When did you truly discover music for yourself?

[gir]

Do you remember the day?  How it felt?  How about the week?  Or the month?  What about the year?

For me, I discovered music on November 11th, 2002.

I was lying in bed and I'd switched it onto CBC at some point past midnight.  I don't know what made me travel in that direction, but I'm glad it did.  For it was that night that changed the course of my entire life.  A static hum came out of my speakers and I was confused.  Then, without warning, the hum dropped to a lower frequency and returned back to its original sound.  It began to form a semblance of a beat.  Layers of electronic sounds, screams, synthesizers all came toppling over one another.  I was awestruck.  I didn't know there was music that sounded different from everything else out there.  I was sixteen and felt like I'd wasted years of my life not knowing what was out there.

The track was called Total All Out Water and was created by Add (n) to X.  God bless you Brave New Waves.  You were my savior.

[b.louder]

the first time i truly ventured to discovering music on my own was in october 1999.

i was being homeschooled for a few months because of a fucked up situation with the school i had transfered to that year. my mum was teaching at mcgill then, so she would give me math homework to do and i would go hang out in the music library. i decided to take a study break and take out a video to watch, so i flipped through the catalogue and landed on Skinny Puppy, Ain't It Dead Yet. and thus began my longlasting love affair with industrial music and heroin addicts.

[cloudscapes]

in 1998 during my katimavik experience, where someone lent me Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness for a couple weeks. after that I was asking around for other reccomendations. before then I liked music, but mostlly istening to the same generic crap the cool kids were listening to. 2002 I guess is around when I startedl istening to much of the same stuff I listen to now.

[David Atman]

My father made me discover music when I was like 10 or something. I used to listen to a mix tape with Led Zep songs. But the only song I was listening to was Whole Lotta Love. I used to listen to that song over and over again until my sony walkman died.

[Stereolab]

It was my first year of high school, I was used to listen to pop/rock/top40 or things like Smashing pumpkins/Radiohead or Bjork but nothing really out of the ordinary. Then one day I was at Archambaut centre-ville and (for some reason!) they were playing Sonic Youth's A thousand leaves in the store. One of the songs begins with a big salve of distortion and it just stopped me in my tracks, I had never heard anything like it. So I bought the album, then many more of SY and shortly after came MBV/Pavement/JAMC/Stereolab/Mogwai/Spiritualized/etc etc etc... That year it simply became a real passion...
Ain't that cute?

[billy]

it happened a few times, but mostly always with my brother. we had always been into the oldies with fonzies favorites and sixties for supper on ckgm and the ol' juteboxes at my dads diner. it wasn't with the banana splitz or the jackson five or later sweet. it wasn't with machine head played full blast by the cousins when we were 7,8. it wasn't when my brother made us switch to chom - i thought it would be too hard. it was later. the moment the needle hit the record with the velvets first and the stooges first were eye popping yowza moments.

[jack o.a.t.m.o.n.]

1992.
Plan B: Questionable Video. 'Nuff said.


But my parents were playing me Al Green and Canned Heat since I was in the crib, so who knows really. But the Questionable Vid defined my early musical tastes. That and a copy of Paul's Boutique my older brother gave me for my birthday.

[Pink Triforce Tape]

weird al: food album
kris kross: totally krossed out
madonna: dick tracy soundtrack
sonic youth: sex is confusion
^ i went in for the weird al, there was a tape special
that must've been 1991? my parents weren't happy about the sonic youth - not normal for a nine year old!

[Frank Liquide]

When I was something like 7, I lived at my aunts place for a few days. She had that K-Tel disco comp with the disco version of the 5th of Beethoven an shit like that. When I heard this LP, I liked it so much that I aksed her to put it again and again and again... she got so tired that she made a deal with me : «If you don't ask me to put it again, I will give it to you when you'll leave». That was the first record I owned.

First single I purchased myself: Blondie's  «Heart of Glass»
First LP I purchased myself : Stars on 45's
First rock Lp I purchased : The Beatles Magical Mistery Tour
First 4 punk albums I purchased: 1) Never Mind the Bollocks, 2) The Clash Combat Rock, 3) The Exploited Punks not Dead, 4) Punk and Disorderly vol. 2 (compilation).

[Ice-T]

1991: Pearl Jam - Ten

[stronzothegreat]

1985

God touched my mother's womb and said, "this one's going to be musically supreme"

[realerman]

when I was 5
I was watching an Elvis movie ...Kid Kreole
that was it for me, that was going to be my life
a bussboy getting in trouble with the mob and singing on tables!!

