ROFL I would have thought I'd get flamed for posting them.
I actually still listen to a vast variety of music and it all started around '79. I didn't really like M too much, but I thought Gary Numan was one of the first nerd type performers I'd see in an interview. Being a nerd back then wasn't cool, so at 13, it was pretty cool to see that. At the same time I also picked up Pink Floyd's The Wall when it was released. I then bought every Pink Floyd record I could find. That was my main inspiration on guitar and song writing in general (I like the big theme type stuff). I really think out of the New Wave of that era, I really only liked Missing Persons & Kim Wilde (mostly because singers were hot, and I was newly a teen). I did play a bit of Modern English, Talking Heads, The Cure, INXS, and U2 in first garage band I was in. Like I mentioned, if girls liked them, and we liked girls, we played what they liked. When it was just us jamming without a gaggle of gigglers looking on, we tended to get more into Judas Priest, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath. Struggled with singers on them a quite a bit, and the garage band days wound down and faded into obscurity. Well, we were already in obscurity... but you get the drift.