The Seven Ages of Bands

The Seven Ages of Bands (chart your musical development one artist at a time)

aka. what bands or artists have defined your musical life?

it doesn't have to be a band, it could be a solo artist too. it doesn't have to be seven (although no more than seven, please!) i just wrote that to make the pun.

Let's be honest here, not revisionist. You probably didn't love a band when you were an "infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms" but your first musical love may well be embarrassing to you now. not many of us are "[in] second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." although a few of us can see that on the horizon. and as for "sans taste" you can be candid (there are only a few thousand of us here).

Let's not get into "scenes", if your teenage life was defined by hardcore rock lets only hear about it if one of those bands/artists was everything (or thereabouts) to you at the time. Let's not get into labels either, if Mo Wax was your thing you can include it only if there was one Mo Wax artist who stood over all the rest; whose work you anticipated and bought on day one of release. Maybe your trajectory went back in time as you moved forward in time, you decided to forego new music and search out the old: the same rules apply. include it only if one of those older artists meant it all to you.

Maybe there is one that stands out because you can no longer see why you were so into it at the time although you still like it well enough, or maybe you loathe it? maybe there were five years or more when you still loved music but there was not "ONE BAND"?

here i go:

1. ABBA (early childhood, i wrote to jim'll fix it asking to meet them, that's enough!)
2. Culture Club (late childhood, could i listen to any of this now?)
3. The Smiths (adolescence, obviously)
4. Pixies (entering university)
5. Autechre (goodbye to all of that)
6. Smog/Bill Callahan (will anyone usurp bill at this stage [pushing 40]?)

so that is flawed, very flawed and maybe therefore it's a poor question but i've written this much now. between pixies and smog i discovered electronic music but could any one single artist define that period? the bulk of my musical life? Autechre were there but it makes me sound like i was IDM for that time whereas i was actually house-then-techno-then-disco boy and having more fun than autechre makes it seem like i was having but i can't drag a single "fun" artist out of that electronic soup.

you could give it a try, at least.

as an aside maybe i should say that maybe only one of those artists made records that i could list on a top ten albums list. and also i should say that maybe i should have included Tricky.

Beastie Boys > MC Hammer > They Might Be Giants > Primus > Melvins > Lightning Bolt > Melvins again

The Beatles > The Time > Love and Rockets > Robyn Hitchcock > Robyn Hitchcock > Robyn Hitchcock

i don't even know who Robyn Hitchcock is EZ! this is strangely reassuring though.

Favorite Band by Grade

yeah, yeah. this is a more generalized question imo, including adulthood.

Hitchcock is awesome! get thee to I Wanna Go Backwards ASAP.

I had to do 8.

1. 9-11 - Tom Lehrer

2. 12-15 - Yes

3. 16-18 Eno

4. 19-22 Crass

5. 23-30 Nurse With Wound

6. 31-35 Alice Coltrane, Gas

7. 36-45 Michael Hurley

Michael Hurley i have also never heard of!

1. pre-teen Iron Maiden
2. early-teen Public Enemy
3. late-teen Sonic Youth
4. college Can
5. post-college Lee "Scratch" Perry
6. post-post-college DJ /rupture (really this could be any number of things, but I've definitely listened to /rupture mixes/radio more than anything else in this period)
7. whatever the hell I am at now Sunn 0)))

14 Green Day
16 dEUS
18 Godspeed You Black Emperor!
20 Charles Mingus
24 Arthur Russell
26 Jacques Brel
29 Mecano

I'm going to use Alex's schema

1. pre-teen The Clash (first cassette I ever bought)
2. early-teen De La Soul
3. Mid-late teen The Jesus Lizard
4. college Spacemen 3
5. post-college Dizzee Rascal
6. young adulthood Luomo
7. Now...god I don't know, Fats Waller? haha

Seems weird not to put Pavement or The Orb in my teens but the others win out

also I think Dizzee and Lumo were at the same time. This is hard

let's see how boring and lol this comes out if i'm honest

15 - red hot chili peppers
17 - radiohead
18 - sonic youth
19 - animal collective
21 - arthur russell

five years later i find it pretty hard to go beyond that. defined by lots of branches out of those (rhcp aside, sorry guys), very roughly speaking? maybe

23 - lindstrom
25 - chet baker

initiate a couple more unique trees, but to the same extent the others have. i'll come back in ten years and offer an update.

