atlantamoi

Even though I think I know a good deal about rock history, I find myself continuing to learn and reevaluate my personal ideas. Hell, reevaluating facts as well. What bands over the years made you sit back and think, "Damn, THIS is causing me to question what I know." ?

I just finished listening to Faust's 1972 album "So Far" for the first time. Yeah, I've read about them before. I'm familiar with Can and a bit of Neu!, but hearing this Faust album for the first time helps me peek into the past and put today in better perspective.

It happened to me a couple of years ago with the Monks. It happened back in college with the Velvet Underground.

I guess I'm talking about bands that never got played on the radio, but still are incredibly important in the progression of rock music.

auto

Velvet Underground

Cliched but it's true.

david12

I might get crapped on for saying this, but The Beach Boys 'Pet Sounds' is the single reason I listen to 'older' music. There is a single moment too...in the song "I'm waiting for the day" when everything fades out then there are a few booming timpani thuds followed by a great running bass line accented by flutes. "I didn't think..." Before that moment, everything that came out before 90 felt stale, but that sound that Brian Wilson produced felt as fresh to me as any music I have ever heard. Still does. W

The Bus

That's how I felt about hearing King Crimson. Very surprised it was from the 60's.

Mordred

When I was just getting into hard rock and metal back in '91 (after growing up on a diet of 50s and 60s top-40 thanks to my dad) I went over to a friends house and finally got a chance to listen to "Master of Puppets." After that, everything suddenly made sense.

The only other time I've had that strong a reaction was when I put on Opeth's "Blackwater Park" for the first time. I came within a hairs breath of turning it off after the first minute because the death metal vocals weren't doing it for me and then everything peeled away to reveal this beautiful thing and I realized no one anywhere on earth was making music the way these guys are doing it.

Also, after years of reading about Robert Johnson, finally getting to hear his stuff, and then recognizing his influence throughout the British Rock of the '60s and '70s was pretty cool as well.

sauce07

This is happening to me all the time
I remember the first time i heard the Talking Heads and how everything changed in my mind, music didn't need to be peachy clean like the Beatles, you don't have to have the best voice (i learned that from Dylan but he's always been godly in my mind)
Same thing happened the first time i heard Rush, Phish and more recently Umphreys McGee from Chicago. Umphreys amazed me by how they were able to change styles midway through songs and switch back, never seen a band do it better

zombiezilla

Nick Lowe's entire catalog; Elvis Costello's better stuff, too.

wendersfan

The Small Faces

For me, they were the "missing link" that I discovered a few years ago. I was already familiar with the Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, the Yardbirds, and the Animals. Learning The Small Faces catalog filled in a gap in my understanding of the development of British pop/rock.

Numanoid

When I discovered Yellow Magic Orchestra and realized that they really had been at the very forefront of electronic music (second only to Kraftwerk perhaps), despite being relatively unknown in the West.

JANK

My epiphany happened when I first heard "I Can See For Miles and Miles" by The Who back in 8th grade. I was stunned.

I then literally huddled around the radio that winter to everything on the radio. I was glued and hooked and then broadened out to the 50's and everything in between.

Later the line from the Velvet Underground's "Rock and Roll" rang true and literal to my life.

"...turns on a New York station
She doesn't believe what she hears at all
Ooh, she started dancin' to that fine, fine music
You know, her life was saved by rock'n'roll
Yeah, rock'n'roll"

So True!

Hiro11

This happens all the time to me: I read about some (at least to me) obscure band from the seventies, buy an album and then realize that what I thought were original ideas from later bands were far from it.

The first time I heard The Flying Burrito Brother's "Guilded Palace of Sin" (which was very hard to find in the late eighties), I realized indie country rock ain't exactly new.

Roxy Music's entire catalogue, but especially "Country Life" made me realize that a lot of my favorite bands have essentially been trying to remake Roxy Music albums for the last thirty years. Ditto T. Rex's "Electric Warrior".

Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" blew my mind in jr. high. Holy shit, the definitive electro pop album was made in the mid seventies.

I had routinely dissed prog (without actually hearing it) for decades, then I bought "Close to the Edge" and "Lark's Tongue in Aspic" and realized just what I'd been missing.

When I bought Rites of Spring's comp a few years ago, I realized that the entire emo scene and basically any pop-punk band in the last decade has been ripping them off.

atlantamoi

Exactly. Not long ago I heard some Karlheinz Stockhausen and I couldn't believe I was hearing music like this made back in 1959. It's not pop... it's not the totally listenable music Kraftwerk has made, but you can even hear how Kraftwerk was influenced by others.

wendersfan

I have the feeling I'm a good bit older than some of you.

The Gilded Palace of Sin is a tremendous album. I was introduced to it, and indeed, Parson's entite ouvre, by a college roommate. I'm old enough to remember Kraftwerls lone US pop hit "Autobahn", and have followed their career since.

And I used to listen to prog-rock back in junior high.

Tscott

Hearing Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album made me completely reevaluate the idea that he was just that guy who did 'Brown Eyed Girl' so that college girls would have something to dance to at bars.

Hiro11

That's like the time I discovered London Calling and realized that "Should I Stay or Should I Go" is probably the silliest and nowhere near the best song the Clash ever wrote.

nazz

Why would you get crapped on? Pet Sounds is a masterpiece.

Nick Danger

Muddy Waters.

You've got yearnin' and I got burnin'
Baby you look so sweet and cunning
Baby way down inside, woman you need love
Woman you need love, you've got to have some love
I'm gonna give you some love, I know you need love

I knew that there was some kind of scandal about Led Zepplin and plagarism. I didn't know it was so flagrant. Muddy Waters sang it so much better than Robert Plant, too.

Bell65

when i ws younger...Green Day

when I got a bit older Alabama and Alison Krause turned me on to country music ...

now at 23 Im really digging soem bobby darin and billie holiday a lot!

Dudikoff

In High School I loved Korn, Megadeth, Deftones, and ICP. The Napster came along and I fell back in love with the 80's (I'm a child of the 80's) and surprisingly with my parent's music, the 50's and 60's. I'm open to anything now, as long as it's not prefab/manufactered/overproduced crap like most of the stuff on the radio today. To name a few artists, I love:

the White Stripes
the Smiths & Morrissey
Chris Isaak
Social D
the Pogues
U2
Radiohead
Tom Petty
Sam Cook
60's Rolling Stones
60's Beatles
Duran Duran
Def Leppard
Howard Jones

...so basically, quite a variety just like everyone. My 16 year old self would kick my ass for how I've changed!

illennium

Kraftwerk, Television, Joy Division, Husker Du, Nick Drake, Gram Parsons.

covenant

I've heard so many people praise London Calling so I tried it out myself. The cover looked cool enough and I thought it would rock hard. Not one song grabbed me. It was too soft and too poppy. Rockabilly? No thanks.

Maybe we should have a thread: "Albums everyone likes but me"

JANK

If the title track only doesn't grab you and slam you against the wall then you ain't listening!

wendersfan

Wow. "Clampdown" was "too soft and poppy"?

EddieN

The cover is just an intentional rip of Elvis Presley's first album.

cdollaz

Hateful is one of my favorite songs of all time.