what was the coolest band/artist you were into when you were 17?

Also Pop Group, Pere Ubu, Moodists, Dylan, john Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, James Brown

THE SMITHS

1987: Was finding a ton of new-to-me music through obvious sources like Melody Maker, Sounds, John Peel. Also there was this fanzine-ish indie music monthly with really tiny writing called Underground. For some reason they used to sell that in WH Smiths and it would have coverage of a lot of under-the-radar indie mopheads, noisy Fall-ish Ron Johnson bands, stuff from NZ, Sweden... sometimes it would come with a tape stuck to the cover, first time I ever heard Clock DVA. There was a Sunday afternoon show on BBC Radio Sussex whose signal just about reached me in Basingstoke, and they had US indie bands dropping in when they were playing the Zap Club or wherever; they also once had a hilarious live-over-the-phone session from Negativland that I taped and played over and over. Every now and again there would be a cool band on some Yoof TV programme (Husker Du even made it on to the Chart Show once). Mostly I just poured over the SST and Homestead catalogues and bought anything I could find on those labels from Our Price in the shopping centre or on infrequent but eye-opening trips to Rough Trade in London.

Favourite bands were Throwing Muses, Pixies, Live Skull, Band of Susans, Dinosaur, Slovenly, Meat Puppets, Big Black, Swans, Sonic Youth, Dog Faced Hermans, Nice Strong Arm, Volcano Suns, Thin White Rope, Wolfhounds, Cabaret Voltaire, Sugarcubes, Cocteau Twins, Diamanda Galas...

Turned 17 in 1995 and nothing seemed cooler than 'Maxinquaye', 'Tical' and compilations like 'Artcore'.

probably Earth

I went into this elsewhere but I was pretty geographically isolated through my high school years so my exposure to music was mostly limited to whatever I heard on MTV and the radio. But I was pretty big on searching for new things via the limited avenues I had. I discovered Aphex Twin through a remix on a NIN EP, Tricky through a remix on a Luscious Jackson EP...uhhhh, I first heard Cocteau Twins on Echoes (a late night new age-y music program that I guess still exists in some form). But this was nascent exposure that I didn't have the ability to expand upon until my college years. I got big into Lush and the Sundays (neither of which had much of a following in rural Indiana ca. the mid-90s). Pavement? I dunno. Pretty much every act I knew of had, like, at least one video in 120 Minutes rotation so they couldn't have been that cool.

Oh, Heavy Vegetable (one of Rob Crow's bands) opened for some local band when I was in high school. I bought and played the eff out of their 7" forever.

1996. DJ Shadow, Orbital, Bjork.

Julian Cope.

17 was mostly about vacillating between ska and Phish for me. I had listened to cooler stuff earlier - the big SST bands, Dischord, D.R.I - but 17 was an awkward phase for me. Toward the end of senior year, I started listening to Toots and the Maytals and Peter Tosh, thanks to Sublime. Also was getting into Leonard Cohen through his inclusion on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, but it didn't fit very well into my rotation.

https://65.media.tumblr.com/26b9da702d6d6e0fb9ff4453703ebd0c/tumblr_o1pe7dPsaL1snb6qwo1_500.jpg

Last two years of high schooI (17 or 18):

I started getting into the Residents and bought John Zorn's 'Locus Solus' though I can't say I was "into" the latter just yet.

Atari Teenage Riot was my answering machine message and I was way into Dr. Octagon

http://b-c-ing-u.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Foster-and-Allen-with-Chas-and-Dave.jpg

my last.fm goes back to just a couple weeks before my 18th birthday

last song I scrobbled at 17: Joy Division, "Heart and Soul" (lil goth)
first song I scrobbled at 18: Brian Eno, "An Ending (Ascent)"

I know I listened to Jandek starting around age 13

Coolest? Like most indie? Or most obscure? Or best?

xxxp: Oh, I forgot I was getting into Zorn around this time too, thanks to Mr. Bungle. I had Spy Vs. Spy and one of the first two Filmworks records. I didn't like them much though.

(significantly less funk-metal than expected)

When I was 17, I listened exclusively to Led Zeppelin. So, probably Led Zeppelin, then.