1. pearl jam
2. bad religion
3. sonic youth
4. the dead c
5. john fahey
6. the shadow ring
7. fleetwood fucking mac

1. pre-teen: weird al
2. early teen: public enemy
3. late teen: husker du
4. college: a guy called gerald
5. post-college: timbaland
6. the ilm/music writing era: talking heads
7. washed-up middle thirtysomething: al green

maybe 'ilm-era' explains my difficulty in naming names in recent years, thanks to here the dominant trend in my listening has been little more than patchwork diffuseness.

gonna say that this thread is gonna be _the_ thread for frontin' about early taste.

1. preteen showtunes, notably the soundtrack to Oklahoma, Hello Dolly, and George M!
2. early teen Public Enemy + The Eels
3. mid-teen: The Cure
4. college Leonard Cohen
5. after college: Pavement
6. grad school I; Stone Roses
7 grad school II: Big Star

I think I am maybe a tad too young for SEVEN ages of bands. I mean, I'm not going to turn 40 and stop discovering new music

xp

first cassette I bought was the Clash, first CD I bought was Martika though! =)

(Who by the way, is dope)

First single I ever owned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE

there is nothing feigned or aggrandized about my prepubescent love for weird al

we hit the same developmental milestone w/r/t public enemy so, i mean, we cool.

my two favorite bands from like 11 to 13 were p.e. and guns n roses. then nirvana fucked everything up for a year.

Fairly boring as fuck:

Beatles - elementary school
Smashing pumpkins - middle school/early high school
Aphex twin - mid-late high school
Saint etienne - senior yr hs + freshman yr college

It gets pretty hazy after that.

gets pretty hazy after that

Aphex twin - mid-late high school

...in your vagina?

Pre-teen: Billy Joel
Early teens: The Blues Brothers
Late teens: Tears For Fears
College: The Chameleons
Grad school: The Chills
Late 20s: Robyn Hitchcock
30s: The Fall

This is not necessarily when I first got into these artists but if I had to pick ONE for each age, this is a pretty good list.

pre-high-school - tchaikovsky if anything but really nothing; i had a stereo but i mostly used it to listen to old radio shows, weird kid
early high school - dylan
late high school - modest mouse
early college - talking heads
late college - ghostface
help i'm unemployed pls read my novel - paramore
quarterlife crisis - bikini kill

i had a stereo but i mostly used it to listen to old radio shows

when i was about 9 or 10, my grandfather sent away for a couple of cassette compilations of 30s and 40s radio comedies, and then sent them to me. i was weirdly fascinated by them, so there was this year where i was the only kid in fourth grade listening to jack benny and getting approximately 1/90th of the jokes.

more accurate than any artist based list:

late 70s: whatever my parents listened to
early 80s: mtv, top 40 radio, r&b radio, breakdance movie soundtracks
mid 80s: mtv, rolling stone
late 80s: yo! mtv raps, spin magazine (esp john leland), postmodern mtv/120 minutes, college radio
early 90s: college radio, hanging out at wuxtry, rockethead, other record stores, spin magazine, the village voice, whatever clubs i could get into underage, the 99cent rack of columbia jazz masterpieces at the rose's department store
mid 90s: indie rock label catalogs, clubs clubs clubs
late 90s: college radio, the wire, wfmu, rap radio, other music mailing list
early 00s: ilx, the wire, blogs, wfmu, other music, aquarius records mailing list
mid 00s to present: resident advisor, wfmu iphone app, spotify

xp -- for me it was all the crimefighting stuff: the shadow et al. definitely easier to translate. also there was this thing called "the new adventures of sherlock holmes" which was sponsored by petri wine (petri took time... to bring you good wine) and every episode began with a representative of the petri wine company visiting the aged dr. watson at his london flat, pouring him a glass of petri, and listening to a story about the doctor's years with sherlock holmes, the famous consulting detective. halfway through, watson, an ex-military man, would always break to urge listeners to contribute their used kitchen fats to the war effort.