[dead messenger]

I was probably about 6 so 1986, I heard the opening chords to Back in Black and my mind was blown. Shortly thereafter the RUN DMC version of Walk This Way came out and again my mind was blown. I remember the first tapes me and my middle bro ever bought were RUN DMC Raising Hell and Appetite for Destruction. It wasn't to long before I got a guitar and started playing.

[natachas leon]

Slightly embarassing, at christian camp no less. Great record, though.

[Pink Triforce Tape]

^ totally great!

[A happy carton of milk]

I think always did from the moment i started buying records.

The first one i was ten and it was Indochine - 7000 danses.

[TheBishop]

First got into music around 78/79:



86/87 was pretty great too:

[smells]

beatles obsessed from like 5 - 11 then when I was 14 I heard this:

[harmoun]

1986: RUN DMC - Raising Hell.  Some Haitian kids hijacked the one record player that was set up to provide music at an end of year dance/party in grade 5 and put that album on.

[bunny]

 Robert Palmer - Simply Irresistible & Addicted To Love

not sure if the video's are due credit

[oblio]

ace of base - the sign

[Fred]

ace of base - the sign

word

[Kober]

didn't have music stores or internet up in morin heights so aside from my parents blues and reggae collection and my 2nd generation dubbed tapes of DRI, exploited, nwa and metallica we didn't hear much new music.  then at 16 a friend brought acid from ottawa and made us listen to Bauhaus, Coil and Butthole Surfers and it was pretty much game on after that.

[scratchy45]

I don't know if I could strictly separate "for myself." My folks listened mainly to classical & celtic/folk: the folk stayed with me, but I had to re-discover classical much later, thanks to settling on CBC as a workplace compromise between FM96 & CKUT.
Listening to John Peel every night in the mid-seventies was a huge thing: he could play the Slits next to Little Feat next to Peter Tosh next to Can next to the Chieftains. One particular memory is of him playing Buzzcocks' What Do I get? for the first time (from a live session, it wasn't on a record yet): I'd never dreamed that such a perfect pop song could exist.

[lillywave]

agree w/ scratchy's "for myself"...


i remember listening to claude rajotte's sunday night show on chom when i was about 10... i found him to be very weird but was memorized by the music that he played... i remember hearing bob marley there for the first time and twas a very good moment

my folks' initiated my music awakening with parisian accordian music and joan baez on reel tapes, which i did not consciously appreciate for quite some time... my dad was into songs from movies & musicals, so i have a strong attachment to lyrical odes

[golux]

I was really into loud, crazy '20s and '30s jazz songs when I was seven or so, I think due to the influence of the theme song from the BBC/PBS/whatever "Jeeves and Wooster" dramatizations.  Those kinds of songs, ragtime, and the West Side Story and Guys and Dolls soundtracks were the first music I remember consciously liking.  There was a Spice Girls/Hanson interlude, and then I started listening to all of my parents' old records - a 45 of "I Get Around" by the Beach Boys was the first one I remember playing over and over and over.  John Lennon was my first celebrity crush, I did class projects about Arthur Rimbaud because I had read that Jim Morrison was really into him, and I would listen to a copy of "The Wall" that I stole from my brother on my discman every night, while lying awake and getting depressed over how much middle school sucked.  Then when I was thirteen I read an article about Detroit garage rock in a friend's copy of Spin while sitting in the shade at my grade eight pool party, trying to make a face that would accurately convey how much I didn't want to be there and defiantly Not Swimming.  I bought White Blood Cells and everything changed after I listened to "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" for the first time. 

[fireball]

hole - live through this. one angry little girl, i was.

[Louis]

Aside from the ol' Fisher Price record player with the plastic records, there was a suitcase-style record player in the basement of the house I grew up in, with weird records like Duane Eddy, Herb Albert, Mantovani Strings, some 50th anniversary of CFCF Radio box set full of swing music and Sinatra. I thought it was pretty much all crap, but loved putting on the records. (I later appreciated the Duane Eddy and have since collected all his albums.)

The portable AM radio I got when I was 6 or so was like magic, I would keep trying to find new stations, kept opening up the radio to see how it worked, eventually I put it back together the wrong way and it stopped working. Got a cassette deck for my 8th or 9th birthday -- one of those language-class types with a built-in speaker (which I picked out from the Consumer Distributors' catalogue). I would put it next to the old Grundig radio my parents had and tape stuff off the radio. I would tape Highway to Hell and John Lennon's big comeback, those hit songs like Starting Over, Woman. I had a new portable AM radio when he got shot and remember cranking it up to listen to Beatles songs on the schoolbus the day he died. (EVERY radio station in the world played Beatles music non-stop for days after he died.)

