Travis McClain

For the purpose of this thread, I'm not asking who actually made you aware of music, but rather who was it that put you with the music that you first loved? You might have grown up hearing whatever your parents played in the car, for instance, but it was your older brother that led you to the metal. Maybe a childhood buddy that first brought rap to your ears. Whatever it is, who is responsible for your musical "first love?"

Numanoid

I did it all on my own, in an effort to seek out music that wasn't the same cookie-cutter stuff that everyone else was listening to (I knew it HAD to be out there). I ended up being the guy to turn other people on to interesting, different music.

Supermallet

My father introduced me to The Beatles, Stones, Who, Jethro Tull, Genesis (Peter Gabriel era), Emerson Lake and Palmer, and Yes. Then I discovered Bowie and found a shit ton more on my own.

My best friend introduced me to a ton of diverse artists, including The Residents, The Boredoms, Laurie Anderson, Built To Spill, Spiritualized, They Might Be Giants, etc.

rw2516

I grew up with an older sister. I was 6 when Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan and although I couldn't appreciate it at the time was exposed non-stop to top 40 radio, American Bandstand, Shindig, Hullabaloo and endless playing of 45s in our house. She babysat me when folks weren't home which further exposed me. I started to "get it" around 1970 when I was 12 and started buying my own records, mostly 45s and few albums by people I was exposed to through AM radio. My best friend who lived next door had an older brother, long hair party dude, through his albums discovered stuff like Zeppelin, Traffic, Grand Funk, Hendrix, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, etc. By age 14 in 1972 I was listening to underground radio, Beaker Street on KAAY Little Rock and buying all my albums and head shops.

al_bundy

parents bought a radio when we came to the US and that's how i heard Run DMC and rap for the first time. 5 or 6 years later people introduced me to heavy metal and rock

Skyclad01

Since having no brothers or sisters or near by cousins, and with my musical preference being different than my friends, I just found out on my own through general classmate interaction throughout school.

As a kid, I was used to hearing Country & Western music cause thats what my parents listened to. But then around 5th grade thru early jr. high I got into a little rap and typical 80's music. Then I found out about Twisted Sister and thats when I officially got into metal. Then in high school, I found the infamous heavy metal station KNAC (just as they had ended thier new wave KROQ-esque era). Then I started to learn about so many great bands; Overkill, Exodus, DRI, SOD, Suicidal Tendencies, Metallica, Danzig, Death Angel, Dark Angel, Motorhead, Megadeth, and Slayer.

Thankfully that was just in time for me to catch the birth and rise of Death Metal (yay!)with such amazing bands such as Death, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Napalm Death, Terrorizer, Unleashed and so many others. There, I had a friend who introduced me to Industrial music, and some goth. Then from there, I found out about this import band called Cradle Of Filth (this was before they were widely known), and my musical horizons broadened to include Black Metal along with the previously mentioned bands/genre's and its all been great until this new wave of music (Emo, Screamo, Deathcore, Metalcore, etc.) thats ruined a lot of that for me now.

Fortunately though, theres been bands that have stayed true throughout all of that, and on the plus side, it seems like Thrash Metal is slowly making a comeback. So its all coming full circle now and hopefully that will bring about the return of true Metal and Death Metal like the way it originally was 15 - 20 years ago! Yay again!

NORML54601

A friend turned me onto Zeppelin IV when I was 13 and it snowballed from there.

bobert3

I got really hooked on music once my cousin got me into Pink Floyd's The Wall from there I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, so I took lessons, and that opened the door for everything else.

FatTony

Oddly enough, MTV did. My life changed one fateful night in the summer of 1997 when I caught the video for Reel Big Fish's "Sell Out" at like 2am, which led me to countless other ska and punk bands (many of whom I still count among my favorite bands to this day), which eventually led to my branching out and discovering all kinds of music. But no matter what I was getting into over the years, I was always willing to check out new ska and punk bands.

Before that, I wasn't much of a music person and just listened to whatever my friends were listening to, which was part of the reason I wasn't a music person...they had shitty taste.