i liked that watson always seemed skeptical re: the wine.

add 'bet' to late 80s and early 90s and add the really deep cut classic rock block armed forces network radio would play in the middle of the night for mid 90s

I was a big fan of The Shadow around age 9 as well!

oh rad! but i mean who wouldn't be.

i'm a big fan of the shadow now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzShbpY-Oqg

oh man and i was gonna write tonight :(

occurs to me now that talking heads should probably share their slot w/ the mountain goats, as if it had really been nothing but talking heads i probably would have contracted autism.

heh yeah i kinda wavered about posting that because i figured a few people might mistakenly follow me down the rabbit hole of old timey radio on youtube nostalgia

i'm gonna give you dudes fibber mcgee and molly for xmas

basically all i remember about those cassettes now is how much mileage radio comedians got out of wacky ethnic stereotype voices in the 30s and 40s

I went through a golden age of comedy thing myself: Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, the Great Gildersleeve, etc. I used to get an AM station that seemed to play only old radio shows and Philly collegiate basketball.

Also used to check out tapes from the library. Still love that shit.

"what is in that vial, gerber? what is... that crimson liquid?" "that's the poison, shadow! i'm supposed to be analyzing the blood from my last batch of poison victims -- BUT INSTEAD I'VE BEEN MAKING MORE POISON HAHAHA!"

there's some old interview (which i think i saw on that pbs american experience episode about citizen kane?) with orson welles where he talks about his radio days: "basically i would take a cab from the mercury rehearsals to the radio station, and arrive with no idea of who i was supposed to be playing that day. and so they'd say 'a 90-year-old chinese man.' and i'd say 'okay, give me a second to get into character.'"

84-88 Eurythmics
89-93 Digital Underground, Public Enemy
94-98 Tori Amos, Bowie
99-02 US Maple, Royal Trux
03-06 Xiu Xiu
07-10 David Sylvian

this story is only tangentially pertinent & it's really fucking long but I think it was really formative so I'm going to do this in two ages:

1. from my youngest age I treasured my record collection and it consisted largely of children's records and soundtracks. the music man. fiddler on the roof. the aristocats. I knew that shit backwards and forwards. could time the fadeouts, on the tracks where there were fadeouts. had identified print-through on multiple records and had ridiculous theories about how it got there. I didn't know other kids who even gave a shit about this stuff so I thought to myself boy if being cool ever turns out to have anything to do with your record collection you have got it made because check out all this cool shit you've got. all those 7"s you found in your dad's garage too, Herman's Hermits, the New Christy Minstrels. "A Holly Jolly Christmas" by Burl Ives. my record collection kicks ass.

2. right before the 3rd grade my family moved house for the 4th time in 3 years and my new classroom was for students in the 3rd grade through the 6th grade. I was fucking scared of everybody. one day early in the year the teacher said "if you guys want to listen to music during your playtime go ahead and bring your records in, we have a record player" and I thought "I'm new here and I have no friends yet and it's lonely being the unknown new kid but when I bring my record collection in everybody will know I'm cool, this is gonna be awesome." like, I was thrilled. it was like God was just putting this opportunity to shine right in my lap. I assumed nobody could possibly have all the cool shit I had, so I was gonna have it made. the music man. fiddler on the roof. the fuckin aristocats. next morning I come into school and several of the girls & a couple of the guys have remembered to bring in records, they are already fighting about who gets to play what first. the osmond brothers. the commodores. the beatles. and I was like, holy fuck underrated a, you forgot that you were supposed to bring in records today and if you had brought in fucking children's records you would have gotten laughed at for the shit that you like, and that would have sucked balls. I was super conscious of the bullet I'd accidentally dodged by being forgetful. at the same time I started taking fucking notes about what everybody liked and I was sad I wasn't going to be able to play the shit I liked for anybody but what the hell anything beats getting treated like a clown when you're the new guy.

so these are my two ages of music: everything leading up to the day I forgot to bring my records in, and after.

omfg

the f was accidental but leave it in there

Pre-teen: Queen
Early Teens: Metallica, Megadeth
Late teens: Meshuggah
Early college: Faith No More
Late College: Motorpsycho
Late 20's: Sunny Day Real Estate
Early 30's: Spoon, Pavement

aerosmith, i just loved reading that post. x

some fall of man stuff there

1. Do You Know The Way To San Jose by Dionne Warwick / Michael Jackson
2. Misplaced Childhood by Marillion / Guns N Roses
3. The Beatles / The Stone Roses
4. Orbital
5. Embrace
6. Patrick Wolf / Caribou
7. Whatever comes next...

