When you first heard "new" music

[Tucson Thump]

Long post.

I was wondering about when you first heard a new sound that knocked your socks off ... and under what circumstances.

A) You've first heard Elvis on the radio in 1954, after WWII and the Korean War. But then Chuck Berry comes along with "Maybellene" with that driving overloaded sound.

B) You're living somewhere in 1962 and a friend puts the "Surfin Safari" LP on for your first listen. You want to move to SoCal because where you live seems boring in comparison. Teenage energy and angst is harmonized, but then JFK is shot in November 1963.

C) The Beatles are a hit in January 1964. After ten US LPs of pop, rock, and country you put the new Revolver album on your turntable in August 1966 . After listening to side one you flip over to side two, and the last song is "Tomorrow Never Knows". You get a hint that things have changed and the journey will be different.

D) February of 1967 brings Grace Slick belting out "White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love". SoCal doesn't look as interesting as S.F. You are now absolutely sure that the journey will be different.

E) 1968 brings "Sympathy For The Devil" and 1969 brings "Gimme Shelter" which both seem to foreshadow the change from a "peace and love" Woodstock generation to murder and violence a few months later at Altamont Speedway concert to the mass consciousness (which had already been long occuring in other parts of the US ... mentioned in acknowledgement).

I could go on but I've chosen just a slice of time.

There can be a difference as to when you were struck by that "new sound" that struck an inner chord.

Some of you first heard the sound when it was happening and was different from the contemporary pop music of the time. Other events were happening that affected everyone, including the artists. What is happening is culturally new.

Some of you first heard the same sound years or decades later, after the "contemporary" events became your history and the original sound had already influenced (either as a pro or con reaction) the contemporary musicians of your time. What is happening is a reaction to what had happened, in a sense like an echo.

Surely you can appreciate the music in either example, but what I'm wondering is if the initial personal impact is different because of the context of the time at which the sound was first presented.

Your thoughts?

 

[Deli6505]

There have been many magical musical moments in my life but there is one that sticks out in my mind as being one of the greatest I've ever seen. It was the evening of Saturday, September 30, 1989. Me and my brothers were watching Saturday Night Live. Bruce Willis was the guest host and Neil Young was the musical guest. As usual, we haw-hawed over the Wayne's World episode and all the other comedy routines of the night but when it came time for Neil's performance spot, time stood still for me. I was expecting to see Neil perform with Crazy Horse like he normally does but that night, I was in for a hell of a shock. Neil had a different band performing with him which featured his Crazy Horse co-guitarist Pancho Sampredo but there were two other fellows that I didn't recognize at the moment (Charlie Drayton on bass and Steve Jordan on drums). With one crack of the snare, they exploded into a new song ("Rockin' in the Free World") that had not been released yet (The album it was on "Freedom" would be released a few days later on October 2, 1989). Right off the bat, they were stomping around the tiny SNL stage like a tribal gang of warriors, assaulting the audience with a full on attack of twin P-90 equipped Les Pauls and 100 watt Marshall stacks. Steve Jordan was going gonzo, beating the living crap out of the drums with his dreadlocks flying about and Charlie locking in with some serious bass lines. I was sitting there on my bean bag, with my jaw on the carpet. Completely transfixed by what I was seeing and hearing through my parents' Zenith console. Unfortunately, these were the days before HD TV screens and surround sound wasn't yet a standard fixture for most living rooms. My brothers were more or less not impressed as they were both into whatever Top 40 crap was playing that week but me, I was the guitar player in my family so naturally, my mind was blown. When the song was over, Neil yanked back his Bigsby tremolo with one sharp move and busted all the strings of his Les Paul and walked off the stage with a half-way grin/sneer. The audience was cheering but I think that most of them were in total shock, as I was. That, to me, was my "Elvis/The Beatles on Ed Sullivan" moment. I was already playing guitar before that moment but this was when I decided to stop farting around with it and practice more seriously. I decided to record the show on my VCR that night and I must have worn out that tape in a matter of weeks because of me constantly cueing and rewinding to that performance and playing my woefully inadequate Fender Stratocaster and Fender Champ 12 amp along with the tape. Whenever I need some inspiration to get me out of a musical rut, I always can rely on that one performance to jump start my engine all over again.

 

[bodia]

Man, good thread! First off, I don't have shoes to cover all of my musical interests!

I'd say this; being born in '67, I was a sponge for all types of music from my first recollection until the mid 80s. I didn't draw lines, or dislike anything. All music was fair game. Around the mid 80s I developed a strong dislike for "New Wave" and things I considered simplistic (anyone can chug Metallica). I remember thinking Nirvana was something special, but not something I really liked. Still a Hair Band fanboy at this point. Temple of the Dog really sent me for a loop as did Pearl Jam's Ten. Those were something special, to me. Past the 90's, I became more open minded. If it's a good song, or if the band/artist has talent, I'm in. There are plenty of things I don't like, but they cross genres and arent time specific.

