How did you first hear your favorite #bands?

Doesn't have to be an especially interesting story, I just don't think we've done this before and I wanna know.

'When' shall also be an important element to your answer

I first heard the Smiths in my friend Benj's new used Accord hatchback... It was "Please, Please..." off his Louder Than Bombs cassette. But the end of that day I was legit obsessed with the band. Had never heard anything like it.

First heard Pixies the same year, it was my bff Rob's "Here Comes Your Man" cassingle, and likewise, I could not get enough. Play it again! Play it again!

Oh the year was 1990

Age 24, on the radio in the car. I'm always most receptive to new music when driving, especially at night.
(and especially like 2 decades ago when I was still receptive to new music)

When I was working at a used record store from 2001-2004 (age 20-23), employees were allowed to borrow store, and basically use the store's inventory as a library. Accordingly, I was able to just go nuts on jazz and new wave records.

*borrow stock

be specific w/r/t artists!

john peel began (iirc) one of his shows in 89 by saying "and now, lord and master of us all..." before playing "in these times" by the fall. i later discovered that i'd already been unknowingly listening to them on a friend's mixtape. i was 17.

The Cure and Bill Evans were the records that I was always wanting to purchase after borrowing them. Of course, that's very specific. In general, I was just more about hearing new records that I hadn't heard before.

KROQ

PAVEMENT: I probably listened to "Greenlander" once or twice on the Born To Choose comp, but it made little impression on me; I spent my most time playing the R.E.M./Natalie Merchant track over & over, trying to transcribe the lyrics. Didn't get into Pavement until a few years later.

ROYAL TRUX: A friend gave me a tape w/Thank You on one side and various singles on the other, and I played it once or twice; but I didn't fall hard for Trux until Sweet Sixteen came out.

RED KRAYOLA: I was working in college radio when Amor & Language was released; immediately loved it.

VELVET UNDERGROUND: Who knows; but this was one of the first CDs I owned in high school.

Dave Kendall and 120 Minutes accounts for many of them

FIERY FURNACES: A friend loaned me their first 2 CDs (the only two that existed at the time), because I agreed to accompany her to a live show; I thought the albums were "OK." Then the show blew me away.

Elliott Smith was No Name #? off a Kill Rock Stars comp which I obsessed over despite it being easily one of his weaker songs

Sleater-Kinney: Saw them live before ever hearing them on record, opening for Yo La Tengo when Dig Me Out had just come out. One of the most memorable concert experiences I have ever seen to this day.

john peel.

The internet

sorry I should explain :
Cabaret Voltaire, CHAKK, shriekback, front 242, j&mc, on-u sound, foetus, age of chance
all discovered via john peel.

BOB DYLAN: I was riding on the Mayflower, when I thought I spied some land...

Our neighbors use to go to Parkersburg to buy 45s in bulk that had been rotated out of jukebox play. Use to borrow 50 or 60 at a time. Got me into ABBA, Bee Gees, Wings, ELO, and discovered Sukiyaki, Last Date, and Sleep Walk. I'm sure there was more I'm not remembering.

Think I discovered Tomita & Tangerine Dream listening to "Music from the Hearts of Space" on Sunday nights.

Cocteau Twins - Garbage were hyping Version 2.0 on the local rock radio station, and they were allowed to play some of their favorite tunes, one of which was Massive Attack's "Teardrop." I was entranced immediately and had never heard a voice like Liz's and was effectively presold on her old band.

Labradford, Sleater-Kinney: from josh blog!
Electrelane: from ILM, pretty sure as mentioned by nabisco.

Back in the tape trading days, I got a tape with Blues for the Red Sun on one side and Undertow on the other. A properly life-changing tape, that.

#bands

THe Stooges & The Velvet underground through the wooden room divider between the front room and my elder brother's room.

Birthday Party John Peel at some point. I thik I may have heard Bouys next door's Boots Are Made For Walking on him and then never picked up on them until they were splitting up triggered by the repeat of teh Bad Seed session.
Bad Seeds because of missing the Birthday party caught their 2nd ever London gig, first one was teh nIna Hagen support that I didn't hear about until after.

GUn Club I may have read about or actually met through the clothing shop I used to frequent and then saw them at the December 83 Lyceum gig i think before really hearing them.

Jon Coltrane , really not sure. Possibly read about him and then picked stuff up. Or maybe heard bits on the radio.

Other bits and pieces, finding cheap copies of things in 2nd hand record shops after reading about them. THink this is true of Fairport Convention and Pentangle.
Or mid-price records in new places in the case of Dylan who I may have had a track or 2 on samplers and read about.