At that time, I remember stuff like "You've lost that lovin' feelin'" sounded very exotic, like it was from a different time I just missed. 1979-1980 was a big year for tunes, I was 9-10 years old, The Wall was fucking huge, same with Billy Joel "It's Still Rock and Roll", Steely Dan "Hey Nineteen", Back in Black, Moving Pictures/ Tom Sawyer, Another One Bites The Dust. All this stuff found its way to my crappy radio tapes. (It was pure luxury a few years later for the family to buy a stereo where you could tape directly off the radio without worrying about coughing or making noise...)

First LPs ever purchased: Queen, The Game; Styx, Paradise Theatre (both from Zellers at Galeries Saint-Laurent, I think); Rush, Motion Pictures (a bootleg copy from Rock en Stock -- the fuckers used cheap cardboard and left out the lyric sheets!) Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, and Hendrix Smash Hits (both from Cheap Thrills on Bishop, probably purchased there in 1981 -- my first-ever used records! I think every record at Cheap Thrills cost between 1 and 3 dollars back then...)

By 1982, I was in high school, and quickly went through phases of listening to "new wave", then metal, then punk and hardcore, then goth, then the local scene and 60s punk and everything else I missed first time around ...

[babyspit]

oh boy, the progression what kind of rocky for me:


>

>

>


Kind of makes sense

[pestilentsplendour]

x

[Ice-T]

these were my first two tapes.  *SHUDDER*

[wants and needs]

when i was about 13  (1990)  i started reading my dad's rolling stone magazines and sassy magazine. up until then i listened to a lot of bobby brown, paula abdul, vanilla ice....  they were writing about jane's addiction, morrissey, the happy mondays, etc. etc. and they looked weird and seemes like they'd sound weird and i had no idea as to where to hear their music. my dad asked his friend's college-age daughter what radio stations i should listen to and she said 89X and CJAM.  i listened to the radio all night.  i'd put it on quietly as i was reading and then fall asleep with it still on.  absorbed sonic youth, dinosaur jr., siouxie and the banshees, primal scream,  violent femmes, iggy pop...

first album: saturday night fever
first 45: i love rock and roll
first tape: purple rain, or pointer sisters

[vostok6]

There was definitely no gradual progression for me. I happened upon the CBC show Realtime by chance back in '96 when I was sixteen and it was such a revelation. Every week thereafter I had a date with the radio, my tape deck at the ready to record.

For the first few weeks I was so excited about all this fantastic, and seemingly ephemeral, music that I would start taping almost every song, then decide 30 seconds or so in whether I wanted to keep recording it or not. If I didn't then I had to hurry up and get it cued up again in time for the next song. I would listen to the tapes during the week until the next show rolled around.

I have such fond memories of listening to the CBC on saturday nights. Every week it was Realtime from 7 to midnight, and then as as much of David Wisdom's Nightlines as I could before I got too tired.

[jrem]

Pray tell, what is wrong with Snow? a licky-boom-boom down? that's so next level. it'll probably make a nasty comeback, megasoid remix.
I was a really big fan of brave new waves when I first heard it, it was heart breaking to have it taken off the air.
I remember I used to listen to the ongoing history of new music with alan cross when I was in elementary school. I later tried to get an interview with him for a school project. No dice.

[Televiper]

Around 1990 when my friends brother lefts his copies of Maiden England and Cliff 'em All at our house for a weekend.  That's when I picked up the bass guitar and started developing a real interest in music and a desire to hear everything I was reading about.  It wasn't long until I discovered College radio and City Limits and learnt that my tastes truly lied with the bizarre. 

I still remember the night I was watching City Limits and this came on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2G3KfKbJwE

[realerman]

i remember listening to claude rajotte's sunday night show on chom when i was about 10... i found him to be very weird but was memorized by the music that he played

wow he used to play us all the time
he'd get a lot if his records from dutchy's where my bassist Laz worked at

[lucabear]

1979, I was in the womb...no one knew i was there yet...my dad owned a bar i spent every night of my first month there in me ma's tummy as the music blasted til 3am...it was most likely cheesy disco playing.

oops you said for (yourself) myself well that's an even longer story...

here's some things i remember for myself...playing the piano at age 3 in my grandmother's living room...the first song i ever learned was "silent night" you know the christmas song...i loved playing that and chop sticks and just generally twinkling away with some improvisational stuff

then my dad showed me rubber soul...my mind was completely blown...i listened to it every night while going to sleep when i was staying at his place at the age of 4 or 5.