 

[Screamingdaisy]

GnR, Metallica, Nirvana, Korn.

Like them or not, they changed music.

 

[Tucson Thump]

There have been many magical musical moments in my life but there is one that sticks out in my mind as being one of the greatest I've ever seen. It was the evening of Saturday, September 30, 1989. Me and my brothers were watching Saturday Night Live. Bruce Willis was the guest host and Neil Young was the musical guest. As usual, we haw-hawed over the Wayne's World episode and all the other comedy routines of the night but when it came time for Neil's performance spot, time stood still for me. I was expecting to see Neil perform with Crazy Horse like he normally does but that night, I was in for a hell of a shock. Neil had a different band performing with him which featured his Crazy Horse co-guitarist Pancho Sampredo but there were two other fellows that I didn't recognize at the moment (Charlie Drayton on bass and Steve Jordan on drums). With one crack of the snare, they exploded into a new song ("Rockin' in the Free World") that had not been released yet (The album it was on "Freedom" would be released a few days later on October 2, 1989). Right off the bat, they were stomping around the tiny SNL stage like a tribal gang of warriors, assaulting the audience with a full on attack of twin P-90 equipped Les Pauls and 100 watt Marshall stacks. Steve Jordan was going gonzo, beating the living crap out of the drums with his dreadlocks flying about and Charlie locking in with some serious bass lines. I was sitting there on my bean bag, with my jaw on the carpet. Completely transfixed by what I was seeing and hearing through my parents' Zenith console. Unfortunately, these were the days before HD TV screens and surround sound wasn't yet a standard fixture for most living rooms. My brothers were more or less not impressed as they were both into whatever Top 40 crap was playing that week but me, I was the guitar player in my family so naturally, my mind was blown. When the song was over, Neil yanked back his Bigsby tremolo with one sharp move and busted all the strings of his Les Paul and walked off the stage with a half-way grin/sneer. The audience was cheering but I think that most of them were in total shock, as I was. That, to me, was my "Elvis/The Beatles on Ed Sullivan" moment. I was already playing guitar before that moment but this was when I decided to stop farting around with it and practice more seriously. I decided to record the show on my VCR that night and I must have worn out that tape in a matter of weeks because of me constantly cueing and rewinding to that performance and playing my woefully inadequate Fender Stratocaster and Fender Champ 12 amp along with the tape. Whenever I need some inspiration to get me out of a musical rut, I always can rely on that one performance to jump start my engine all over again.

I remember seeing that. Young was, as you aptly wrote, a wild man!

 

[geese_com]

Mine happened last year when I heard Tal Farlow's version of "Have You Met Miss Jones?". I was completely blown away like when I heard EVH's Eruption for the first time.

 

[Drew]

I kind of regret being too young to not have experienced the truly ground breaking new stuff. Stuff like Hendrix, Sabbath, & Van Halen. But, my era wasn't too shabby. I was just getting into high school when the grunge era took hold. Pretty amazing to hear stuff like Pearl Jam, STP, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and Nirvana for the first time. Another wow moment was 1996 when Radiohead released OK Computer. I still never tire of that album and there has never been another one remotely like it. But, THE wow moment in music for me was when Dream Theater released Images and Words in 92 and hearing Pull Me Under for the first time. My god... the song that more or less sent me on a big musical journey that not only included Dream Theater, but lead to the stuff that inspired them such as Rush, Yes, Malmsteen, and much much more. It also really sparked my fire on the guitar. Before I heard that one song on the radio, I was into more straight up rock.... Aerosmith, GNR, Motley Crue.. But, after that is when I really started to develop a passion for musicians music. It was my manager at the seafood shack I worked at, a great drummer, who loaded up the tape when we were cleaning up after a shift. If it wasn't for him, who knows where I might have gone musically. I'd probably be a Taylor Swift fan and not play the guitar at all

 

[11top]

These quickly come to mind as songs that stopped me in my tracks. Not necessarily my favorites, but ones unlike something I’d heard before.

I Want to Hold Your Hand
Glad All Over
Satisfaction
Purple Haze
Mississippi Queen
White Room
Look at Yourself
Good Timed Bad Times
I Got a Line on You
Paranoid
Keep Yourself Alive
Starship Trooper
4 Day Creep
Running with the Devil
Hold the Line
Can I Tell You Something
Pull Me Under

 

[Herr Squid]

This is probably going to come across as weird because it's mostly not contemporary pop music, and mostly not discovered in the stereotypical ways but well, so be it.