My mom also listened primarily to oldies stations when I was growing up, so I have a certain soft spot for a lot of that stuff as well. Though at the time, they weren't playing anything like Led Zeppelin, mostly stuff from the early 60s and before, so I had to find out about classic rock mainstays on my own.

atlantamoi

On my own here. My aunt did leave some Beatles records at my grandmother's house and a home we moved into in the early 70's had the first Rolling Stones and first Monkees albums left in the basement. Those three albums can pretty much sum up the base for all I love. I do wish I had had an older sibling who could have made me aware of the underground music around in the late 70's. I totally relied on FM radio for music when I was in my early teens. I definitely DID NOT care for the cheesy crap my parents were into (early Olivia Newton-John and some wimpy Christian music).

Tscott

Growing up, my best friends older sister introduced us to a lot of music. She LOVED Duran Duran- so much that her room was plastered with magazine articles, pictures and posters of them. But she also listened to early Depeche Mode and Jean Michel Jarre and was the first to say "You've gotta listen to this" and play Barnes and Barnes "Fish Heads" for us.

Not necessarily the best music at times, but enough that I knew that there was stuff different from what was being played on the radio that I could seek out when I had some disposable income.

The Bus

My German grandmother bought classical music, a-ha, and Guns 'N' Roses. When I brought Appetite for Destruction home my stepdad thought it was satanic music and never let me play it again.

(This ranks right alongside my cousin making me turn off The Cure's Wish because she didn't like the "heavy metal" I was playing).

A few friends in high school sent me on disparate journeys of discovery. I had a friend that loved mostly 70's rock, a friend who only listened to European techno, a friend who liked "hippie" music, a friend who was into a lot of indie stuff, a friend who liked Sonic Youth and Ween, a friend who liked East Coast hip hop.

Add to this my subscription to Spin and Rolling Stone and I was pretty well-covered.

My only regret is that I had nobody that was in any way interested in Latin music.

Achtung

There wasn't really one person or anything, it was more of a long journey for me. When I was young, I pretty much just listened to the soft rock stuff I heard on the radio when my mom was driving.

By the late 80s and early 90s, I paid a little more attention to the stuff on VH1 and MTV, though I didn't really get into the whole Nirvana/grunge scene at the time, and in truth I'm still not that big of a fan. But it opened up some more options for me and got me into some of the alternative bands of the period.

I was also on the internet pretty early, starting around 1994 or so during middle school and so I could get into more bands of similar styles that weren't on the radio or TV. That pretty much continued into college and using a then-new service called Napster to get a taste of lots of different bands and styles of music. I also read up a lot in music magazines like Q and Spin. And I also had some friends at school who were into classic rock and encouraged me to get into some older stuff as well.

So for me there was definitely not one person, but a lot of different sources that helped mold my music tastes.

JasonF

Around the time the Doors movie came out, I picked up the autobiography of John Densmore at the library. I figured I ought to listen to some of this music I was reading about, so I started listening to classic rock and enjoyed it.

About a decade later, I was getting my hair cut. When I got my haircut, I used to park at a bookstore that had free parking with validation, so it was my habit to pick up a book or DVD or something whenever I got my haircut. This particular time, I saw the Ramones' Greatest Hits. The begining and end of my knowledge of the Ramones at that point was "I Wanna Be Sedated," but listening to that made me want to find out more about punk, which led to the "No Thanks" and "Left of the Dial" boxed sets, which led to a love of punk and post-punk alternative.

Since then, I've made more of an effort to expose myself to new and interesting music, which is much easier now that we have the internet.

The Infidel

I could go through a laundry list of all the people who introduced me to whatever kind of music I listened to at various points in my life. Whether it's a good thing or not, I very rarely found something to listen to on my own. The biggest artist I was into at what I consider the most formative time in my life was Prince. A friend introduced me to his music, and I was hooked. My friend would like to think that I only started listening to him because he did, but that's just stupid.

