did have a live recording of his once and it was great! it didn't really have many of his well-known songs on it, and that made it interesting to me. in fact the songs were quite different than what i expected.
alas that was years ago on a cassette, and now that has gone and i don't recall the name of the album.

my favourite rolling stones song is a chuck berry one, little queenie.
that opening riff! i can't keep still when i hear it!

 

[electric funeral]

Great stories all!! Love to read them.

With me I guess it started all with the then very popular radio station called Veronica. A hugely influential and very famous station in Holland. They really started to play music like The Beatles and Rolling Stones. In the early seventees they played a lot of Sweet, Slade, Bowie and Alice Cooper. I remember having a huge poster of him hanging on the wall of my room. It helped a lot that my father liked that music as well and he was a big Beatles fan. He has always been supporting my choice of music and helping me explore.

Also around that time I went to and friend's house. He showed me his two older brother's LP collection. They had made room for them under their beds. They had loads and loads of them. Ranging from ELP, Stones to Beatles and Gentle Giant. I think the love for vinyl started right there.

Later I started getting into Led Zep, Sabbath and music like that through another friend. He was a few years older and had albums like Robin Trower Live, Rory Gallagher live in Europe and Band of Gypsies whitch were really eye/ear openers for me.

 

[gcczep]

i used to think pink floyd were very boring and their songs were too long! then i met a guy a couple of yrs older than me who loved them.
went to his place, he put on floyd, and i smoked cannabis for the first time!

i get it now!!!

my feelings about floyd and similar music completely changed, it was as if there was something before that i hadn't understood.
it was light and day.

as far as the old 50s artists go? i can take some of it in small doses. i do appreciate them though.
the only one that i can listen to and enjoy is chuck berry.
most of his tunes sound the same.[the ac/dc of his time!]

actually i did have a live recording of his once and it was great! it didn't really have many of his well-known songs on it, and that made it interesting to me. in fact the songs were quite different than what i expected.
alas that was years ago on a cassette, and now that has gone and i don't recall the name of the album.

my favourite rolling stones song is a chuck berry one, little queenie.
that opening riff! i can't keep still when i hear it!

Well, I saw Floyd in 1980 at the L.A. Sports Arena. Me and a friend...let's say "experimented" with some substances which added an added dimension to the gig. It was a one time pass. Never did it again.

Good bit about Berry who I consider The Godfather of the rock and roll geetar. HUGE oversight on my part not including him on paragraph five. Not only did he have great tunes with clever lyrics but his riffs are also iconic. Keith Richards has been known to sport a black eye every now and then because of it.

I can't listen to Celine Dion but can handle Bette Midler. The ladies CAN rock too. Tina Turner... 'Nuff said.

 

[AboutAGirl]

The first two songs I fell in love with when I was 5 were Time by Pink Floyd and Signs by Five Man Electrical Band, by hearing my dad play them. Listened to a little bit of modern music after that but it was short-lived at the time.

In my tween years I was a LOTR fan and got turned onto The Battle of Evermore. I started listening to classic rock, namely Zep, Floyd, Doors, Who, Yes. A couple years after that I got strongly into Neil Young and Bob Dylan. Kept digging deeper and deeper, but I only listened to music up until 1980. Then when I was 16 I finally allowed myself to listen to relatively newer music and I became obsessed with Nirvana and Alice In Chains. 18 I got really into Tom Petty, although I had been listening to him for years, and also became obsessed with Regina Spektor and Neutral Milk Hotel.

In college I started getting into Guns N Roses and Metallica, followed by a devout and lengthy exploration of Pantera, and an endless myriad of metal.... Lamb of God, Entombed, Monolithe, etc. etc. After that my mom gave me back a CD she had taken from me as a kid, The Marshall Mathers LP, and I got deeply into Eminem, then Immortal Technique and Dr. Dre. As I experimented with drugs I incurred an intense love of noise music such as NON and AIDS Wolf, as well as indie rock like Pixies and The Breeders.

The sober version of me became enthralled with the crystal clarity of Burzum and 2nd wave black metal, bands I had been listening to for a few years but like Petty earlier they became an all-time fave later. When the digital remaster of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere came out, something amazing and unexpected happened.... I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but I became even more of a Neil Young fan than I had been before, and I listened to his entire discography extensively.

I ultimately became particularly interested in long jams and Neil's 90s albums, which I hadn't paid as much attention to earlier, and this started a little 90s phase for me. I was into Petty's 90s albums as well as bands like L7 and Cat Power. The pure fun of Petty tracks like Walls and King's Highway inspired me to delve into pop music, starting with 90s artists like Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow, then moving onto modern music like Taylor Swift, Miranda Cosgrove and Paramore. As I delved deeper into modern pop I fell in love with edm-inspired dance pop like Ke$ha and Katy Perry. I even started getting into extended dance remixes.

The abridged version of all this would be:

Age 12 to 16 -- Classic Rock: Neil Young, Zep, Floyd, Doors, Bob Dylan

17/18 -- Grunge: Nirvana, Alice In Chains

18/19 -- Sentimental: Tom Petty, Regina Spektor, Neutral Milk Hotel

19 to 21 -- Metal: Pantera, Metallica

20 to 21 -- Rap: Eminem, Immortal Technique, Dr. Dre

21 -- Noise: NON, Indie: The Breeders, Pixies

21/22 -- Black Metal: Burzum, 90s: Neil Young, Tom Petty, Cat Power, L7

22 to present -- Modern Pop: Taylor Swift, Paramore, Miranda Cosgrove, Ke$ha

Now obviously my favorite artists (pretty much all of these on the list here) are ones I still listen to and always have since discovering them, but I list them based on when was the period I was first obsessed with them, 'cause that was when they were really in sync with what I was going through at the time.