(It was around the age of 19-20 when I went through my brief fugue of paying attention to contemporary music - Mr. Bungle, Man or Astroman?, Brainiac, Tortoise.)

Spy Vs. Spy also had a Phish connection, since they had mentioned Ornette Coleman in a few interviews. But it was difficult to square that with Zorn's takes on the songs. They were more in line with my punk sensibilities, which I wasn't really cultivating at the time. At any rate, it felt like something I was supposed to like.

Mr Bungle (which I read about in the coolest magazine, People), or Beastie Boys or De La Soul, as far as new music that wasn't necessarily mainstream when I was 17. But also XTC, Funkadelic, Primus, post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys. And yeah stuff like Led Zeppelin, Queen, Beatles. But then it's also the year that Nirvana broke, so not sure how to answer this question.

1990-1991: Color Me Badd?

Cool around my way was Violator, Pretty Hate Machine, Violent Femmes, Jane's Addiction, and They Might Be Giants "Flood". It was the year before Florida raves spread. Soho "Hippychick" was a fave.

Until 1994, the closest I got to raves was when Lisa Stansfield and Black Box led to Simon Harris led to 808 State and LFO. Radio mixes and video obscurities on BET.

I found lasting taste @ 17 listening to the samples within Hip-Hop (Granddaddy I.U. leads to "I'm Your Puppet", Candyman's Knockin' Boots led to Betty Wright, etc..). Then saw Alvin Ailey's For 'Bird' - With Love on PBS, and discovered Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie "A Night in Tunisia" and "The Song is You". Recorded it for the Gang-Starr sample (Manifest), but in the end, that broadcast changed my life.

I turned 17 in December 1988, so...1989 I was into Big Black, Borbetomagus, Einstürzende Neubauten (saw them the first of 4 times that summer), electric Miles (had On the Corner on vinyl), Pussy Galore (saw them live in L.A. summer of '89), Tad, the Rollins Band, the Residents (saw the Cube-E tour), but also really into Ministry, Jane's Addiction, and Sonic Youth. Also Public Enemy (saw them in '88 and again in '90, the second time with Anthrax), Big Daddy Kane (who opened for PE in '88), Eric B. & Rakim, and Ice-T.

1990? the waterboys
haha

Spacemen 3, Funkadelic, the Beach Boys

which are, perhaps predictably, still generally the troika I cite as my favorite all-time acts

Haino and Fushitsusha probably. Though I was out of my depth a bit, it was just too cool for school for me.

Stuff you've never heard of.

I preferred their demos emil.y

Utah Phillips.

MBV probably

I really liked Tom Waits, I guess that was the most faux-bohemian I ever felt. 17 was an incredibly important music year for me but it definitely wasn't the coolest: I loved shit like the Wrens, the Clientele, Built to Spill - a lot of indie rock. Maybe it was the edgiest though - I never liked Boredoms, Grouper or the Books more than I did that year.

Even if I knew less stuff, I think I was pretty cool for a 15 year old: Modest Mouse, Pavement, LCD Soundsystem, Yeezy, Deerhunter, Beach Boys. I'm not nearly as into indie stuff like I was then but I was discovering new incredible things every day. My mind was getting blown on a weekly basis.

Stuff you've never heard of.

― emil.y, Monday, September 12, 2016 9:35 AM (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this isn't too far off

"coolest" being subjective, my friends and i were preoccupied with being in projects/bands and actually making interesting music and collaborating with cool/interesting musicians. a lot of the nonmusicians we met spent a lot of time talking about 'cool music' and made it a point to justify how cool they were by making them sound 'up and coming' enough, but not quite 'selling out' or mainstream, which for my probably pretentious friends and self was a waste of time

dj quik

1998... Most of the contemporary stuff I was listening to was pretty bad so probably Public Enemy or the Pixies.

Crass and Felt all day long.

Don't know which of these are considered cooll by ILM standards but I listened to these artists a lot:

Aphex Twin, Sonic Youth, Amon Tobin, Gyorgy Ligeti, Pavement, Jesus & Mary Chain, Cat Power, Stereolab, Cranes, Pixies, Yo La Tengo, Massive Attack, Modest Mouse, Slowdive.