Reading things like the Record Collector Record guide, the 100 Essential records, NME top 100 lps of all time from the mid 80s, U.S. underground fanzines, YOur Flesh, Forcedexposure etc etc.

Had a curious, Manchurian Candidate style moment in a basement arcade of the old Virginia Galleries in Glasgow around 1989 when I walked past an antique stall with a tiny radio playing New Amsterdam and got a really vivid sense of connection with the melody in the chorus as a youngster which immediately made me go and buy Elvis Costello records.

2003, 16, at the Broward Community College library going through the original Trouser Press Guide. Like half the book is two tone bands, so when I got to The Fall’s entry they stood out immediately. Also MTV did a profile on Interpol and mentioned them as an influence. Got the Grotesque reissue (the one that starts with “Elastic Man”) and was kinda put off cuz it sounded like some one note take on Mekons or something. I liked the TNSG cover so I got that one next and that one blew my mind

I first heard The Wurzels on Terry Wogan's breakfast show on Radio 2 in the mid 1970s but he didn't play albums so they probably don't count.

From age 14 to 18, some first hearing moments:

The Stooges
1986: Saw a TV special on Iggy in which he was asked to listen to some music. First song was “No Fun”, which put a great big grin on his face. Then went on to tell how he structured it based on Johnny Cash’ “I Walk the Line”, it’s here: https://youtu.be/GyeBJUMQcTU?t=13m42s). Ordered the 1st Stooges album at the local store which then took about two years to arrive.

Sonic Youth
1987: After reading a review for Sister in a magazine I’d just gotten a subscription to, I got a copy at the library (they had such a cool collection). Put the record on when I got home while a friend and my brother were in the room. Still remember the goosebumps I felt upon hearing the intro to “Schizophrenia”.

Thin White Rope
1990 I think. A clip on 120 Minutes. At my then gf’s house.

on an advert for tyres in 1993

Underworld: bought the Lo-Fidelity Allstars CD cuz I loved "Battleflag". Read a review on Amazon of it that said something like "this is a shitty version of Underworld" so I figured, better check them out. as soon as that 303 loop kicked in on "Cups" I was hooked for life

Cardiacs: someone from an old music forum sent me an MP3 of "In a City Lining" and said "check this out, it's like VdGG + Zappa + Devo + a million other things....ON ACID!!!" and I was like "ok, whatever sure" and forgot about it. My bad!! Eventually I was playing "The History of Music" by the great Captain Lou Albano and this song by "Cardiacs" came up next...HOLY SHIT!! The dude was right!!!!

Yellow Magic Orchestra: the excellent compilation album "Nick Rhodes and John Taylor Present Only After Dark" had "Firecracker" on it. I got some greatest hits disc by them and was blown away.

P-Model/Susumu Hirasawa: I think I heard about them on the Mutant Sounds blog. They were described as sort of a Japanese version of Devo. I came away with the impression that they only had 2 albums and just disappeared, similar to Plastics. Later I found out that they had way, way more and that the main guy had an extensive solo career. Turned out to be some of the best music I've ever heard.

Autechre: Knew about them for years and years, got Tri Repeatae and didn't really like it. I think LJ or someone on here urged me to keep trying them out. I think Chiastic/LP5 was what did it for me. And their later albums of course are brilliant.

King Crimson: This one was actually from my mailman who I used to see at the hobby shop, just painting stuff. For whatever reason we were talking about ELP and he mentioned something like, "did you know Greg Lake used to be in a different band?". I actually hadn't. So he ripped me a copy of their first two albums on cassette (which he sourced from his vinyl) and it blew my head off.

Can: back when I was a teenager I used to work at Burger King and we'd always play music after close. there was one guy who only liked hip-hop, like literally all his stuff was like Tupac and Biggie and Snoop, y'know, the classics. one day he randomly asks me if I've ever heard of this band called Can. he had the Ege Bamyasi CD, I never asked how he'd heard of them but he couldn't stop talking about how great they were. so we listened to it at close and it was awesome.

