what were you listening to at 15?

concerts i saw in 1994 pretty much sum up my listening around then - pavement, frank black, breeders, beck, john cale, robyn hitchcock, they might be giants, grant lee buffalo. my older brother would've just gone off to college and i remember he (for some reason) got heavily into british folk rock like fairport and steeleye span, so i listened to a lot of that. could probably throw in a bunch of other stuff like guided by voices, neil young, tom waits, velvet underground, etc. haha, my listening habits have not changed all that much, really.

1976...Rocks, Machine Head, Frampton Comes Alive, Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine, Hendrix's Smash Hits, and Worst of the Jefferson Airplane; still listening to Toronto's two Top-40 stations, crazy about "Bohemian Rhapsody"; just starting to branch out into older-brother music like Neil Young, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. The Ramones don't exist, and won't for another three years. I've read about the Velvet Underground in Lillian Roxon's book, but haven't heard them yet; I do remember looking at a cutout copy of White Light/White Heat in Sam the Record Man. Disco exists, but I'm pretty sure I don't think of it as disco yet; I love "Get Down Tonight" and "Right Back Where We Started From."

Man is the Bastard, Wu-Tang

1993

pavement
black sabbath
sebadoh
blues explosion
nirvana
beastie boys
sonic youth
the boo radleys
smashing pumpkins
my bloody valentine
husker du/sugar
cypress hill
the fall
dinosaur jr
flipper
teenage fanclub
babes in toyland
rollins band
soundgarden
mudhoney

1982
elvis costello
the specials, madness, english beat
talking heads
gang of four
psychdelic furs
x
human switchboard
the stooges
ramones
patti smith group
velvet underground
LOTS of zappa
Lou - the blue mask
new york dolls
the rolling stones
eno

1998

Mansun
Gorkys Zygotic Mynci
Ultrasound
Jeff Buckley
The Boo Radleys
Suede
Pulp
New Order
The Divine Comedy
Strangelove
Super Furry Animals
Supergrass
The Bluetones
Duran Duran

95-96

Yo La Tengo
Unwound
Pavement
Sleater-Kinney
Nation Of Ulysses
Oval
Tortoise
Mixtape after mixtape of songs I'd impulsively recorded off college radio after hearing about five seconds.
LOTSA OTHER STUFF

It was at age 15 when I first started going to the indie record stores located in nearby towns on a regular basis. I was actually making decent money at the time, mowing lawns, and I spent pretty much all of it on records and shows.

I could make a list here, but really, if it was any kind of shoegaze or space-rock that was popular in those circles at the time (the more obscure the better), chances are I was ordering it from Parasol mail order or at least had it on a mixtape from one of my shoegaze friends on Prodigy.

92/93 btw

96/97

beck
beastie boys
beatles
de la soul
wu-tang
pavement
belle and sebastian
jeff mills
elastica
blur
daft punk
aphex twin

i thought i was soooo cool compared to all the moshers and casuals.

15 was an awesome year actually, my dad started making good money so i got some nice clothes and a pc, had my first proper girlfriend, school was actually kinda fun, first time going to gigs, getting drunk, high, etc.

*sigh* good times.

1991

Public Enemy, Metallica, Megadeth, Suicidal Tendencies, Anthrax, N.W.A., Ice T, 2 Live Crew, Jodeci, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana

it would be next year that I really got into like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and stuff like that

1985:
New Order
The Cure
The Chameleons
The Sound
Echo & the Bunnymen
Siouxsie & the Banshees
Sisters of Mercy
Bauhaus
Joy Division
Killing Joke
Depeche Mode

Was going through a bit of a gothy phase and moving away from listening to Big Country and the Alarm and U2 and other horrific shite like that. The year after this was when I discovered Husker Du, and then I started getting much more into a lot of US indie instead.

Still baffled at how obsessed I was with the Alarm at 15. I mean ffs why didn't I just get into the Clash or something, what was the matter with me.

BTW NickB, 15-16 year old me would totally have had a big crush on 15 year old you with that set of bands!!!

Could never afford much music - became an expert at anticipating a good song within 1-2 seconds of it's playing on the radio.

