records as entry-points into a genre

maybe its less to do with listening as history lesson and more to do with emerging sounds.

ie "i luv u" = what the fucking fuck was that?????

for me anyway.

i mean, no, i wouldn't say "o man, i heard a love supreme and fuck me jazz opened up" but i might say summer 94 i heard drum'n'bass selection 2 AND MY LISTENING WORLD CHANGED.

i often find that a contemporary album or a song on a recent release might inspire me to go back and listen to work which influenced it which in turn opens a genre up to me or broadens my taste. here's a basic example which explains why i like country music. i always loved the rolling stones. beggars banquet and sticky fingers are influenced by gram parsons and the country gram was playing to mick n keef. stuff like the carter family and roy acuff. so i listened to gp and grievous angel and then emmylou harris as well. next i got to roy acuff and the like. And now i listen to a lot of country... which i didnt before i tracked back from the stones through gram parsons...so there you go...

In Sides by Orbital literally did change the way I listen to things back in 1996. Up until then I'd heard Screamadelica and whatever was on the radio and that was it as far as 'dance' music went; as I've said many times before, my friends were all massively anti-dance, they were grunge & indie fans and anything without guitars that was made on a computer or sampler was eeeeeeeeeveeeeeeeeeeeeeel as far as they were concerned. It was a review in Select, and the coercing of my brother, that convinced me to buy In Sides on the day it came out, and i was properly blown away. Listened to it last night on the train, as it happens, and still loved every minute. That wasn't a moment that turned me 'on' to a particular genre though; it just turned me away from only being into one genre.

During my adolescence, I detached myself from listening exclusively to parent-approved music because of three albums:
Therapy? - Troublegum (The first record I bought solely because of listening to the songs on MTV)
Nirvana - Nevermind (Mainly because of the hype, but I enjoyed it a lot. It seemed like something forbidden at the time, completely different from the norm. Only bought it some years later, but the tape I recorded before is all warped...)
Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie & Infinite Sadness (It changed my life. It prepared me for all sorts of indie/alternative genres. It made me the compulsive CD buyer that I am today. Unfortunately, I never found another record that made such an impression.)

Other interesting entry points for particular genres:

Gothic/Doom metal: Paradise Lost - Icon / Tiamat - Wildhoney / My Dying Bride - Like gods of the sun / Anathema - The Silent Enigma
Post-rock: Tortoise - Millions now living will never die
Math-rock: Don Caballero 2

I would say that the majority of the currently in-vogue NME bands could be cited as an entry point into various musical genres. Kids listening to The White Stripes may want to go and search out some old blues stuff, The Thrills may lead back to The Beach Boys or Buffalo Springfield, Franz Ferdinand will get them checking out the entire catalogues of Postcard and Factory. The list is endless.

Depeche Mode: New Life

I heard it in a club when I was 15, and can honestly say I walked out a different person.

I've said it before but I'll say it again: New Rose by The Damned was responsible for changing pretty much everything in my life.

Other than that:

Hearing "It Noh Funny" by Linton Kwesi Johnson on John Peel some time around '78 / '79 was really responsible for making me start listening seriously to and buying reggae;

I guess The Blues Brothers soundtrack was largely responsible for opening my mind and ears to Soul, R&B and Jazz;

A 1994 BBC TV documentary called "The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart" was responsible for opening doors that led to all sorts of strangeness as well as re-fuelling my passion for music to levels it hadn't been at for at least 10 years at that point.

Repo Man Soundtrack on tape

Black Flag's Damaged got me interested in punk. I checked it out at the library.