Who has a "favourite band" post-22 or so really?

I'm feeling this. Far too hard. However, I wouldn't necessarily equate 'favourite band' with 'band that is the dominant artist in your life'. For instance, I would find it relatively easy to point to Dagmar Krause and Jun Togawa as being the dominant artists in my life right now, and they are definitely among my favourite artists, but I don't have the compulsion I did as a teen to declare 'this is it, this act is my very favourite of all time' about anyone. I think the reason I can't do this is because scenes/styles were explicitly discounted in the opening post, and much of my listening was based around that between my early 20s and now.

"because scenes/styles were explicitly discounted in the opening post"

yeah i don't know if this was a good idea tbh.

5-8: Michael Jackson
8-11: John Williams (Star Wars Soundtracks)
12-14: radio pop/hiphop/r&b
15: Pink Floyd
16-18: Radiohead
19-20: Messiaen
21-now: Schoenberg

I've definitely had favourite artists over the last ten years. I've not been that fanboyish about them compared to when I was 15-22 or so, and there have been more of them, but I've definitely preferred artists over scenes.

pre-teen John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John
early-teens AC/DC
late-teens The Smiths
early 20s Frank Sinatra
late 20s Teenage Fanclub
early 30s Guided by Voices
late 30s on The Hold Steady

7: michael jackson (pretty vivid, intense memories of listening to man in the mirror while looking in an actual mirror; some photographic evidence of self in mj-esque poses still exists)
10: oasis (i lived in manchester, i try to avoid discussion of them for fear of triggering my long-dormant but inexorably ingrained musical-hulk reflex to stand up & rep for first album trax like they're insulted family members)
15: my bloody valentine (wooooah & headphones & playing isn't anything front to back at night every night probably more often than i've played anything since. i lived in a town not knowing anyone who liked it, so owned it); (feel like i could have another entry two years later for 'my bloody valentine arkestra' b/c it was pretty consequential in itself)
18: can (i want to pick potentially disqualifiable rulebreaking scene/comp 'nuggets', here, because the critical thing it represents is the beginning of tangential, family-tree orientated exploration that meant i was hearing old stuff & just dipping into things broadly, freaked out by the abundance of non-topical music, skipping back from spacemen 3 to mississippi john hurt, sam cooke's one night stand)
22: barbara morgenstern (as an emblem for finally getting to the stage of being all fuck i just like this, in spite of a disconnect with the aesthetics of previous interests, which would also apply to belated appreciation of things i would've 'liked' in a kinda guarded sense, qualified with 'mm yes this is interesting' rather than just breezy and open fondness)
25: the-dream (kinda representing just modern exciting music & music that didn't have roots or tenuous links to some of the earlier things; music with synthesisers and samplers & vocals made to sound sweet and honied rather than personally relatable to me)

i feel bad for orphaning steve reich & glossing over wfmu, here, but since i cheated with the brackets it feels reasonably accurate. i both want to liberate 'can' from the list, to better represent was a goof i was and displace the inaccurate image of being a cool outsider kid in an ege bamyasi t-shirt, & to flex a little more for 22 ->, but the whole point with that is that it had gotten quite diffuse and so difficult to encapsulate so neatly outside of 'w' 'f' 'm' 'u'.

good thread, jed!

i actually saw the stones play in '74, but y'know, they were stuck in that whole teenybopper thing...i was rmde at their bubblegum brigade

it was like chaka kahn in '80. i mean, what's the point??

dell, granted, i have seen you make a lot of shitty posts, but i never imagined it would come down to you ripping off jon wurster

1. Father Abraham & the Smurfs – first record I bought with my own money
2. Gary Numan/Tubeway Army – followed this guy fanatically from the ages of 12 to 16
3. Pink Floyd – late teens
4. Suzanne Vega – early 20s, first artist of many I liked in the folk rock mould
5. Swans – mid-20s, instilled in me a love of noise that has never gone away
6. Current 93 – late 20s, my introduction to the post-industrial underground (see also: DIJ, NWW)
7. Peter Brötzmann – early 30s, first free jazz I ever loved

So I'm just gonna ramble on a bit here about a few acts that were important to me...

