who opened your ears ?

Roxy Music. Being a burnout in a rural town full of burnouts, steeped in Priest, Maiden, Crue, AC/DC, Scorpions, Floyd, Zep etc., I can't even begin to describe the epiphany I had when in our stoned stupor, somebody slipped the first album onto the Pioneer. That fact that none of the other stoners 'got it' except me made the moment even specialer.

Mmm, I think it goes like:

'Loaded' > 'French Kiss' > 3:Am Eternal > ALL OF RAVE > Philip K.Dick > J.G.Ballard > William Gibson > Basic Channel > Delaney > erm...Prada. With countless divirgent paths, but this is the mainline I think.

Nice question, yr Racerness. I don't see how there would be one linke unifying everything that one likes (but I could be wrong, or misunderstanding, here). But let me be the first to say that MORRISSEY is paradigmatic here, because he created a whole mythological web of books, films, images, icons - an invented tradition, you might say - to support and embed the music; to give it Roots of a kind, I suppose. All of that did have an effect on me (I read Delaney / Waterhouse / Sillitoe and watched all the films in one memorable autumn term; hey, I wish I could remember it a bit better), but I'm not sure that it determined my most significant tastes. Morrissey never says anything about Joyce... does he?

Hey! Hurry up with those Yootha gags! We're waiting here!

Morrisey. hmmm, is it possible to have that one >Waterhouse>Lynsey Anderson>PetShopBoys & also claim the Manics.

Manics > Words > Easton Ellis > Buckowski > Cooper Manics > Pictures > Glitter & Eyeliner > ?

This is all very heirarchical - some sort of tree would be better, or is it not possible to trace these things back so far?

LISTENING: Morrissey AGAIN --> Chuck D (paranoid outsider perspective but now with black exoticism replacing northern exoticism) --> John Peel (J Peel clearly bored by predictability of Festive 50 choices, saying but where is PE: my first intro to the intoxicating world of indie-against-itself) --> "Little Fluffy Clouds" (paying more attention to the non-indie stuff on Peel) --> Rave and here the trail goes kind of cold.

READING: alt.music.alternative turned my entire idea of music discourse over.

does the inverse work - where all trails lead to someone - e.g. burroughs - who you feel compelled to explore ?

You British will hate me for saying so, but my ur-musician is Brian Eno, though once again that leads us back to Roxy Music. Whether you like Eno or not, his ideas and interests have led me and many others in many directions where we might not otherwise have trod. On the other side of music, it might very well be a childhood fascination with Wendy Carlos, who led to me the synthesizer and classical music and ever outward.

The link between all of the things I love might possibly be the Velvet Underground. I will now slink away in shame, exposed as the cliched art fag indie kid that I am...

(But then again, that might not be so shameful... the Velvets seem to be the Kevin Bacon of the music world in terms of tennuous connections and influences that you can draw?)

Lloyd Cole > everything. ;)

Not really.

Buddy Holly> The Beatles> Creation Records> MBV> Stooges> Suicide> 'Digereedoo'> Mouse on Mars > Matmos

or alternatively

'Voodoo Ray'> 'Out of Space'> 'Bloodclot Heart Attack'> 'Angels Fell> 'Six Million Ways to Die' > Kid 606

dave clark 5 > Ramones > Creation Rebel > PIL > spacemen 3 > to me at the race track last Saturday betting two dollars on ole gluefoot to place (it finished 6th), the next race I boxed a couple of trifectas and lost 24 dollars. Dave Clark, so much to answer for.

John Peel. Nuff said.

Scentless Apprentice > Perfume: Story of a Murderer

Jimi Hendrix, specifically Axis BOld as Love, in 8th grade.

Hmm, can't pinpoint such specific trajectories, and epiphanies/gateways always seemed to come in pairs: First, REM's Velvet Underground covers on Dead Letter Office > VU, and the sadly OOP (never issued on CD?) live LP, The Name of This Band is Talking Heads (which covered their career from its nervous beginnings to afrobeat days with recordings from each era); then, "Birthday" and Public Enemy; then, "Little Fluffy Clouds" and Aphex Twin, alongside Pulp and Orange Juice. Everything else pretty much jumps off of one of thos

College radio. And uh, MTV in about 1980 or so.

E-Z.