Prelude: Sometime in about second grade or so I was watching my usual diet of PBS afternoon programming. It was possibly Sesame Street, possibly Electric Company, but I heard IT for the first time: fuzzed-out wah-soaked electric guitar. I didn't know what I was hearing, just that it sounded like nothing else I'd ever heard before, and I loved it. All I could think of to call it was "crazy music."

Fast forward many years, and I realize that ferocious, precise music strokes pleasure centers in my brain that probably shouldn't be there, but are. I can't explain it, I just know I thrive on music that sounds like the end of the world.

My first fully realized OMG moment was hearing Van Halen's "Eruption" in junior high school. I took a couple of years of gymnastics classes and the teacher would let the kids play their records during class. Somebody with outstanding taste commandeered the record player, and there was a pretty steady diet of late-70's (brand new at the time) Rush, Van Halen, and Scorpions on rotation. I didn't know what was what (actually thought "Eruption" was form the "2112" album for a little while), but I had to have it, and the first Van Halen album was my first vinyl LP.

During the heyday of MTV, Living Colour's "Cult of Personality" and Soundgarden's "Hands all Over" blew me away, as did Voivod's cover of "Astronomy Domine," and GnR's "Welcome to the Jungle."

Then there was the entirety of "Master of Puppets," which made me completely change my approach to guitar. James Hetfield's combination of aggression and finesse rocked my world and still does.

Fast forward a lot (a lot!) of years and and the one-two punch of Porcupine Tree's "In Absentia" and Opeth's "Blackwater Park floored me. Here was big beautiful sweet/gloomy music with long elaborate arrangements and sounds to get lost in. My second-favorite concert ever turned out to be Opeth's show in the parking lot there in Stevensville -- didn't see that coming despite being a long-time fan.

But the coup de grace was one day I happened to be poking around a cable TV music streaming service (a thing I almost never did) and they played Meshuggah's "Bleed." Holy freakin' sheeyit I had never heard anything even remotely like it in terms of intensity and sheer savage grace. Somebody I once knew described them as "atonal math metal with obscene polyrhythms" and that begins to describe it but doesn't really do it justice. It's relentless and frightening and sounds like the jackhammer that destroys the universe and I absolutely love it.

 

[Wakester]

Like Bodia I am a half century old, beyond that, the similarity probably ends. I grew up on old country (Reeves, Jennings, Cash, Williams, etc. ) because of Dad, and also liked old show tunes and classical because of Mom. But I also liked John Denver, Glen Campbell, and whatever was current and playing on AM Radio. Around Junior High I started getting more exposure to my older brothers music and better Radio stations. That was the late 70's / early 80's. By the mid 80's it was Styx, Journey, REO, Loverboy, Foreigner all the top 40 Chart toppers. Then I heard Kaleigh, by Marillion on the radio. I couldn't get enough, of it. I bought one album, then another, an ep here, a bootleg there. I now have collection that I've easily invested $2k in. The music is there daily, I can recall just about any song in their repertoire, not just lyrics, but notes, beats, inflections, reflections and memories from back then. It became a part of me, it changed me, I became a part of it.

 

[Huggy Love]

Growing up in Da Hood I was exposed mainly to Soul music, Funk & Jazz and didn't pick up the guitar until I was an adult, so Rock & Blues was not the big thing in my environment, with the exception of home town hero Carlos Santana. After leaving I ultimately did pick up the guitar and dived into the deep end of the pool when it came to Rock and guitar music.

-early to mid 70's-
EWF, Kool & the Gang, Tower of Power, with serious horn sections, superior grooves, and knockout songwriting & vocals, these bands touched me deeply with just about every album release. Then Fusion Happened and Return to Forever, Weather Report, etc. showed me how far you can take an electric instrument, everything seemed lightweight compared to it.

-mid 70's to 80's-
Fusion, P-Funk & the Washington DC GoGo music was deep in my psyche.............. then I bought a guitar and Rock was the target. Hearing EVH made me look at guitar things much differently and Frampton's marathon live version of "Do you feel like we do" made me feel like I could do something with music cause I did a decent cover of it. Then Back in Black AC/DC came out and covering those songs on stage actually made me feel like a Rockstar, even doing Ozzy didn't make me feel that way.

-80's to 90's-
That was all a blur to me.

-90's to present-
After always having a love for Jazz I decided to go that route as lead guitar in popular music died and that was my inspiration in Rock, so gray suit here I go. I was already exposed to Wes Montgomery, Herb Ellis & Kenny Burrell so listening to them was not an epiphany ........ learning how hard it is to play like them ........... was.

 

[flux]

Some of you first heard the same sound years or decades later, after the "contemporary" events became your history and the original sound had already influenced (either as a pro or con reaction) the contemporary musicians of your time. What is happening is a reaction to what had happened, in a sense like an echo.