1990-1994 - The Prodigy - Dance music was my first and most natural love. I was given a radio for Christmas and hearing all the early (kiddy) rave stuff was amazing... So fast and sugary with comical noises etc. I got the first album the following Christmas and was disappointed with how the original single versions had been replaced with slightly drier, more serious remixes, but it didn't matter. A few years later, a lad came round with Music For A Jilted Generation and my mind was blown again - this wasn't kiddy rave pop, it was laced with evilous intent - references to drugs, swearing and loads of stuff I had NO IDEA about but knew my parents wouldn't like it.

1994-1998 the Boo Radleys - By the time we were in high school, my friendship group aligned itself as a rockist tribe. You either listened to grunge and punk or Britpop/indie - anythign else was verboten until Firestarter came out and changed their minds. Of course, I still loved my crazy noises and hearing the b-sides to Wake Up Boo! satiated that. Giant Steps was like therapy to me in those troubled teenage years - as well as drawing influence from a huge palate of styles, what I came to realise a lot later is how much Martin Carr wrote about his own life experiences. Far from the chirpy tag they always get lumbered with, the Boos' lyrics were about relationships, drug experiences, friendship, nostalgia - and the desolation/isolation that comes with it.

1997-2000 - Beastie Boys - As a result of those troubled teenage years, my parents made the executive decision to move me to a sixth form college for my A-levels - in fucking Cambridge. Everyone there seemed to know each other and being quite introverted I barely remember speaking to a soul while I was there. I spent a lot of time in the town library - a huge collection of music to borrow, rip to tape and walk round college to during those long free periods and break times. One of the best things I heard was "Ill Communication". I remember being really impressed how a hip-hop album could have a punk song on the second track. I also remember feeling a well of confidence spring up around me as I walked home one day listening to "Alright Hear This". Here were a bunch of dorky white guys who oozed confidence in every thing they did - from the clothes they wore to the way they delivered their words. I guess it was a bit of a life-lesson for me - School had shattered any sort of confidence I had, and I had no social skills whatsoever. Soon I'd made a good bunch of friends back home, and Hello Nasty was our soundtrack.

2000-2003 - Autechre (and Aphex) - Of course Aphex really was the gateway drug back into electronic music. I'd had any ostensible enjoyment of dance music hammered out of me in my teenage years and as a uni student abhorred the cheesy disco dancefloors. It took a long time to fully embrace dance, but it happened. In the meantime there was Warp Records - the nerdy whiteboy student's wet dream. Like most, it was precisely Autechre's awkward cool that touched me - real head music, and yet hiphop deconstructed. Tracks would start as random jittery cocoons and then chrysalise into incredible beauty. I spent most of my student days making tracks and helping run a website I started about electronic music - met some really nice people and got to play gigs round the country.

2001 - 2006 - Beach Boys - I must own more music by the Beach Boys than any other band. I've read more about the Beach Boys than any other band. And I guess I must have spent more time witht heir music than any other band. End of. Simply the best that ever walked.

2003 - 2007 - Tom Waits - Soundtracking my time immediately after uni, Tom Waits was a love-at-first-sight thing. I couldn't believe I'd gone so long without hearing him - it was perfect. Strange, lush, witty and sad. I think I must have devoured his back catalogue at a rate of knots. Even today, there's no artist who quite hits the spot on a dark and rainy night as Tom Waits.

2004 - 2009 - Animal Collective - You've gotta love em or hate em. They're by no means a perfect band, I'll be the first to admit, but when I first heard Sung Tongs I knew there was something a bit different about this band. Folk music as seen by a primate looking through a kaleidoscope and then on through noise, electronica, techno and myriad other styles. There's a pattern here - I've always loved bands that change drastically from release to release, and Animal Collective to me were like the Aphex Twin of American leftfield rock.

