Year Zero

You are unfit to claim the name Dastoor Josh since that is a totally different question.

Anyway, we have had similar questions but I'll answer whatever because it's that or work:

It was kind of a three-stage process. At 12 or so I found myself aspiring to listen to 'grown-up' music but without the knowledge (or will) to do anything about it. I changed schools, made friends, and started listening to any and all classic rock I could get my hands on, while not enjoying most of it beyond liking a few of the hooks. After about a year - at the end of 1987 - I became aware that you could only 'seriously' like this music if you didn't like 'pop', so I stopped listening to pop and got into Pink Floyd. It was one of the most miserable years of my life.

Clearly there was an itch I was trying to scratch but the Floyd weren't really doing it. Bowie did the trick better, but it wasn't IT. In May 1988 I listened to The Smiths for the first time and realised that, in fact, *this* was IT - the most perfect pop articulation of whatever I'd needed articulated. So my interest in music suddenly switched from 'classic' to 'contemporary', and Pink Floyd were wiped out overnight in my own personal '77.

Then in Autumn 1988 I heard 'Introspective' by the Pet Shop Boys, who were a massive chart act at the time and had been my preferred hitmakers when I'd last listened to the radio much, back in '87. I got it out of the library on a nostalgic whim and loved it. Switching the radio on I found that pop was just as good as it had always been, and vowed I would never lose track of it again in favour of the likes of Floyd. Awwww.

See my answer on this thread.

no year zero to speak of, but there was a chain of realisations that my peer group were missing out on something that i felt was vital music. (i'm hungover and fancy writing my life story rather than thinking, so indulge me...)

peer group 1: my mum (natch when you're a kid). i was such a chart rundown kid, me and me mum would listen on sunday and i'd often record my faves, producing some terribly edited tapes full of snippets of DJ intro and outro. My mum liked a lot of chart punk and post punk, so at the end of the 70s i was into that whole buzzcocks- costello-blondie axis. The first development from that was the realisation that my mum's taste and mine was starting to diverge. she became devoted to (amongst other things) Springsteen and Billy Joel, which much as i tried i really wasn't getting, and she wasn't getting depeche mode (vince clark really) and OMD (somehow i missed Blue Monday being in the charts, so sue me). Much later was the killer blow of the pet-shop boys "west end girls" on top of the pops which was MY SONG damn it.

peer group 2: school friends. So i was still a chart music boy when i got to 15/16 and then the sixth-form room nearly always had a "Now" comp tape playing. if it wasn't that it was the beach boys (which seems odd now) or Queen. Queen were huge, even the arty kids wore Queen t-shirts. Meanwhile the charts were throwing up some oddities (jesus and mary chain, the smiths and new order! 1986ish?) which were catching my attention. i can distinctly remember confessing to my be-queen-t-shirted friend on the way to school that "i really like that jesus and mary chain song". which labelled me as a freak, which was ok, cos i already was one (getting asked "are you the brainiest boy in the school then?" is the mark of a freak).

I still wasn't buying music at this point - not a one. i had some novelty records that were bought for me, so they don't count.

Peer group 3: college friends. well this self-indulgent post has gone on long enough, so long-story short, college friends couldn't see how i could like smiths/JMC AND petshopboys/s'express/misc dance.

well i've written all that and don't feel i can justify posting this, but sod it... click "Submit" and i'll see you in the office party threads.

Day zero: the day I walked into my Uni hall of residence and wild and weird music was blaring out of various rooms. I then met my new flatmates, who introduced me to The Velvet Underground.

Were they friendly?

Maybe hearing Springsteen's Nebraska ~ '84. I always liked music on the radio, but that was the first time I connected w/ a record in such an intimate and personal way. Those songs were like tiny black & white films (I stole this Springsteen observation from Tom Waits -- also the video for "Atlantic City" WAS a tiny black & white film!) that I could live inside while I listening. It created the idea that music could be "my music" and I didn't have to count on the radio, & the way it focused my attention, like a book or movie, was completely new.

When I was a young kid, I used to carry a transistor radio around with me a lot of the time and I can remember a number of songs I enjoyed hearing on the radio over the years: "Heart of Gold," "Last Night I Didn't Get to Sleep at All," (Don't know if that's the title), "Then Came You," (Spinners), "Riders on the Storm," "Dancing in the Moonlight," "Smoke on the Water," "Ain't No Sunshine," etc. I also listened to the records my family owned, mostly my brother's, which were in the same vein as what I was listening to on the radio: pop, rock, R&B/Soul.

Around 6th or 7th grade I started to listen to jazz a little bit, but it mostly served as atmosphere. I don't think I learned the names of any of the musicians. Also around this time I was listening to the rehearsals of a semi-punk cover band led up by one of my brother's friends. I remember having a vague sense of wanting to hear something new.

In around 1978/79 my family moved to a new town. While looking for the old station I used to listen to for jazz, I stumbled upon a different station with much more varied programming. I was suddenly introduced to genres of music I hadn't even known existed (free jazz, avant-garde, electronic, progressive music of various sorts, reggae, various forms of international music), plus I was exposed to original recordings of punk, which I hadn't heard before. For a little while after this--I can't remember exactly how long--I accepted, not always completely consistently, that popular/commercial=bad. I got over that, though I never really listened to commercial radio much after that time, mostly out of impatience with commercials and with the amount of music there that I didn't like.

Terrific Question.

Year Zero #1: Black Flag "In My Head" Dead Kennedys "Frankenchrist" Husker Du "Flip Your Wig" Minutemen "Post Mersh Vol. 3"

(before this I was listening to Hall and Oates and Micheal Jackson. Those four albums were given to me by my cousin in college. I was 12 years old.)

nirvana's nevermind was the album that got me interested in pursuing alternatives to "open up and say ahh" and "permenant vacation" (when i was 12). but the one that really changed my life was sonic youth's sister, when i was 14, and it will forever be my most treasured album (most likely)