Since I feel like the reigning king of "day late & a dollar short" when it comes to musical discoveries, I have an interesting one along these lines.

2004:

The great stagnation, before my hiatus from playing. I'm bandless, pissed off about the state of popular music, and starting to really hate most of my guitars. The desperation mounted to break out of my rut, because it was the most severe I'd experienced. Now, I will most politely express that country is not my genre, although I will happily listen to anything, anywhere, especially involving a high level of musicianship. On a whim, I ordered the not-too-distantly-released Alison Krauss & Union Station Live DVD, thinking it might be a change of pace. Her voice could still be used as a weapon, so I figured even if the bluegrass numbers weren't my thing, I'd catch some mellow FM material.

I have to say, honestly -- I'd never really paid attention to Dobro/reso players. Not intentionally, it was just too far outside my limited sphere. Enter the best I'm aware of, one Mr. Jerry Douglas. Holy frak. I've been fortunate enough to have seen a lot of cool stuff in my time, and some really phenomenal talent. In this case, not only the different tonality of the instrument caught my attention (and his, of course), but he was blistering out these amazing lines, I was truly shocked by what I was seeing and hearing. After the third or fourth solo I would've signed away my proverbial soul to be able to perform like that.

Now, all my favorite stuff in that show resides in traditional bluegrass standards, or the AKUS arrangement of other nifty stuff, but Douglas just infused this modern twist, flawlessly. Perhaps the groundbreaking nature was illusory, but who cares.

Prime example, the solo section of Take Me For Longing (which starts at 7:08 in this clip in case the timestamp fails).

To this date that probably remains the most I've ever been nuked by anything, which strikes me as funny in hindsight. My desire to learn a new instrument waned, anyway. Pretty quickly too, once I realized the gravity of what I was dealing with. That'd be the equivalent of buying some chalk and a board and expecting to overturn Einstein in a few short years.


Much shorter #2: hearing Derek Trucks when the DTB was on the big rise. Yowza.

 

[Deli6505]

Mine happened last year when I heard Tal Farlow's version of "Have You Met Miss Jones?". I was completely blown like when I heard EVH's Eruption for the first time.

I think it goes without saying that "Eruption" made every guitar player in the world collectively crap our pants the first time we all heard it. I don't know anyone that wasn't blown away by that sonic blast.

 

[veinbuster]

I’m not sure my memory is good enough, but here are a few that come to mind.

Stones, Sympathy for the Devil. It had a much different character than stuff I saw on TV or heard on the family record player. I soon started buying my own music.

Bob Marley: a very different feel and perspective. I still favour music with a sideways beat.

B B King: it was exciting to see how much someone could say with so few notes. This level of compactness has stayed with me.

SRV: I had to see him live after he turned down touring with Bowie. Seeing him pour out his soul sitting on the edge of a small stage set a new standard of expressiveness for me.

Portishead: I still wonder how they got there.

NIN: maybe the first music my daughter brought to me.

 

[Dirty_Boogie]

I like to think I have pretty diverse tastes, but the "new" music that I still remember to this day having a major impact on me was Metallica's "Ride the Lightning" album. The year was 1984, the year I started playing guitar, and the year I really discovered guitar-heavy music (Led Zep, VH, ACDC, Maiden, Scorps, etc.) Then a friend gave me the Metallica tape. It was so unbelievably fast, heavy, with a crushing rhythm guitar tone, and it scared the cr@p out of me - really, there was heavy music, and then this came along! I couldn't listen through the whole album, but came back to it 6 months later. Still amazes me today that these guys delivered something so different at that time.

Oh, and hearing Jimi's Crosstown Traffic when I was 11 years old. That also left a lasting impression.

 

[Kiwi]

In 1968 I was a conventional suburban 10-year-old in a conventional suburban home, listening to my parents' collection: Herb Alpert & TJB, New Christy Minstrels, Kingston Trio. You get the idea.

Then I got a copy of Cream's Disraeli Gears, and my world was never the same again.

=K

 

[Steve's addiction]

By decades

60s Beatles/Stones
70's Black Sabbath
80's Cars
90"s Grunge
2000's jazz/funk instrumentals

 

[Tucson Thump]

In 1968 I was a conventional suburban 10-year-old in a conventional suburban home, listening to my parents' collection: Herb Alpert & TJB, New Christy Minstrels, Kingston Trio. You get the idea.

Then I got a copy of Cream's Disraeli Gears, and my world was never the same again.

=K

Were we neighbors?

 

[László]

I can’t list them, there are too many moments like these, but one record that truly grabbed me by the throat for its vibe, clarity, and simplicity was The Cure’s album, “Seventeen Seconds.”

 

[Ovibos]

Porcupine Tree "In Absentia" was my 'holy crap that's the sound in my head' moment.