2007 - 2010 - Talking Heads - An older colleague introduced me to them and at first I didn't get it. Then I watch Stop Making Sense. Another tale of dorky white dudes reappropriating black styles and doing it sort of wrong but coming up with something else in the process - my tastes appear to be quite transparent in that respect. I'd like to think it's not a race issue - in fact I've never really thought about it this much before. But I like the incongruousness of it all - the happy accidents that comes with dabbling in unfamiliar styles - like that Japanese black metal band Sigh, who sound just like a thrash band, but don't sound like anyone else either.

1. Father Abraham & the Smurfs – first record I bought with my own money

I HAD THIS!!! Beer beer, smurfin' beer, you don't get drunk and it isn't dear!

1. pre-teen Status Quo (lol I am 31)
2. early-teen Chili Peppers
3. late-teen Mogwai
4. college Big Black
5. post-college Melvins or Dizzee Rascal
6. post-post-college Khanate
7. now Pissed Jeans

whenever we do stuff like this I'm always struck by how rockist I come off in my answers... idk I listened to a lot of electronic music or whatever in most of these 'ages' but for one reason or another (partly to do w/ my circle of friends and also the publications I write for) it gets elbowed out of the way somewhat

^^ this. by boiling my tastes down to just my favourite acts of a certain time, it completely discounts the fact i was also listening to all sorts of other, perhaps much more "valid" music.

aero's post upthread <3 so sad :-(

i think everyone's had one of those "you can never go home again" tpyes of moments. like when i came into school one day and all the kids had decided that He-Man was now a load of crap, instead of the coolest thing ever.

i remember when my mates turned on Pearl Jam and RHCP. They were right for the most part though.

& you were like children stop shouting i am here to give you your maths test
xp

haha

if he man is travelling at 30km/h

1. pre-teen - ELO
2. early-teen - U2
3. late-teen - Hüsker Dü
4. college - Sonic Youth
5. post-college - PJ Harvey
6. post-post-college - TV On The Radio
7. now - Colour Haze

I second the above sentiments, listing only one artist goes against my very essence and makes me itchy. Kinda makes us all seem boring, even though beyond our favorite bands at the time, we might have been digging deep into exploring post-punk, krautrock, dub, electronic, hip-hop, jazz, etc. Being over 40, I could probably use a couple more stages too. For pre-pre-teen, it would be Elvis and Captain Beefheart. When Elvis died I remember worrying about who else I liked was dead or dying, and frustrated that I knew nothing about the status of Beefheart (as probably were a lot of people in 1977!).

I wrote something that covers the first three stages here:
http://www.fastnbulbous.com/favorite-albums-growin-up.htm

23 to 26 is a hard one for me because thanks to the internet, its the first time I had the ability to listen to anything I wanted to and my taste started to become maddeningly eclectic.

the download era was definitely an accelerated time - catching up with new things and old things.

Strangely, this is the first time in my life where I don't have a "favourite band". I still pretty much love all my above choices, but I've exhausted their back catalogues and am no longer obsessed with them like I once was. Since I've started making a conscious effort to start getting my writing out, I feel a real need to keep on top of new releases, so it's harder to form relationships with existing acts who have a strong back catalogue - and I can't see myself getting too engrossed in a brand new band short of saying "Hey, this album is remarkable!"

xps bravo! aerosmith

Kid: Ray Stevens, the Guess Who, top 40 radio.
High School (early): the Beatles, Kiss, Aerosmith, art-rock.
High School (late): Neil Young, canon LPs like Highway 61 and Let It Bleed, Spirit.
University: punk--British at first, American later.
20s: Husker Du, Replacements, JAMC, then a turn towards Madonna, the Pet Shop Boys, and pop around 26.
30s: wide range, anchored by rating hits for my fanzine.
40s: narrowing, anchored by college radio show.