for my 5th birthday i got one of those cheesy mini keyboards with the small keys and the different sound effects and drum beats...i still have some recordings i did with that...some of them sound evil and dissonant i must have been a troubled kid at the time..or maybe i just liked augmented and diminished chords and minor keys? I also liked the waltz and swing beats.

i also remember getting a little portable radio that i used to take to bed...every night I'd hear "I just called to say i love you" hahah i really liked that song!

i remember seeing the thriller video for the first time too when i was like 2 or 3 and getting so freaked out that i had to sleep with the lights on for months after that...i thought at any given moment my parents could turn into werewolves like Michael jackson does at the beginning of the video and i feared dead people walking around the house and breaking through my walls...funnily enough i became a big Micheal jackson fan...i ended up buying the thriller record and really liking it, i even had the red leather jacket with all the zippers in kindergarten and knew all the dance steps to thriller...this is awesome btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtJRNyPK-lc&feature=related (the indian triller)

My grandmother got me into jazz...we used to listen to bird and Billie holiday and Louis armstrong records...i used to like to rotate dancing and drawing to jazz

I remember going nuts over that "electric avenue" song and I'd dance my head off...also i used to love to dance to my dad's James Brown records, "hot pants" was my fav...i also went through a Billy Idol phase loved "mony mony" "dancin' with myself" "white wedding" etc.

i remember discovering NWA and freaking out thinking it was the dopest shit ever i was like in grade 4 though and it was quite explicit hahaha...i used to love "two hard muthafuckers" & "straight outta compton" consequently i also began liking the LA Raiders hehe

i dj'ed for the first time in grade 5 for a school dance i kinda put into motion...it was fun cause i remember playing a lot of 50s + 60s music and our teacher/chaperon was all like how come your playing all kinds of stuff from when I was a kid, and i was like cause its good...stuff like "shout" "twist & shout" "blueberry hill" chuck berry, uhm richie valens (who i also adored after seeing the movie la bamba when i was 8) roy orbison, the beach boys stuff like that..i also had this jukebox that came with a compilation of 50s tunes, great stuff! i probably threw a bit of hip hop in there for good measure...hahah i remember liking bobby brown ("my prerogative"), salt n pepper ("push it") oh shit and "supersonic" that was some dope and super fast rapping

I'm really embarrassed to say it but i used to skateboard to NKOTB hahah hangin' tough

soon enough i discovered a chest full of my uncles old records, awesome collection which he gave to me...he had almost every freakin classic rock album you could think of: beatles, led zep, hendrix, doors, pink floyd, janis, the who, jefferson airplane, the stones the list goes on and on...

In 1991 the doors movie came out and this altered my path in life completely!!!...i went from being class president all through elementary school and a football player, to a pothead musician...goddamn you Jim Morrison heheh

i started to learn guitar, the first songs i learned were all doors songs and beatles, then a lot of dylan

Also freakin Nirvana came out around this time...everywhere you went people were playing nevermind and it was the perfect album the catchiest fuckin heavy heartfelt shit you could ever imagine!!! kurt & jim were like gods to me...i bought every album every single every import every magazine with them in it, it was to the point of obsession.

i remember my first experience with punk was the the dead Kennedy's "give me convenience or give me death" my best friend showed it to me when i was in grade 6 and we giggled at the swearing and that story that jello tells about the jocks, the rock and the pickup truck.

i also remember really getting into guns & roses and metallica when i was 11 or 12 i even went to that historic show at the big o when james got burnt and axel walked off after about 3 songs and everyone rioted and broke everything...also me and my friend used to jump up and down on the bed to appetite of destruction heheh

in my teens i was a big hippie i loved everything 60s...i listened to it all...wore psychedelic clothes, got stoned a lot...loved watching concert footage too from the 60s ie. woodstock, Monterey pop fest, led zep's concert at madison square garden "the song remains the same" live concerts i had of hendrix, the grateful dead and the doors, we used to have a big screen TV too, so many nights were spent stoned watching this stuff and continually having my mind blown.

my first band was a nirvana cover band mind you plus we did some sex pistols and sonic youth, that was in grade 7...then for the rest of "high" school i played in a band that had up to 10 people at times we mostly played our own original psychedelic music but threw some of our own versions of santana's "soul sacrifice" and some grateful dead etc. in there at times...we were called evenrude after the boat motor i have no idea who came up with that stoner name...we did mushrooms and acid a lot and i have tons of 4 track recordings of acid test like parties we used to play.