Sean Cassidy > pop radio > Duran Duran and Def Leppard for guitars and rhythm machines and synths in particular > the world. Books and food and all that followed their own random paths.

the and band & the perfect strangers in christchurch, 1980 - a chance encounter in deep space - all kindsa connections betw. psychedelic/punk/improv/free jazz/mark perry style audience- expectation-confounding pointed out or hinted at - i was never gonna be the same (& i'm not, QED). i was 17, the only person there that wasn't already a friend of the band that didn't leave in disgust.

(before that - buncha records that had seemed to lead to "there"...but that was the 1st time i saw a live band except for things like the christian band that used to tour round high schools)

*yawn* Morrissey again, for basically leading me away from the Britpop ghetto I was then inhabiting and as a consequence to practically everything I'm into today.

great question!

i'll probably come back to this after i've thought but it might go something like johnpeel-joeybeltram-stereolab. no, thats not right. this is actually a really hard question if yr going to throw books and clothes and hair and films and stuff in there. will try again later

I'll tell you what opened my ears: reading Creem magazine at 12-13 years old, and then buying the records they recommended! My entire life was thrown permanantly off-kilter by listening to Patti Smith's "Easter" at that tender age. Thank god!

Tired of the grunge and radio alternative music when I was in middle school I started listening to my parent's record collection and took off from there. First it was The Beatles "White Album" when I was 14 and I knew I was addicted to music. The rest is all chaos.

I'm trying to figure out what the exact line is, how I get from the Velvets to my girlypop fixations, but it's something like this:

Velvet Underground > Spacemen 3 > Jesus and Mary Chain > Ronettes > Shangri-Las > Girls In the Garage > Stereolab > Kraut Rock > Spacemen 3 > Velvets again in a big, big circle.

I don't know how the books and food and art and things all fit into it... I mean, really, you can get from the Velvets to Warhol, and I do like Warhol, but I'd be hard pressed to get from them to the Pre-Raphaelite Brethrin.

Wait, wait, I can do it for some of the art I like...

Spacemen 3 > Jason Spaceman > Jason G-force > Japanese Anime > Amano, one of my favourite painters.

Kate - you iz my troolurve !

GRD Robot 2 - momus > high llamas > stereolab > neu > hawkwind > michael moorcock - 'jerry CORNELIUS' > momus - whoah wrong thread - all these konnections - kannot kompute biddibiddibee........

peter,paul&mary->bob dylan->billy Bragg->sex pistols->cure->REM- >Patti Smith->Velvet Undeground ->my demise

Ozzy Osbourne / Randy Rhoades "Tribute" album listened to nonstop in Cambridge, Mass --> "not fitting in" once back in Tennessee --> desire for other foreign lands --> Chicago, Providence, Glasgow --> Woody McBride at Glasgow Art School --> British friends --> ILM -- > "Cupid and Psyche 85" by Scritti Politti. So: Ozzy and Scr Pol - 2 sides of same coin!

Pearl Jam > Nirvana > Husker Du > indie rock > all over the freakin' map (allowing me to get back in touch with my R&B / rap roots, as well as classical music, learning to appreciate the Beatles & early Pink Floyd & the Stones, blues, folk music, and so on).

The actual path is much more fractured, though. As you might imagine. For one, it skips over my oh-so-brief dalliance with Phish.

Brave, sir.

Indie-rock (of the post and alt-country variety) to the velvets to the mats to krs-one to backstreet to uk garage to missy. Oh, and Feldman + classical a-g predate that whole progression.

Weezer>Nirvana>Sonic Youth>Sun Ra>Albert Ayler>Ascension>Britney Spears

The last move there is what hurt my head, but in a nice way. As in opposite reaction to Ascension or what?

Anyway, the vast majority of you liars based in America have not mentioned the inevitable (to quote my friend Dan, not the Dan on these boards) 'country-fried beer rock' which makes up the majority of AOR classic rock playlists to this day, and which inevitably shapes people somehow. Where is the Doobie Brothers/Steve Miller/Foreigner/Journey/ REO Speedwagon love?

I'm sorry, but my love for that crap just got flushed.

Ascension > Britney = conscious move towards blatant contrarianism, drastic counterpoints, helpful to both parties. Watch Legally Blonde and Fassbinder's Gods of the Plague back to back like I did the other day, doesn't matter in which order, and your enjoyment of each will increase tenfold.

I do not know those AOR classic rock bands, beyond a song or two, but they seem good, especially Journey. Maybe Mark Walhberg's new film (Rock Star, not Planet of the Apes), in which he has long hair and plays in an AOR classic rock band, will be a jumping off point to open my ears to those bands.