My real obsessions would be the ones crammed into a short period late teens, and would look something like this:

1988: New Order
1991: The Smiths
1991-2: Ride, pushed out by
1992-4: Suede
1995: britpop heaven, then retreat to
1995-6: The Beatles
1996: Led Zeppelin

then there's the adult obsessions, which are but pale imitations:

2002: Bob Dylan, which I can't explain 'cos I can barely stand him
2005: Arctic Monkeys
then ILM enters my life
2008: Fleetwood Mac
2009: Kate Bush
2011: U2, which is the biggest surprise of all

wu
pixies
my bloody valentine
pan sonic
tom jobim
hadaka no rallizes
autechre

Autechre appearing on a lot of people's lists.

else,

mozart
ligeti
bartok
scelsi
liszt
xenakis
alkan

ah the anagram round

oh no wait sorry, rockism on my part

Was gonna say 'what no Xenakis?' on your first list, nakh.

jr. high/early high school - Oingo Boingo
late high school - The Smiths
early college - Pavement/Pixies
late college - Capt. Beefheart
mid-20s - John Zorn
early-30s - Destroyer
old age/decrepitude - Steely Dan

i wish i could reassign groups who would have been more useful at the time. like i probably would have been better having beat happening as a 15 year old or whatever

8-11: Michael Jackson
12-13: Stone Temple Pilots/Green Day
14-15: Beck
16-17: Stooges
18-20: Pavement
21-24: Parliament/Funkadelic, Beach Boys, Grandaddy
25-28 (present): changes every few weeks, but Rilo Kiley/LCD Soundsystem/tUnEyArDs/1970s Miles Davis for a start

10 - queen/bowie
12 - maiden/priest
14 - pink floyd
15 - black flag/minutemen
16 - sonic youth/swans/live skull/butthole surfers/scratch acid/big black
18 - public enemy/eric b & rakim/nwa/geto boys
20s - wu-tang/the fall/team dresch
30s - lightning bolt/cat power
now - I dunno, prolly jorge ben

Was gonna say 'what no Xenakis?' on your first list, nakh.

― emil.y, Monday, 22 August 2011 17:04 (1 hour ago)

yeah i tend to think of the notated music and recorded music as quite separate categories for this sort of thing (though xenakis counts as both i suppose thanks to his tape music)

cool thread idea

8-10: The Police, The Presidents of the USA, ELP (my Dad liked 'em)
11-14: Cake, Beastie Boys, Chemical Bros, Fatboy Slim, They Might Be Giants
15-18: Underworld, King Crimson, Deathray Davies, Orbital, Daler Mehndi, The Kinks
19-20: Sparks, Brian Eno, Devo, Neu!, Can, Rip Slyme, Aphex Twin, Zappa
21-22: Yellow Magic Orchestra, Cardiacs, Datarock, LCD Soundsystem, Boredoms
23-25: P-Model, Ween, Denki Groove, Scooter, Soul Coughing, Roedelius, Haruomi Hosono

birth-10: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, The Stranglers, The Jam, Erasure, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Metallica
11-15: Super Furry Animals, Blur, Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, R.E.M., Radiohead, Suede, Supergrass, The Beatles
16-20: The Cure, New Order, Rush, Yes, Genesis, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, System Of A Down, Pet Shop Boys
20-present: hard to say, really, because I'm listening to more music than ever.

man, to be a fan of Kraftwerk, Numan, and OMD at 10. you must have been a weird kid.

My dad was still only 20 in 1983 when I was born, he was still buying a lot of records and therefore I heard a lot of music around the house. Those are the main ones from his record collection that I latched onto in a big way. I never really thought anything of it until I mentioned to someone I remember coming home from school in 1991 (I would have been 7 going on 8 at the time) and listening to my copy of OMD's 'Dazzle Ships' on my bed (he had it on tape... which I still have), and someone said "you what?".

If I remember, the older kids at school were listening to stuff like Technotronic and Vanilla Ice at that time... and I didn't like that shit.

yeah when I was a kid I looooved The Police, thought they were the best band ever, along with stuff like ELP's Brain Salad Surgery and Devo's Greatest Hits. come to think of it had my parents had nothing but Billy Joel and Dire Straits like most parents did I've have turned out a lot different

Also, I was 11 in 1994... and that's when I started asking for music of my own - Christmases, birthdays... saving up pocket money.... that explains all of the choices from 11-15. I started college at 16, and I had friends who were into nu-metal... The Cure/New Order thing was discovered through Napster, believe it or not... Rush, Yes and Genesis came from a friend I was at college with who use to hold late night vinyl listening sessions at his house on the occasional weekend (with recreational stimulants)... he liked to buy cheap vinyl from charity shops, and we just used to sift through 'em...