Don't feel much nostalgia for those times beyond my moments by the radio, doing homework or somthing, listening to the college radio stationsc - I still have those few hundred cassettes with me, should I find myself in some odd music emergency or something. I played them so often that they became their own narratives, the false starts and cut-offs thoroughly integrated with the music. I'm always astonished whenever I hear the intro bit to New Order's "Regret" - that's not supposed to be there!

Yeah Trayce, I could have sold you my old Alarm records too. Where were you?!?

I was on the other side of the planet! ;_;

I still have a copy of "Declaration" on vinyl. Cringe.

yeah, taping radio was essential in the pre-mp3 era. i would sit through dross for ages listening to the evening session or john peel in the hopes of finding something cool to tape.

x-post to r baez

The Cure, Public Enemy, De La Soul, EPMD, PWEI, LL Cool J, NWA, The KLF, Happy Mondays, Awesome Dre & The Hardcore Committee

Max -

I'm American, so my own specific John Peel experiences all involved me staying up til 4AM on a Friday night listening to the BBC World Service, waiting for the one hour of Peel we got a week.

'And in the subways I can hear them whisper "Trayce has still got Declaration on vinyl"'

1991 - Ride, The Stone Roses, Pixies, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans, Slowdive, Lush.

1987
pink floyd, u2, zep, skynyrd (who i saw that year on their first post-crash tour)

pittsburgh amirite

'And in the subways I can hear them whisper "Trayce has still got Declaration on vinyl"'

*dies of laughter*

'98/'99
All the classic rock greats like led zeppelin, pink floyd, lynyrd skynyrd, the who, cream, queen and deep purple. At 15 or 16 I found my big favs in king crimson, jethro tull and yes. Laying on my bed listening to prog rock was a spiritual experience

^ p much same deal. It was all Grand Funk Railroad, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones for me... actually never got into The Beatles until I was at least 18. At that age I couldn't stand the fact that their music was so commercialized... 15yr old mentality, I know, but I basically considered them to be a bunch of overhyped sell-outs.

NYC mainstream radio, Yes, Pink Floyd, Bowie. The last probably being the most significant. Randomly found Ziggy Stardust in a collection of LPs donated to my school, then never looked back. Two years later I knew who the Shaggs were...

...now I have the Alarm stuck in my head, god dammit ;_;

these are the only CDs/cassettes I played on my own volition when I was 15 (2002-2003):

Default - The Fallout
Staind - Break The Cycle
Barenaked Ladies - Maroon
Fastball - All the Pain Money Can Buy, All the Pain Money Can Buy
Pearl Jam - Ten, Vs., Riot Act
P.O.D. Satellite
Nirvana - Nevermind
System of a Down - Toxicity, Steal This Album

for the most part my musical tastes were informed by Clear Channel alt-rock radio, though I'm pretty sure Loveline introduced me to a couple of these acts. I wasn't really into music in those days.

2001-2002 but i think that year was a lot of Rush and some corny nu-prog like Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree maybe. i had just gone through a 'classic rock' phase so i was listening to more old music than new. pretty sure my Radiohead phase started before i turned 16 too.

This would have been between Octobers 95-96. A crossover point from being a casual listener to a proper obsessive. We used to go to the local indie and buy up all their baragain-bin singles for 25-50p. Ended up with a whole load of twaddle, but I did also discover some great bands such as dEUS this way.

I'd "discovered" "alternative" and "indie" music about a year or so before, via Blur's 'Parklife' and Nirvana etc. My friends at school had taken on an extreme-rockist snobbery that disallowed nearly all forms of pop, dance and hiphop (I remember being called a "raver" once because I deigned to mention liking Cypress Hill). This was a shame because up to then I'd been an unabashed fan of most chart dance. The Prodigy and a few other things got a free pass for a while. 'Firestarter' definitely opened a few people's minds when it came out.

Most of what I listened to was grunge/britpop/punky fodder from around the time:

Radiohead - The Bends / Pablo Honey
Blur - The Great Escape
Green Day - Dookie
Offspring - Self Esteem
Faith No More - King For A Day
The Boo Radleys - Wake Up / Giant Steps
Nirvana - You weren't allowed in the gang unless you had all their albums
Space - Spiders
Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie
Tripping Daisy - I Am An Elastic Firecracker
dEUS - Worst Case Scenario / In A Bar Under The Sea
Terrorvision - How To Make Friends And Influence People
Rage Against The Machine - RATM
Black Grape - It's Great When You're Straight... Yeah!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41KAQ8QVMQL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

And that was about it.

