What was the band that changed everything you listened to after the first time you heard them?

For me it was the Ramones...they got me interested in punk and the subculture music scene in general. Not that i ever got super huge into and got all punked out, but a huge part of who i am stems from the music i listened to and the people i met throught that music and it wouldn't have happened unless i heard the Ramones for the first time....Gabba Gabba Hey!!!

RIP Joey and Dee Dee Ramone

dylan changed everything...he is so amazing...mmmmmmmmmm
yeah i listen to a lot more 60's 70's stuff now... but he changed my whole way of thinking

changed fucking EVERYTHING i listened to?

nothing.

I saw the Specials on Saturday Night Live when I was 13...they did "Gangsters" and "Too Much Too Young." At that point, I'd only heard what was playing on top 40 radio and "FM rock" stations...my brain was blown, I couldn't believe how exciting it was..."there's something else out there!!"

From there I started discovering the left-of-the-dial stations and all sorts of other music, well beyond 2nd wave ska...power pop, punk, postpunk, no wave, etc. And I started going back to rockabilly, 60s beat & punk, country, soul and R&B and on and on. I still think I owe it to Jerry Dammers & the boys for showing me there was something else.

[Edited on Apr 05, 2003 by DrNecessitor]

7 Seconds...
i remember the moment so clearly. i was in 7th grade and i attended a cookout with my best friend at his aunt's house. i had never met his cousin nigel before, and this kid was like no one i had ever seen before. he was a couple years older than us, large purple mohawk, camo shorts, combat boots, piercings. it was 1988. at this point in my life i think i was mostly listening to bruce springsteen and van halen, the bangles, the beastie boys were the most punk thing i had ever heard. when we ventured into nigel's room and i saw vandals and misfits posters and he put on 7 Seconds "walk together, rock together" and i don't think i spoke until the album was over. i think it maybe was the farmiliarity of 99 red ballons that hooked me, but it certainly wasn't Nena singing. it was fast and furious and melodic and saying something that phil collins just couldn't say. from that moment forth i searched out the subversive and underground. the music that meant something, not merely the catchy songs that were force fed to me by mainstream radio. i found the dead milkmen, they might be giants then minor threat and operation ivy, fugazi, dead kennedy's, bad brains and on and on from there....but i may still be listening to van halen "1984" if it hadn't been for nigel and 7 Seconds....

[Edited on Apr 05, 2003 by the_nihilist]

it was probably back around '84 (12 years old) when i got the first minor threat record -- that album blew my mind. i had memorized every single word of every single song within the first few days. before that, i was mostly listening to mainstream rock like van halen.

radiohead and ok computer

this happened several times 1. gnr 2. chili peppers 3. mike watt 4. charles mingus 5. jeff buckley....etc....changes every day. gnr was HUGE though, for a lad of 11ish.

1982, 10 years old, ramones 'rock and roll high school' soundtrack made it to me through kenny day through my brother who was then becoming dchc X...

1983, 11 years old, first live ramones show, subterranean jungle tour... punk was still punk, this was the ramones and no one can match that shit unless because of that shit and im glad i stayed. and im glad i was able to go to 7-11 with my heroes, and im glad the funky man gave me those picks, and im glad i waited til...

1997 to start really recognizing other types of music as more than novelties or digressions. that goes for the beatles amongst others.

After I heard a song by Morrissey at my cousin's house, 90% of my collection became Morrissey, The Smiths, New Order, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, The Cure, Siouxsie, Bauhaus, etc... I'd never heard those bands before because I lived in an itty bitty conservative town. I was fifteen, and the change in my lifestyle, music, clothes, and such was dramatic. It was like finding myself, as trite as that sounds.

For me it was the CRAMPS at the Concert Factory / Cookooos Nest. Right when the "Smell Of Female" album came out 1984 or 85. At that time I was a punk rocker. I was only into punk rock, period! The Cramps showed me that their was more out their than hardcore punk. The Cramps were more punk rock than the supposed punk bands that night. Lux took off his pants & was just kicking & straight arming every idiot crazy enough to get up on the stage that night, cock waiving in the air & all. It was awe inspiring & truly sent my head spinning in new musical directions.

P.S. - Poison Ivy is & was the hottestpeice of womanhood ever concieved or created!!!

from the first 5 seconds of Ænima on.. Tool is, has been and always will be the band that changed me musically forever.
Pitchshifter made me question everything i thought about making music, there is no norm.. break your own mold if the need strikes you. change is good.

"you've claimed all this time that you would die for me, why then are you so surprised when you hear your own eulogy?"

[Edited on Apr 05, 2003 by psiko]

Same as Paul_MuadDib, Bauhaus (the first time)

They didn't change what I listened to, but they definitely broadened the spectrum of music I looked into.

I used to listen to chart music like Gary Numan and Adam and the Ants, until i discovered Discharge's 'Fight Back' e.p. around about 1980. The guitars on that record sound like buzzsaws! They shred! That e.p. remains my all time favourite punk single ever

Someone's gotta be plain-jane here....

The PERSON who changed my fucking life after I heard them was and has to be NIck Drake. THere has never been and never will be anyone remotely like him again- and that's sad, and yet... only serves to immortalise him further somehow.