lol yeah I suspected a lot of people would have these weird list explosions around 1999 with Napster and all. I certainly did though I mostly used it to d/l crap I heard on MTV :( either way I'm surprised to hear you're still in your 20's, that list would suggest different ;)

my own prog experience was very different. believe it or not my mailman first told me about King Crimson. I was like, "wait, you mean THAT Greg Lake? From Emerson, Lake, and Palmer??" - now I realize how backwards I was. I looooved it so much and bought a TON of prog albums, got burned out real quick, then realized how great Van der Graaf still was, and whatever, now Yes is cool again, etc. etc.

birth-10 - Walker Brothers, Pretty Things, PJ Proby, Lou Christie (i was in love with my mothers 45 collection).
10-15 - New Order, Human League, Soft Cell, Smiths, Roxy Music
16-20 - Throwing Muses, Pixies, Wedding Present, Kitchens of Distinction, The Fall
20-30 - Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Aphex Twin, American Music Club
31-39 - Can't think of one particular artist during this period.. More an amalgamation of the previous thirty years.
39-40 - African music, in particular Fela Kuti

at any given point in my life post-9th grade or so my musical obsessions have centered around:
1) the Beach Boys
2) Spacemen 3/Spiritualized/Spectrum/etc
3) P-Funk

sure I like lots of other stuff but more or less all of them have borne some relation to these three

yeah when I was a kid I looooved The Police, thought they were the best band ever, along with stuff like ELP's Brain Salad Surgery and Devo's Greatest Hits. come to think of it had my parents had nothing but Billy Joel and Dire Straits like most parents did I've have turned out a lot different

― frogbs, Tuesday, November 1, 2011 10:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

I don't know if I would have appreciated 'Brain Salad Surgery' if I'd had heard it at such a young age! The 2nd impression of 'Karn Evil 9' boggles my mind whenever I listen to it now(!) ... My uncle was into Dire Straits, I think, but I never really got into them... then or now! Mostly, I responded more to synths when I was a youngster than guitars and discovered 'guitars' when I was on the verge of my teens... I really did it backwards, didn't I!?

lol yeah I suspected a lot of people would have these weird list explosions around 1999 with Napster and all. I certainly did though I mostly used it to d/l crap I heard on MTV :( either way I'm surprised to hear you're still in your 20's, that list would suggest different ;)

I just turned 28 a couple of months ago!

my own prog experience was very different. believe it or not my mailman first told me about King Crimson. I was like, "wait, you mean THAT Greg Lake? From Emerson, Lake, and Palmer??" - now I realize how backwards I was. I looooved it so much and bought a TON of prog albums, got burned out real quick, then realized how great Van der Graaf still was, and whatever, now Yes is cool again, etc. etc.

Yeah, it's amazing how much prog seems to have made a bit of a comeback... in my first year of college (and bear in mind this was like, around the time when nu-metal was 'reigning supreme', for want of a better term) I remember bringing in stuff like 'Hemispheres' and 'Relayer', and they were met with a lukewarm reception to say the least! "What's this meandering shit?" was a popular one!

Elementary school: Monkees
Junior High: Grand Funk Railroad
Senior High: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (but also Roxy Music and Sparks)
Early 20s: B-52s
Mid 20s: Weird era. I went back to school with a grueling course load. Didn't buy/listen to/identify with much new music.
Late 20s until now: Pretty much everything predating The Monkees: soul/funk/blues/jazz/early rock and roll from the 30s-50s.

NGDB I somehow acquired from a record club and saw twice in concert, which set me on a brief but obsessive Americana phase (in tandem with buying Melody Maker and learning about stuff like Sparks and Cockney Rebel.)

childhood: whitney houston, sade, the jets
10-13: michael jackson, technotronic, david lanz, rachmaninoff
13-15: pearl jam, bush, live, cake
16: radiohead
18: sonic youth
20: big star, indie
22: can, miles davis
24: keith rowe, kevin drumm, jim o'rourke
26: fleetwood mac, the dan, neil young (thanks ilx!)
28: disco, sade, techno