Interesting answers on this thread. And now back to talking about me.

JOHN ZORN > Peter Brotzmann, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler > Noize!

Lemme try this out:

Talking Heads > Brian Eno > No New York > Jesus and Mary Chain > Sonic Youth

PiL's Cassette > David Lee Roth's Eat 'Em and Smile > Frank Zappa > Ween > Schoenberg > Igor Stravinsky (Steve Vai has a lot to answer to, but thankfully I did skip Whitesnake)

of course, it all started as a 14-year old kid listening to WPRB, Princeton University's kick-ass college radio station.

and how i came to love death metal:

David Bowie > Led Zeppelin > Stormtroopers of Death > Venom > Metallica > Slayer > King Diamond > Celtic Frost > Carcass > ... ad infinitum.

You forgot Lawnmower Deth. And Amorphis. ;-)

Re one of Ned's earlier posts -- I have a few Steve Miller CDs kicking around. And I used to have the single for "I Want to Know What Love Is." Dunno where any of that led if anywhere at all, to be honest.

Though I do confess to this progression: ZZ Top > Lynyrd Skynyrd > Meat Puppets.

"I do not know those AOR classic rock bands, beyond a song or two, but they seem good, especially Journey."

Um, they're not good. Even Journey. Especially Journey.

A few threads of mine:

My uncle Bob, the disco DJ, and his large record collection I was obsessed with as a very young kid > Michael Jackson > Prince > radio pop ca. '79-'84 > Tears for Fears (yes, I know, but I still love the shit out of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World") > a few years of not paying attention to music

Siskel & Ebert > obsession with critics and criticism > discovering the Paul Gambaccini top 20 albums of all time list (from '77) in The Book of Lists 2 > the Beatles (who had four of the top ten and five of the top 20) > Dylan > Rolling Stone magazine > Village Voice critics' poll > Sign 'o' the Times, which alerted me that not only had Prince just made an album as good as anything--better, even!--from Rock's Golden Age [TM], but that he was as fully great and complex an artist as the Beatles or Dylan > simultaneous rediscovery of radio pop and hip-hop > reading Brit press and finding out about raves > Kevin Cole's Radio Depth Probe program, which played the dance stuff I was reading about in English magazines > everything under the damn sun

A picture of Andy Warhol laying cooly & seductively on a ratty couch in his silver factory loft in nyc. That pretty much did it for me, and ruined it for me at the same time.

I can't look at this thread without hearing Morrissey sing "This night has opened my ears / and I will never sleep again" in my head, and wondering just why that sounds quite so bizarre

All my links are disappointingly short. Velvet Underground/Lou Reed --> Delmore Schwartz
Felt/Lawrence --> Rimbaud
Galaxie 500 --> Exact Change Books --> Denton Welch

Hey, hey, I've got it! But I warn you, this one's short too. It's the shortest of all.

Stevie T!!

(eg: ST > Belle & Sebastian; ST > Magnetic Fields; ST > Pynchon; ST > O'Hara...)

Also, Lloyd Cole/'Rattlesnakes' --> On the Waterfront (well, also my sister) and Joan Didion.

I can do it with people better than with bands.

Laura>Hum, Smashing Pumpkins, Pink Floyd, the Doors Anna>Belle & Sebastian, Neutral Milk Hotel, Momus Chris>In Flames, and thus all the metal I've ever heard TW>Nine Inch Nails, Bush Anthony Burgess>Beethoven, Handel, Wagner

Let's try this with more than music, and not in the correct order.

Velvet Goldmine> Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, glittery clothes, Oscar Wilde> exhibitionism, livejournal, fairy tales> In Flames> metal in general, Norse mythology> Ayn Rand> back to fairy tales> Apocalyptica, Momus> David Bowie> Velvet Goldmine

I love when it does that!

simplified: Black Box - Pulp - Peel - Momus - FT - ILM - ILE - now.

old threads eh..

"communications" by the jazz composers orchestra

composed by michael mantler, with p sanders d cherry g barbieri l corywell _and_ 2 sides of cecil taylor

introduced me to semi-tonal music, free jazz "rhythm", real week- beats-your-year musicians -- understood and loved cecil taylor from this moment and abondoned popmusic

have lent it to countless friends who have all had to buy it -- this double lp single cd got me to schoenburg free jazz stockhausen -- it was my musical adolescance made semi-adult -- it CHANGED MY LIFE