In grade 9 i played my first show as me & maryjane at the loyola talent show...i played 2 originals and john lennon's "imagine", the next year i did canned heat's "going up the country", bob dylan's "masters of war" and an original...at the QAA talent show i did mazzy star's "fade into you" and an original...those are some of the songs i truly loved in that period

In 96 i discovered raves and got into that for a while i liked goa chill stuff and jungle drum & bass, my favourite was DJ Trace from england  it was really evil sounding jungle, also ambient stuff like the Orb, spent many nights falling asleep to "little fluffy clouds" and the live 93 album i think it was...Aphex Twin's "come to daddy" was one of my favourite tracks as well

I forgot also in grade 8 i discovered ska through my friend Tim Doyle...we loved the specials, the selector, the english beat, madness, all that 2 tone stuff, of course the trad stuff like the skatalites, early wailers etc. and some newer stuff like me, mom, the kingpins, the planet smashers, NYC ska-jazz etc. i played in a ska band for 3 years called general rudie, then got fed up and left the band to start a punk band...got on a NOFX kick with a little blink 182 and other kinda "faux" punk.

got fed up of that and went through a couple grungy bands The paper heroes which we used to say was like cobain meets lennon and the hooks which was full on screaming and distortion, we got compared to bleach era nirvana a lot.

I remember going through a brave new waves on a nightly basis phase...as well as the after hours jazz show that preceded it.

then the next break through came when i saw my first AIDS wolf show...i was completely fuckin mind blown i never imagined anyone ever making and performing music like that...also An albatross and ICPMABOYC were pretty mind blowing too! so i started checking out the noise no-wave like scene and finding happiness in other bands as well like Chinese Stars, Duchess Says, Athletic Automaton, Arab on Radar, CPC Gangbangs, Comets on Fire, Think about life etc.

then in 05 i think it was, i went back to my roots in a sense because for the past 2 years or so I've really been diggin' acoustic music again and started my Me & Maryjane project up again...i love Hayden (who i initially discovered in high school), Elliott Smith, Bright Eyes, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Lou Reed etc.

I still like an odd noise show once in a while...sometimes i feel like jazz (oh man i absolutely love Chet baker, miles davis & billie holiday) sometimes i feel like some bossa nova (Getz & Gilberto)...once in a blue moon i feel like a bit a hip hop (i especially like some older shit like digable planets, tribe called quest, NWA, plus eminem and snoop dogg)...sometimes classical music (i love beethoven, debussy, bartok, satie, rachmaninoff stuff like that) mostly the melancholy stuff in minor keys. i also went through an indian period with stuff like ravi shankar (in my hippie days) his performance at the monterey pop festival blew my mind!!! sometimes i feel like some ray charles, sometimes nirvana, sometimes beatles and/or most of the classic rock. I like some soul sometimes like Al Green, Marvine Gaye, James Brown or Sam & Dave...I rarely listen to techno, ska, "faux" punk or country anymore however Johnny Cash does crop up sometimes...sometimes i like listening to old blues like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Leadbelly, Howlin' Wolf...I also love delving back into 50s music...sometimes i feel like some punk (ramones, pistols, the old shit)

some new discoveries i absolutely love are Emily Haines solo album, i loved the Besnard Lakes album, the Patrick Watson album, the Man Man album, Mark Berube, Camaromance, uhm the Moldy Peaches, rediscovering Lennon, Leonard Cohen, and Van Morrison...i still love Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, Hayden, Eric's Trip, Priestess, Zoobombs, stuff like that

I'm continually truly discovering music both new and rediscovering the old...its a life long affair

MAN that is the longest post I've ever written I'm going to bed now, goodnight!

[dead messenger]

i remember listening to claude rajotte's sunday night show on chom when i was about 10... i found him to be very weird but was memorized by the music that he played

wow he used to play us all the time
he'd get a lot if his records from dutchy's where my bassist Laz worked at

Ha! Laz who was in timetakers?

[nashvilleskyline]

vitalogy from pearl jam, 1994.
before that it was michael jackson.

[blawa]

Music ahs always been there with my father and older brother but the true starting point towards decadence was, and don't laugh because it is kinda weird in retrospect:

Living Colour - Stain (1993)

Before that I was into Aerosmithg, Van Halen, Queen, Zep, classic and hard rock basically. The devolution went somewhat like this:

Living Colour -> Pantera -> Sepultura -> Entombed -> Brutal Truth -> Agathocles -> Spazz -> Brighter Death Now -> Tons of noisy shit