Didn't you like any crap bands?

Fran & Anna, Sydney Devine.

― Bottlerockey (Tom D.), Monday, 12 September 2016

You were one cool guy!

In '98 I was 17, so probably Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Ween, and Negativland. The Dispepsi album was very big in my household.

I was pretty much listening to a lot of '70s progressive rock and hard rock stuff. The prog stuff was probably at its least "coolest" at that time.

17 = 1991

Probably Siouxsie and the Banshees. MTV used to play "Kiss Them for Me" quite bit and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I had never heard of her before.

i was already on ilm when i was 17, so this is unfortunately extensively documented

a post on thread '11 favourite songs of the moment, fuck' from the era:

pixies - wave of mutilation
david bowie - "heroes"
the fifth dimension - let the sun shine
bob dylan - corrina, corrina
john coltrane - my favourite things
velvet underground - sister ray
beatles - there's a place
department of eagles - no one does it like you
king khan & bbq show - i'll never belong
les georges leningrad - sponsorships
radiohead - you and whose army

scanning thru some other posts i was onto the-dream, clipse, ponytail, grizzly bear, boris, unicorns, jaylib, tyvek, bunchof captured tracks stuff, animal collective, beach boys, rick ross, sunset rubdown, discovery/vampire weekend, destroyer, wu tang (although i got into that much earlier), major lazer, dj quik. standard corny teen p4k reader with a noticeable canadian home bias, shades of budding popism. can't say much has changed, could be worse

For me 17 was June 91 -> June 92, so my entire senior year of high school. I was probably into "cooler" music earlier, as 8th and 9th grade was all punk rock, 9th and 10th was golden era hip-hop, but then 10th and 11th was kind of a mixed bag classic rock era (doors, hendrix, zepplin, the dead, parliament).

Seventeen was my full-on alternative rock / 120 Minutes era - Nevermind, Badmotorfinger, Blood Sugar Sex Magick, Ten, Trompe Le Monde, Gish, Loveless (which I didn't really get at the time), Mr. Bungle, and Sailing the Seas of Cheese all came out in like a six month period and this was all I was into at that time, plus Jane's Addiction from the summer before. This led to lots of terrible decisions to buy also-ran grunge era records and to truly believe somewhere out there somebody was combining funk and metal into something greater than the sum of their parts.

from the vantage point of a 40-something person deciding what would be a cool thing for a 17 year old American in 1991-92 to be into: Ornette Coleman (thanks to the movie Naked Lunch)
at the time, what I thought the coolest was: Suede

Didn't you like any crap bands?

― Bottlerockey (Tom D.)

Well, every now and then I listened to Velvet Underground & Nico.

But being serious, I was 17 in 2003 so downloading mp3s and exploring and reading about music was pretty easy and that saved me from listening to a ton of crap. I was constantly going through 'phases' of exploring new and old artists. I think the music I heard when I was 16 was actually cooler... that year I remember buying and listening a lot to albums by King Crimson, Can, Arvo Part, Kraftwerk, The Microphones, Boards of Canada, Broken Social Scene and Wilco. I also loved Sigur Ros, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Stars of the Lid though and now I can't find myself putting any of their music.

Depeche Mode

joygoat's post embodies the cool kid at my school

The coolest album I owned when o was 17 was Joy Division's closer, and I thought it was awful. I listened to Ben Folds Five's Reinhold Messner waaaaaay more often

1978: the Ramones, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads

The albums I remember buying in 2002 were:

King Crimson - Court of the crimson king
King Crimson - Sleepless: the concise king crimson (compilation)
Can - Tago Mago
Can - Cannibalism 1 (compilation)
Kraftwerk - Man Machine
The Microphones - The glow pt. 2
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
BSS - You forgot it in people
Mum - finally we are noone
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful place Out in the Country EP
Sigur Ros - Ágætis byrjun
Stars of the Lid - Tired Sounds of
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Nirvana - In Utero
Tricky - Maxinquaye
Golden Palominos - Dead Inside
Sarah Mclachlan - Surfacing
DNTEL - Life Is Full Of Possibilities
Four Tet - Pause
Plaid - Double Figure
Low - Things We Lost In The Fire
A Silver Mt. Zion And Memorial Tra-La-La Band - Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward <- I remember this one was pretty hard to find back then.
Godspeed You Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antenna To Heaven

Besides that there were many mp3s and I guess that's where the most shameful selections are since I downloaded pretty much everything I stumbled upon. I think there was a phase were I downloaded lots of punk from bands like New Found Glory, NOFX, bad religion and such which I never really got into. Eventually I found Ramones which sounded pretty stupid back then and it took me almost a decade to appreciate it what they were doing.

