"I remember where I was when I first heard..."

Walking to college through the fog with one of them new-fangled Walkman thingmies and a tape of Hatful of Hollow by The Smiths.

Then having How Soon is Now blast my eardrums for the very first time.

Unforgettable.

Ah, yes. How Soon is Now was a great one. I was in a gritty club in Toronto...I think illegally???...I can still feel the dance floor under my chinese slippers...and smell the tang of sweating bodies and glue and poppers. I can still see the lights glinting of the dirt on the dance floor. feel the bodies swaying against me...STOP! I was falling into a wormhole there for a minute!


The first time I heard 10:15 Saturday Night by The Cure...I knew I found my home. It was 1979...I was on the cusp of an extremely wild ride on the dark side. 13 years-old...and lucidly falling down the rabbit hole. The train in that song called me aboard...and it was a 5 year trip into magic mind altering brilliance! The beginning and the pinnacle of that journey began with the first notes of 10:15...and the rest of the Three Imaginary Boys album.

I was working as a bartender when I first heard Scarface's 'I Seen A Man Die'. At the time I was just realizing that I was Gothic but I still loved my hip hop/rap culture. It seemed like the two couldn't possibly co-exist. But this song with it's dark and menacing message combined the two and I couldn't get enough. I bought all his albums and the pain and power of his music is still with me.

*My son crushes on Jill Scott something fierce*

My stepdad is a devout blues fan. By that,I mean none of this MTV hipster bullshit. I mean authentic blues. When I was a little girl,every Saturday he fired up the grill and no rap or RnB younger than twenty years old was allowed.The first time I heard Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters,Howling Wolf, Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy and so many others,my fucking soul ascended to a higher plane. I love the blues for life.

I was 16, in early 2000. I had just bought an 18+ album thanks to my mother approving it. She asked the worker there, "It says on the front there is swearing. Do you think it's suitable for a 16 year old?"

The worker guy said, "The music's so fast, you can't even hear the swearing."

So I bought that album. It was Midian by Cradle Of Filth, and when I listened to it that night, I was brought to the throes of ecstasy that is Heaven on Earth.

Curiously, there was a lyrics booklet included, so I could read along while the songs played. Trust me - the swearing is SO not the most offensive part of that album!

It was the Australian Tour Edition, with a special cover. AFAIK that's the only time they've ever been to Aus, and I missed it (not that I was old enough to go anyway).


Another album was Slipknot's self-titled. I heard it in a friend's bedroom - we had been friends since pre-school, but I hadn't seen him in a couple of years. Just as I was getting into KoRn, he was getting into Slipknot. This was about a year or 2 before I got into Cradle Of Filth.

Cradle is still my favourite band, hands down. Others come close, but god, Cradle rocks my world.

I remember listening to it twice in a row, laying on my single bed in my tiny room with the door shut, not up too loud lest mum confiscate it.

I was working at a club in NYC the first time I heard "USA for Africa"

They dropped a screen from the ceiling and the place went silent. It was cool as hell.

Till then I didn't know there was a screen up there

I can't remember the year, but I remember being around 11 or 12 and borrowed my big sister's friend's tape and hearing A Night Like This by the Cure. It's still my favorite. I was a HUGE Cure fan up until Wish.


1989, at a friend's apartment listening to Remission by Skinny Puppy. I was scared.. he had mannequins.

Fall of 1990, sitting in my boyfriend's bedroom while he burned the hair off his little sister's Barbie Dolls to make art - listening to Pretty Hate Machine for the first time. (mmmm.. burning plastic.)

December of 1991, driving to work in my 1977, Robin's Egg Blue VW Rabbit in the rain with the windshield leaking onto my Docs, listening to Ritual de lo Habitual.

and the most recent, probably 2005, driving back from Wax n Facts in Atlanta listening to Antics by Interpol.

Oh, there are so many.

Neil Young: Rocking in the Free World (electric version). Late fall, 1989. I had just driven back to college from a weekend at home, 90 miles in a blizzard in the dark, unable to go more than 35 mph at any time. I was young and stupid; I should have stayed home and blown off Monday's morning classes. The "student storage" parking was on the edge of town, and by some miracle the campus bus service was still running, saving me a 45 minute walk in the knee-deep snow. Exhausted, terrified, needing a drink REALLY badly, I sat on the nearly full bus. The driver had a boom box cranked up, and the song came on. It didn't pertain to the situation at all, but that song still brings back that memory.

Well, almost all my albums remind me of something, my teens, high school, friends, and all that stuff.

I remember listening to Boston's first album at a friend's house right after it's release. It was September of 1976 and I was leaving for the Navy the next money. He had bought a few albums, and out of all them, he said he liked Boston the least. Funny that. I can't even remember the other albums. But Boston was all over the airwaves while I was in Bootcamp.

We had Music Appreciation in High School in 1974 and on Fridays we could bring in our own music for the class to hear and I remember one of the girls brought in Robin Trower's "Twice Removed From Yesterday."

I remember staying overnight at a friend's in 1975, just after graduating from high school, dropping acid, and listening to Captain Beyond's "Sufficiently Breathless" until the sun came up.