For my 15th birthday (1995) I asked for and got the new albums by Terrorvision, the Foo Fighters and the Wildhearts. So that's where I was at the start of the year.

Back then I didn't live near a record shop and didn't have much money so my listening was largely composed of things I'd taped from the library and magazine cover tapes/CDs. Every month I'd buy whichever music magazine had a free tape/CD that month. They'd largely be full of Britpop, but I was just getting interested in electronic music, so occasionally it'd be a Mixmag or Muzik mix.

Things my friends liked and so did I: Ash, Blur, Portishead, the Prodigy, Leftfield, Soul Asylum, Radiohead, the Manics
Things my friends didn't like but I taped off a friend's cooler boyfriend: the Fall, Sparklehorse, Pearl Jam, RATM (uh)
Things I thought were my own little secret: Belly, the Breeders, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and various other bands I first heard listening to Mark Radcliffe's evening show

Later in the year I'd start listening to John Peel and obsessively writing down the names of tracks I liked, even though at that time I had no way of finding them. 15 was also the year I discovered Pavement; aged 16 I would get online and googling for bands similar to Pavement would open up a whole new world of "own little secrets", and a larger allowance (increased so I could join in in the communal clothes shopping trips my friends went on) would soon all be spent on music...

Wasn't into music at 15 BUT my folks had bought me a cd player so I had a good few U2 cd's,a springsteen cd tunnel of love i think it was (I had born in the usa on lp) some various greatest hits compilations of big bands like the stones,dire straits, I had a couple of bon jovi cds too i got as a gift.
I didn't really get into music til i was 18 and I heard Nirvana. More details here

dEUS - Worst Case Scenario / In A Bar Under The Sea

I discovered dEUS in the early days of being 16 (IaBuTS was the first album I ever had on CD) and they were my favourite band in the world for about two years after that.

I don't think I ever responded, but I was a huge fan of Howard Jones and Thompson Twins at the time, and I still listen to some of it. Thompson Twins' records have held up better than Jones' although "Hide & Seek" is still a classic. And Jones actually did a surprisingly good comeback album in 2005.

Hmmmm. Why did I decide that only college radio was worthwhile in 1980? (Of course I do understand. I think it had a lot to do with needing a soundtrack for my adolescent outcast identity.) Most of this sounds pretty good, at the very least, but it's not what I was listening to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3k6dnxCOUo

(And other reasons, I'm sure.)

i think about this a lot, as i was 15 in 1982, and that seems like THE pivotal year in terms of my cultural development. it's when i really started to get into music in an active way, rather than just passively absorbing and reacting to the stuff that happened around me. some of my favorite albums circa 1982:

Cheap Trick - One On One
Blue Oyster Cult - Fire of Unknown Origin and Some Enchanted Evening
Prince - 1999
The B-52's - The B-52's
Devo - Freedom of Choice and New Traditionalists
The Buggles - The Age of Plastic (came late to several of these)
Rush - Moving Pictures and Permanent Waves
Adam Ant - Friend or Foe
The Cars - The Cars (side one of Shake It Up was cool too)
AC/DC - Back In Black and Dirty Deeds
Blondie - Parallel Lines (and some of the later stuff, too)
The Police - Ghost In the Machine
Pink Floyd - The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon
The Rolling Stones - Tattoo You (along w Hot Rocks, a childhood staple)
Roxy Music - Avalon
The Go-Go's - We Got the Beat
The Clash - Combat Rock
Billy Joel - Glass Houses
Talking Heads - 77 (a gift from my dad, inaccessible aside from the hit, but kind of fascinating)
Laurie Anderson - Big Science (similar to the talking heads - i didn't really "get it", but kept listening anyway)
The J. Geils Band - Freeze Frame
Dire Straits - Love Over Gold
Men at Work - Business As Usual
Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret

it will be noted that i wasn't digging terribly deep, i seem only to have liked music by white guys, and there's a lot of fairly embarrassing crap in that list. still, it all meant a great deal to me at the time. was getting tired of earlier favorites like KISS, my parents' beatles albums, abba's greatest hits and the star wars soundtrack.