1995 was the year I picked up a used sampler in Dinkytown (Electric Fetus?) that was 1/2 ... i care because you do and 1/2 Spanners. Going with Aphex (despite the fact Rolling Stone had already called his shit "classical music for the 21st century".)

Forgot one big influence. John Peel was fully active 4 nights a week. Which certainly helped at the time.
I also remember listening to David Rattigan playing Reggae on was it Capital Radio though that might have been a couple years earlier.
Also remember occasionally listening to Alexis Korner dj but not sure when that was.

I guess this thread is only for people that had fully developed tastes and knowledge at 17.

― Evan, Monday, September 12, 2016 6:37 PM (one hour ago)

um, no?

I was listening to plenty of 311, Sublime and Dave Matthews to balance things out

I guess this thread is only for people that had fully developed tastes and knowledge at 17.

― Evan, Monday, September 12, 2016 6:37 PM (one hour ago)

I definitely didn't think this was implied by "what was the coolest band you listened to?"

If you'd asked me when I was 17, my answer would have been different.

Up to 1979, the coolest thing I was into was the Firesign Theatre. Then "Music for Airports" came out.

what the hell is "fully developed taste"

i'm not sure i understood just how cool spacemen 3 were when i was 17 but i knew they were and i knew i liked them because of it. the only other band that think may qualify is the vu but i'm pretty sure i'd only heard banana & loaded when i was 17. i didn't hear wl/wh and s/t until i was 18 or 19 and so i didn't properly understand the velvets until after the cut off

1998: Blackstar, Common and OutKast

I'm just expressing my jealousy for everyone's apparently sophisticated tastes. I didn't get exposed to that kind of stuff until much later.

black uhuru and king sunny ade. saw both in concert in 1984/my 17th year. dunno if the smiths were ever the coolest band but i saw them that year, too

1991: Probably whatever new things were popping up on 120 Minutes each week.

I'm just expressing my jealousy for everyone's apparently sophisticated tastes. I didn't get exposed to that kind of stuff until much later.

seems like "what was the coolest band/artist you were into when you were 13?" would be more interesting, or more fun anyway

2000. I was starting to get away from black metal and into stuff like Stereolab, Kraftwerk, Steve Reich, electro music, some older industrial stuff like Chrome and Cabaret Volatire. I didn't think of it as "cool", though, because everyone was into the Bloodhound Gang and Alien Ant Farm.

When I was 17, it was a very good year: Tonight's the Night and Zuma, Highway 61 and Let It Bleed, Heavy Cream and The Worst of the Jefferson Airplane. (And Al Stewart, and Alan Parsons' Edgar Allan Poe record, and, um, you don't want know.)

1987 - Husker Du "Warehouse Songs and Stories" + "Zen Arcade", Black Flag "Damaged" + "My War", Maiden "Somewhere in Time", Metallica "Master of Puppets", The Cult "Electric", G'n R "Appetite for Destruction" and tons of classic rock. I also probably got into The Ramones and Sex Pistols and other punk around the same time. I can't remember when I saw my first punk show as it might have been early '88, but it was Dag Nasty at the No Bar and Grill when "Wig Out at Denkos" was their new record.

A couple years later Doug Carrion of Dag Nasty worked at a Tracks records in Bloomington and that dude turned me onto a bunch of stuff like Gang of Four and P-Funk.

One thing I should point out for period correctness, I had all this stuff on tape. I had a bitchin' set of tapes. I was way too big a dope to actually buy it on vinyl or actually own a CD player yet. I didn't get a CD player for a year or so later.