I remember seeing the video clip to The Offspring's Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) when I was in high school. My sister was starting Uni, and looking for student housing. She had an interview with one household (which she didn't wind up staying at) and mum and I went with her. It was a Saturday.

In the kitchen, there was a small TV playing the music show, Video Hits (Australia's baby). That song was on, and I saw it in full, mesmerised.

Before that, all I'd heard of The Offspring was their album Ignition. This was their first video I saw. I really liked it (though I've moved on since those adolescent years).

Yeah.

I was 15, window-shopping and bored, when I just happened to have heard Down to the Bone's Brooklyn Heights. Available here.

I just stopped and was like, "Wait a minute...this is GOOD." Strong, sleek bass, piano-driven melody, and my fingers just kind of tapped the piano right along with the song. I used to play way back when....never quite forgot.

It just kind of stuck with me. 10 years after I heard it, and never fails to still capture my ear, to this day.

Riding with my mom, on the way to a school interview - late spring, Massachusetts. In the space of a few minutes, I heard two beautiful firsts: On My Radio by The Selecter, and Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins.

That kind of set the tone for the whole summer, and it defined my daydreams for years.

CheekyWench said:

I can't remember the year, but I remember being around 11 or 12 and borrowed my big sister's friend's tape and hearing A Night Like This by the Cure. It's still my favorite. I was a HUGE Cure fan up until Wish.

Click to expand...

Well, the "Head on the Door" album came out in 1985, so if that helps narrow it down....

It was September of 1991. I had just come back from a trip to Italy, and was hanging out with my friend for the first time since I'd gotten back, and telling her about all our adventures.

We went for a walk on the drag (street next to University of Texas in Austin), and stopped in at the Sound Exchange to see what was new.

Suddenly, they put on something amazing I'd never heard before. "What is this?" I asked the guy behind the counter.

"New Nirvana!" he yelled over the pounding and yowling. It was "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I bought a copy of Nevermind on the spot. Little did any of us know how huge THAT was going to be.

It was 1976, so I was ten or eleven, and I used to come home for lunch from school. My parents were out, and a band was being interviewed on the radio. They were complaining about how terrible the music in the charts was. "So," said the interviewer, "what are you going to do about it?" And the sneering singer replied:

"We want to make it worse."

That was my introduction to the Sex Pistols.

I was 11, hanging out with a bunch of my friends after school, eating some burgers we had picked up from Burger King on our way home from school. One of them put on "Master of Puppets" by Metallica. That initial crunching riff made me put my hamburger down and listen in awe.

That song made me want to learn to play guitar. (Sure, Zeppelin had that effect as well, but the whole "Master of Puppets" album just reaffirmed it.)

I was in fourth grade and discovering the Beatles thanks to my friend Joey. I told my dad that I heard the Beatles for the first time. He asked me what album and I told him "Magical Mystery Tour." He shook his head and he went to the record store. He bought me a copy of Abbey Road and told me to listen to it.

I put it in the CD player and sat in my Phoenix Suns beanbag chair. Looking back on it, it's the most vividly I remember my room in that house.

It is the only CD in my collection that has made it through all my moving and has not ended up in storage. I have a huge poster of the album cover, a few t-shirts and the moment the entire album was up for purchase in Beatles Rock Band, I bought it. I'm walking down the aisle to Something.

I first heard India.Arie at the movie theatre. They were on a kick of playing music videos. They played "Video" in between ads and trivia. I remember thinking, this girl is good!

Tori Amos I first heard at Hastings. I'd heard of her, but didn't think anything of it because it seemed like no guys were really into her. Shocked was I to discover she was writing something really relatable and how many of her lyrics were just piles and piles of delicious metaphors.

I first heard Moby's album Play when I worked at the Subiaco Pavilion Markets at the sunglasses shop. It was one of the rare things that made the job tolerable, hearing good music over the PA system from the CD shop around the corner.

The first time I heard Megadeth's Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? was at a party in my bf's basement a couple of months after the album's release. I've been a fan of the band ever since.

My last night before moving into college, I heard "Misplaced Childhood" by Marillion for the first time. Still my favourite album.

I picked up 3 CDs to pass the time on a 12 hour flight that took me toward a major breakup. My life changed course that trip, and I think I might have become a real adult because of it (or as close as I ever will be). Still, there are emotional echoes anytime one of those songs come up on random on my ipod:

No Angel - Dido
Hey Man - Nelly Furtado
Mixtape vol 4 - Funkmaster Flex


One of these things is not like the others...

Maybe the music was not so memorable that I recalled the events, but vice versa.

The first time I heard more of Nirvana's Nevermind than just "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was in year 7 music class, when one of the boys had brought in his tape (awww!) and got to play probably the first 3 songs. I remember 3 of the boys in a row, head banging to the music. it is a scene that will never leave me

Partly because I liked one of those boys, and partly because I loved the music, my musical life was never the same after that day. Hehe.

It was the fourth of July when I was eleven I think, I was riding with my uncle in his truck and he was playing Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tears album. Before that all I ever listened to and lived was coutry, I mean I worked rodeos, ranches, rode horses, did FFA, etc., even dressed like a redneck. Once that album came in my life, everything changed, for the better in my opinion. My priorities came into effect from that point on.