 

[stepcousin]

well, from when I was born in '67 up to about '74 I heard all kinds of music, mostly from FM radio, AM radio and music played in public like malls and parks and public swimming pools. Mostly popular stuff like Beatles, Stones, The Who, and folk rock like James Taylor and Carly Simon and Carole King.
Around 1975 my two older sisters started buying records like Rush, Kiss, Eagles, Steve Miller, Montrose, Ted Nugent, Nazareth, Thin Lizzy, Led Zep, Deep Purple, Heart, and Fleetwood Mac to name a few. Those bands and a few more are what started it all for me.
In 1978 I discovered Van Halen and they were my favorite band for about 4 years or so.
In 1980 I met a kid who had tons of heavy metal like Judas Priest, Scorpions, Triumph, Iron Maiden, and April Wine and that set me off into a harder direction.
Then I heard Metallica and Slayer in 1983 and that was it for me. The harder and heavier the better. But while I was delving into that form of music, I met a dude from the east coast who was heavily into 60's and 70's hippy music and 70's prog-rock like Yes, Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, and ELP. So by this time I was all over the place musically, just soaking it all in.
These days I'm still just soaking it all in, and loving it. Long Live rock.

 

[Tray73]

My dad has always been a massive music fan, he still catches at least one live rock band a week. I grew up with him playing the likes of Zeppelin, Purple, Cream, Hendrix, The Nice, AC/DC (his favourite band), but Mum was into pop and that's what influenced me the most as a youngster. Until the age of about eleven I lived & breathed Abba, then Duran Duran became my no.1, followed by Aha

Mid teens hit and I came to my senses and started getting into rock music and really appreciating in a big way all my dad's music Def Leppard and Whitesnake took over as my favourite bands for a while.

Eighteen, I was listening to bands ranging from Fleetwood Mac to Saxon to Scorpions to Megadeth and had never had such a passion for music. (I also heard Metallica for the first time when I was 18, and they have continued to be a favourite band to this day.) Summer 1988 Queensryche blew me away like I had never known before with their album Operation: Mindcrime and swiftly became my favourite and were for a good few years, until I started getting more into alternative and indie rock and Britpop (though I still regularly listened to metal & hard rock favourites ).

Radiohead became the next band to bowl me over, followed by Muse in '99 who have remained my favourite band to date.

Along the journey I also became a big fan of solo artists like Kate Bush And Tori Amos, whose music I will never tire of.

Joining this forum has introduced me to some fantastic bands I would probably never have come across and I now have a much more extensive and varied music collection than ever before

 

[Jonny Come Lately]

I'll try to summarise my music listening history, looking at the music I've enjoyed at different stages of my life.

As I didn't actually own an MP3 player until 2012 and only had limited access to the hi-fi in my house, prior to then the music I listened to was largely determined by what my family chose to listen to in the car.

2002-2004 - Fleetwood Mac (Rumours), Don Henley (The End Of The Innocence), Jackson Browne (I'm Alive), James Taylor and Carly Simon
2005-2007 - ABBA , Chris Rea, Coldplay (A Rush Of Blood To The Head, later X&Y), Keane (Hopes & Fears) and Snow Patrol (Eyes Open)
2008-10 - Genuinely next to nothing, I couldn't really care less about music at this stage of my life and the music the rest of my family was listening to didn't appeal to me. The only album I really enjoyed listening to during this time was Rumours.
2011 - My interest in music was reignited when I received a 2 CD Fleetwood Mac compilation for Christmas in 2010. During this year I was introduced to Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys.
2012 - After getting an MP3 player, my musical year was largely spent trying to figure out what I really liked - I further explored the back catalogues of Fleetwood Mac (White Album, Tusk) and Coldplay (Parachutes, Viva La Vida). The mix of music in my (very small) collection was roughly a half and half blend of older music and modern music.
Early 2013 - Pink Floyd and Dire Straits. It may seem surprising of me to select such a short period of time where I was only listening to two new bands, but this was when I realised I had a liking for older rock music and their music provided the soundtrack to my final months at school.
Summer 2013 on - Distinctly focussed on classic rock; Eagles, Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Neil Young have been the main ones I've got into along with, to a lesser extent, U2.

At this point I should emphasise that this is the music I actually liked, as opposed to music I didn't like but I am extremely familiar with through the preferences of my sister (I'm looking at you, Taylor Swift).

I never really went through any 'bubblegum' phase - the music my parents introduced me to around 2002 (I wasn't 10 for another couple of years) was generally quite adult, and prior to then I'd only been listened to overtly child-oriented recordings (tapes of kids' songs, not pop music). I certainly don't recall any of the manufactured pop bands appealing to me.

Although quite a bit of the music I listened to as a child has stuck with me (I still love Fleetwood Mac and like James Taylor for instance), the appeal of others has faded - I'd no longer listen to ABBA through my own choice, although the rest of my family like them and I'm still okay with listening to their music.

 

[Cousin Johnny]

My father has always been crazy about classic rock, he grew up listening to it and loved learning about it... I have videotapes of myself dancing like crazy to Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode when I was like 4 or 5 years old so I also grew up listening to it

Nevertheless I kind of didn't give much for music in general, the fact that my dad was so into it kind of turned me off too, if that makes any sense... A little because he would be too critical if I didn't know an artist or something, so I just gave it up...

But then I had a "revival" when I was 16 years old, and I remember going in the car and listening to "Wild Horses" by the stones and thinking "Wow, this is the shit..."

After that I started making my own research and I remember listening a lot to "hot rocks", a compilation also of the stones and... Uriah Heep, I don't know what got into me but I listened to almost only Uriah Heep for one whole year

Well, ever since I kind of gave "Wild Horses" the title of "my favorite song"... And I don't think that will ever change.

P.s.: Very nice thread, by the way