I also wish I had better taste back then. Most of the bands I listened to back then I still enjoy to some degree so I guess some of them were decent or my taste didnt evolve that much.

I guess this thread is only for people that had fully developed tastes and knowledge at 17.

― Evan

on consideration i guess liking led zeppelin _does_ qualify as "fully developed tastes and knowledge". everything since then has been gravy.

Depends what "cool" means but I was mostly listening to then-current "indie" music so stuff like shoegaze/baggy/fraggle/other ridiculous NME genre names. My favourite band was the Pixies who had just broken up. Most of that stuff isn't really considered cool apart from maybe some of the shoegaze stuff. Spacemen 3 were mentioned upthread that's not a bad shout I suppose.

I had Kick Out The Jams on tape, but I dunno how cool the MC5 are these days.

Is rave nostalgia still a thing? Maybe some of the rave stuff we used to listen to - they were my mate's mixtapes so I never actually knew who did any of the music, so probably doesn't count. tbh I was kind of getting out of dance music at that age. That was more of an early teenage obsession for me.

This was like 2002/2003, so I was mostly listening to stuff from the burgeoning mashup scene (or Bootleg/Bastard Pop as it was known then) like Go Home Productions and other stuff that was being posted on the likes of Boom Selection and GYBO. And I was listening to the early recording of some guy named Neil.

So in other words, nothing cool.

seems like "what was the coolest band/artist you were into when you were 13?" would be more interesting, or more fun anyway

― erudite beach boys fan (sheesh), Monday, September 12, 2016 8:55 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true because the idea that something is "cooler" than something else probably only makes sense to a 13 year old

(not trying to be facetious)

Coolest album I bought when I was 13 was Massive Attack but I didn't really listen to anything but Teardrop, I just saw that singing phoetus video on MTV and loved it. 3 years later or so I finally listened to the rest and was mindblown.

I guess Nirvana, Cafe Tacuba and Smashing Pumpkins were the 'cool' bands I listened to when I was 13. Either that or the Vengaboys and Aqua.

mine was probably a new kids on the block record/tape or something i don't even remember

thought i was pretty bad ass

hangin' tough

at 13...hmmm, maybe Run DMC? And I liked "Perfect Way" by Scritti Politti. Not even sure I owned any records at that point.

i was 17 in '94 = blues explosion, velvet underground, can, black sabbath, stereolab, sonic youth, nirvana, beastie boys, sebadoh

when i was 8 my favourite two bands were xtc and the cure, favourite album pornography ^_^

I was 13 in 1992, which is when I went from Gr 8 to Gr 9, i.e. elementary to high school. I don't think any of the rock music I listened to was that cool in elementary school but I distinctly remember going up a little in the estimation of the other guys in Gr 9 science class because I owned Badmotorfinger. Classic Yes and Moving Pictures were probably the least cool.

damn i when i was 17 i was obsessed with bitches brew and close to the edge and im still obsessed with them... fucking depressing :(

13 for me was the Replacements, the Clash, Husker Du, R.E.M., Velvets, MC5, Moby Grape, the Jam, U2, '60s garage (the '80s Rhino Nuggets compilations -- "The Hits," "Punk," "Pop," etc. -- had just come out), and my first foray into Who bootlegs (Philly '73).

Discovered all of the above within a 3-4 month period. Good times.

17 was Public Enemy, De La Soul, Green, and Sonic Youth, but mostly dominated by a Kinks obsession that lasted a solid 18 months.

When I was 17, I liked Spoon, Arcade Fire, and the Hold Steady--all bands that were cool then but are apparently lame now.

The Hold Steady are definitely not lame

I agree, just noting the movement of cool away from indie rock over the last decade (not that there's anything wrong with this)

13? i listened to mostly chart music from the radio, which these days i guess would make me a super-cool poptimist but in reality i just wasn't aware of the existence of anything other than chart music (and it's not like the late '80s were a golden age for chart music). i had a tape of def leppard's "hysteria", i loved that record a lot. and i was really bugging my mom to let me buy "appetite for destruction", which she did finally relent on.

i had both of those records

Hmm, coolest? Public Image Limited, and Kraftwerk.

Least cool? Ummm... oh the phone is ringing..