A beautiful man with so much sould and heart, a great lyricist, a great guitar player...

Anything he recorded is just sacred to me now-

Hmm.... other stuff... as albums go........

I;m gonna be real specific here and say hearing the SECOND side of The Beatles Abbey Road was a big moment for me, really the first tiem I ever heard anything from the realms outside of classical stuff that was composed in a ceratin way with recurrant refrains and such, all the songs melding in and out of each other and building up to that epic finale with the four of them just jamming their little hearts out...

(I feel the same way about some of the white album)

Second to that, The Stones 'Let It Bleed' album is way too often overlooked by people too happy to call 'Exile On Main Street' the band's best album... What I love about teh Stones is that they never forgot their roots, the stuff they started out playing in jazz and blues clubs in London, and regardless of how uncommercial it might have been, they sorta submerged all their lates sixties early seventies albums in that...

Third album and probably my favourite album ever, 'Forever Changes' by Love. Still makes me speechless when I listen to it...

A fucking amazing band, a brilliantly constructed, complex, deep album that encapsulates a moment- and uh, yeah... nothing more needs be said.

Besides going even further against the punk/alternative grain on this site by saying my favourite piece of music is 'Take The A Train' by Duke Ellington. The guy was a god.

I can answer that!.....KISS..ALIVE II...1978...I was 11 years old
me and my brother were like the biggest Kiss freaks after that....then I guess the fateful day that had the biggest change on my musical outlook was the day I bought the first Ramones album...i remember seeing the cover with them all ratty in leathers hanging out against a wall,and thinking I gotta here this....so I buy it, get home, slap it on my radio shack turntable, and heard to me at the time what was without a doubt THE MOST AWESOME SHIT I had ever heard up till that point.....there was no looking back after that one....JOEY R.I.P DEE DEE R.I.P.

Talking Heads.

Specifically, it was the film Stop Making Sense that did it for me. Totally changed my life the first time I saw it, when I was 16. It was then that I knew I wanted to be a musician. Everything was different after that.

[Edited on Apr 05, 2003 by moondaddy]

You're so cool for admitting that.

I was a huge Toto fan back in junior high. "Rosanna, Rosanna!!!" lol... Oooo, I nearly got the shit beat out of me several times because of that.

The Violent Femmes.....and since that moment they have been my most favorite band ever.

It happened a couple of times, I guess... I mean it didn't change everything I listened to each time, but it definitely changed HOW I listened to it.

The first time was the summer after 7th grade. I'd never been really seriously into music before but I had a song stuck in my head and some kid told me it was the offspring, so I went out and got Smash on cassette and listened to it all summer. Before that I'd had a passing interest in Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Ace of Base and Public Enemy (mom's influence). Anyway, through the Offspring, I was exposed to a world of crappy pop punk. The next summer, I got my first guitar and basically learned to play from Offspring tunes. My second revelatory music experience came then, when my guitar teacher lent me Fugazi's 13 Songs and In On the Killtaker. In On the Killtaker blew me away. I was amazed at how dark, heavy, and intense it was. I was listening to a lot of radio at the time, and In On the Killtaker was gother than the shitty goth, punker than the shitty punk, and just better than all of the metal. Fugazi was my doorway to the underground - through them I found out about hardcore in its many forms, DIY culture, etc.

After Fugazi, for some reason, I got into a lot of really cheesy music - kmfdm, orgy, skinny puppy... but I also started buying comps. One of them was an Equal Vision Records compliation, which had Converge and One King Down on it, so those were problably my first two hardcore bands. I downloaded all the mp3s I could find by both of them since their albums were impossible to find in my shitty little down, and those were pretty much my lifeline. I got more and more into hardcore from there, stepping from Converge to Coalesce to Dillinger Escape Plan, and on to more obscure bands like His Hero Is Gone, Reversal of Man, Orchid. This is so cliche, but it really was like peeling back the layers of an onion. The underground kept getting bigger and fresher every time I learned something new.

My last life changing music experience was in the basement of an art gallery, at a show. It was a benefit for some local kids to get their zine published. I'd only heard two of the bands on the bill before, and they were two of the FOUR bands who cancelled that night. Nevertheless, the show went on. I hadn't slept in 48 hours and I was feeling like shit, so I ended up sitting through two really good bands - then a girl came up to me and invited me to dance instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, and I got up and danced and had a fucking great time. It was a really important show for me, it was when I realized that good shows don't just happen - you have to MAKE them happen. While I was there, I picked up a split LP which had just been released by two of the bands, And I Can't Wait and Bob Barker Youth. I took it home and read the lyrics and listened to it, and it was everything I wanted it to be - fast, hard, cheaply produced, young, idealistic, pissed off, hopeful. And I Can't Wait broke up last fall, but they're still one of my favorite hardcore bands. When I hear 'em playing I can't help but sing along. They are the reason that I love hardcore.

X

Tool and Snapcase I just remember hearing Sober and thinking these guys kick lots of ass

Not long after I heard Snapcase the album Progression Through Unlearning. Probably why both of these bands are the top of my list.

[Edited on Apr 05, 2003 by MrMann]