All in all, my mom was the one who introduced me to music in general. She was always playing music around the house, and even though I didn't get into any particular type of music or particular artist(s) she liked, her eclectic tastes did give me a good idea what music was about, and would form in my own mind what I would like about the artists or groups I would later get into growing up. She showed me that there's something to appreciate about all types of music, and to give everything a fair chance before saying you don't like it.

Hiro11

I went to boarding school when I was 14 and another kid had a collection of tapes with Angry Samoans, Dead Milkmen, Minor Threat, Descendants, Suicidal Tendancies etc. He also had a cool PiL t-shirt and a wicked pair of Doc Martens. Sweet. Later that year, I discovered Wax Trax! records through another friend. The rest... is history.

Shamus McAnally

I'd say my first real musical awakening (realizing there was music not necessarily on the radio) came in college. A couple of friends (and a professor of theirs) brought me into their world of hard rock, hair metal, and alt. hard rock. Subsequently, CD hunting and the ever-expanding search for good used CD shops and/or shops that carried hard to find artists. (Hunts taking place from Cleveland, to Pittsburgh, to even Toronto.)

clckworang

Like others, I think my musical journey began with myself. As a kid, pretty much the only thing I did was play tennis, so I was often a couple steps behind. I started to listen a lot to country music, mainly because that's what the people I had been friend with were listening to, but I just knew that it wasn't quite me.

I had a couple of friends who listened to some other stuff and that I started to become better friends with. I would say those friends helped shape my tastes, but I usually found my own conclusions. For instance, we all loved '60s rock, but while nearly all of my friends were obsessed with Jim Morrison and The Beatles, I went more for Janis Joplin and Pink Floyd (not that I wasn't a Beatles fan). I also dove head first into the alternative rock scene and just found things that appealed to me, something that was very hard to do in a small town before the Internet. I had to special order so many things!

Even now, I basically do my own thing, though I'm probably more open to suggestions now. I started to get into jazz independent of any of my friends as well as punk. Now at least I have a close friend who I can talk punk music with and whose suggestions I actually respect.

woofman

In grade school I listened to whatever was on the radio-I hadn't really found my calling yet. For my birthday in 7th grade my Mom went to the record store and axed the clerk "what would you buy a 7th grader"? The guy handed her POWERSLAVE ... At first I was like "what is this crap" (because it came from my Mom of course).

Then I actually listened to it, realizing that yes she had no idea-thankfully, otherwise she wouldn't have bought it. I was instantly hooked. THIS was what I had been searching for my whole life. I immediately sought out everything else available by Iron Maiden, and luckily I had some friends who introduced me to other great bands too. I eventually got into punk, hardcore, and every other genre imaginable.

As I get older my tastes continue to broaden. Old school country, bluegrass, electronic/chillout, jazz...

So in a round about way, my own mother is responsible for the metal head that I am today, though I would have discovered it eventually anyway...

arminius

The earliest I remember actually playing records it was a Mitch Miller LP. I had just seen The Bridge Over the River Kwai and loved the whistling song. I think it was Col. Bogies march. Also on the record was Yellow Rose of Texas. I used to get up on Sunday morning and play those 2 songs over and over. Then my mother came home with Steppenwolf Monster.

Dan1boy

My mother and step-father (at the time) listened to nothing but musicals (West Side Story, Man of La Mancha, Annie etc.) and adult contemporary (Barbra, Neil, Barry, PPM, Air Supply etc.)

Teen/early 20's spent with Depeche Mode, Erasure, PSB, The Cure, Billy Idol etc.

Post 30 tastes now gravitate towards Placebo, Muse, The Sounds, Franz etc. etc.

I am a straight male.

Hiro11

Great story! All hail the kick-ass record store clerk.

Aegean2007

Well, nobody I know is really that into music, so it was actually MTV (a few years ago) that introduced me to bands that broadened my taste. Four videos stand out:

Radiohead - Paranoid Android
TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion
Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks

Yes, I know, MTV still plays music videos? Yes, at like 2am.

I branched out from those and I listen to anything that I can get my hands on now.

B5Erik

Joseph Kiss Sr. In 1753.