a year or so later, my tastes would be upended by murmur, the violent femmes' debut, boys don't cry, speaking in tongues, peter gabriel, king crimson, and xtc

It was 2000-2001 when I was 15. This are the albums I remember buying and listening to the most those months... (several of these are actually 1998-1999 but I was catching up):

Amon Tobin - Supermodified
Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children
Bows - Blush
DNTEL - Life Is Full Of Possibilities
Four Tet - Pause
Godspeed You Black Emperor! - f#a# infinity
Sigur Ros - Aegetis Byrjun
Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider / It's A Wonderful Life
Modest Mouse - This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About / The Lonesome Crowded West / The Moon & Antarctica
Múm - Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is Okay
Radiohead - Kid A
A Silver Mt. Zion - He Has Left Us Alone / Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward

Sort of typical... I remember my classmates and friends at the time listened to Manu Chao, Mogwai, Moonspell, Lostprophets, Incubus and Depeche Mode. There were several more, of course but those are the ones I remember.

Ah yes, I forgot Cat Power! I was a huge fan of her and Modest Mouse at the time. I very rarely listen to them anymore tho.

As for older stuff I think the Pixies and the Breeders consumed most of my listening iirc.

95-96. Blur, the Boo Radleys, Bis, the whole Britpop brigade, dEUS, Cypress Hill, lots of grunge, not of Metallica. Nothing mindblowing tbh

I was born in June 1979, so in 1994 and 1995 I was listening to mostly to electronic and dance music: trance, techno, jungle, rave, etc. Some of my favourite tracks from the were:

The Prodigy - Break & Enter
Westbam - Wizards of the Sonic
Marusha - Raveland
Paperclip People - Throw
Love Inc. - R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Lemon Interrupt (aka Underworld) - Dirty (the instrumental version with the Akira sample, not the later vocal version called "Dirty Epic")
Moby - Everytime You Touch Me
M.C. Sar & The Real McCoy - Automatic Lover
Banco de Gaia - Kincajou
Hardsequencer - Plastic Fantastic
ULTRA-SONIC - Check Your Head
M-People - Moving on Up
Stakka Bo - Living It Up
Shy FX & UK Apache - Original Nuttah
Subnation - Scottie
DJ Krome & Mr. Time - Ganja Man
Cypress Hill - Insane in the Brain
Warren G. - Regulators
Michelle Gayle - Sweetness (LTJ Bukem Remix)
Toni Braxton - Another Sad Love Song
Erasure - Saturday Night

"some of my favourite tracks from that era were"

was a pretty hardcore music fan from a young age... I was raised in a very musical household, with a lot of Laurel Canyon folk, psych, bluegrass, and 70s Jesus music always playing, got heavily into 60s and 70s soul on my own at age 8 for some reason, and then metal and stoner rock at age 11 - as my worldview got a little darker (as it can when you enter middle school).

by age 15 - 1995 - I'd followed metal back into psychedelia and fell deeply in love with the Grateful Dead - who I realized pretty quickly were much more about shows than albums, and collected a lot of their live tapes.

things really opened up for me musically around that time - something about the whole nomadic philosophy around the Dead, their extended jams and use of drums and space,(plus my getting into head drugs) introduced me to beats/groove and abstraction, and I soon got obsessed with Sun Ra, hip hop, dancehall, and then raves - esp jungle/dnb - which, next to the Dead, was probably the other great musical love of my life

the whole crossover alternative thing happening though (well, the post-Nirvana stuff, with some exceptions) - and the wave of pop-punk and ska that followed - was totally beyond the pale for me, really rang false

it was 91 and i was listening to the geto boys, epmd, misfits, dead kennedys, sonic youth, jfa, gang starr, black flag, public enemy, fugazi

1989 - mostly Pet Shop Boys, New Order, Depeche Mode, Cure, Jesus & Mary Chain, Sisters of Mercy - plus assorted dance/hip hop hits like Bomb the Bass, S'Express, De La Soul, etc.

1977. Punk rock year-zero fundamentalism, informed by taping Peel every night I possibly could. Pistols, Clash, Ramones, Pere Ubu import singles, Peel sessions from The Slits / Banshees / Generation X / XTC / Adverts. Loads of singles, very few albums.