Ween: actually had them confused with Weezer, who I never really liked but always thought were kinda decent. anyway I remember people saying the new CD Quebec was really good so I figured I'd check it out, realized halfway through that it probably wasn't the same band

A lot of my early favorites I heard the summer after 8th grade, when my sister came home from her first year of college with a box full of tapes that she'd made of friends' LPs. Lots of mid-80s UK post punk/new wave/mod revival and some American indie. I made tapes of her tapes and lived with those for a couple of years until I got my driver's license and could go to record stores and started replacing the tapes with cheap used vinyl copies of the albums whenever I came across them. At that point I realized that the speed had been off on either one of the cassette decks or turntables my sister had used, and I'd gotten to know a bunch of these records at a few BPM faster than they'd actually been recorded. It was very strange having to re-learn the albums at their actual speeds.

Also remember one of her tapes was just labeled "The Clash" and for years I figured it was a weird mix of singles, b-sides, otherwise uncollected tracks, and was surprised when I got a copy of Sandinista! and discovered I'd been listening to that album the whole time.

The Blue Nile: saw AWAtR in a pal's stacks in college, but it was the cover of _Hats_ with a Phil Collins blurb at a Silver Platters that started the fandom.

Lloyd Cole (and the Commotions): played "Brand New Friend" now and then on my college radio show (KWCW shout-out!), but _Easy Pieces_ as an album didn't stick. It was the _1984-1989_ comp that tilted me to buying their three proper albums, and then LC's solo.

Prefab Sprout: post-college, playing summer beer pong on a friend's lawn, his _Two Wheels Good_ alternating with Crowded House, 10,000 Maniacs, Van Morrison, etc.

Wheat: first heard _Medeiros_ in a friend's car, so was ready for the release of _Hope & Adams_ (a perfect album).

The Weakerthans / John K. Samson: the guitar hooks and the "rely a bit too heavily on alcohol and irony" lyric, from a Magnet sampler's "Aside", led me to buy _Left and Leaving_ and then _Reconstruction Site_ (which is another perfect album).

The Apartments: a cassette from a friend with "Breakdown in Vera Cruz" added to fill space after a different album, something about Peter Milton Walsh's voice and the atmosphere resonated. Took me a while to realize the same band was also responsible for "The Shyest Time" on the "Some Kind of Wonderful" soundtrack, and that This Mortal Coil covered "Mr. Somewhere".

Mark Eitzel / American Music Club: didn't peg to AMC when they were around, but couldn't get "Sacred Heart" out of my head after seeing ME open for EbtG in Seattle. Ordered _60 Watt Silver Lining_ from BMG, and bought everything else soon after that arrived.

Matt Pond PA: a friend turned me on to _Measure_, knowing how much I liked Lullaby for the Working Class. At that time (and still), any pop/rock that included a cello I had automatic affection for. MPPA, like Pernice Brothers at the time, were both prolific and dependably high-quality.

First 3, 1989. Mark Eitzel, 1996. Wheat and The Apartments, 1997. MPPA and Weakerthans, 2000-2001.

https://www.cp24.com/polopoly_fs/1.82156.1505940624!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg

King Crimson: This one was actually from my mailman

brilliant

Sparks: Not sure if this counts, but when I was in 10th grade I got really into Blur, and I read an article about them that said “Girls and Boys” sounded like Sparks. I wasn’t aware of any way to download or listen to music online at that point, but I spent a lot of time on guitar tab websites, so I decided to see if there were any Sparks tabs/chords out there. All I could find were the chords for “Achoo” and maybe one other song (“With All My Might”?). Strummed through “Achoo” without having any idea about the rhythm or what the song actually sounded like, but I thought it was a cool chord progression. So in a way that was kind of my first time hearing a Sparks song.

I found Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins at the Blockbuster Music at the mall but for some reason decided not to buy it. Didn’t actually hear any of their recordings until a few years later when I saw someone praising them on a message board and downloaded a few tracks from Kimono My House on Audiogalaxy.

I first heard American Music Club by buying a CD, spurred on by a good review somewhere.

First heard the Beatles because they were unavoidable when I was a kid in the 70's

Crimson: like a lot of music I love (early Genesis, Devo, Yes, Rush, Thomas Dolby, Neubauten) I first heard this via my cousin who was 4 years older and who I really respected at the time. He turned out to be a monster who abused his sister and I don't speak to him anymore but I give him credit for the music he introduced me to in the early 80's.

I can thank ILX for Kate Bush. Fun fact... didnt click with me on first couple listens so I shelved it for a long time (same thing happened to me with early Genesis but all my other favorites clicked right away)

Sometimes I wonder what I would have thought of the indie bands I fell in love with in college, if I had encountered them a few years earlier – when their early stuff was actually being released. I probably wasn’t quite ready to make the jump from R.E.M., Gish, and 10,000 Maniacs to Pavement, Unrest, and Sebadoh – and would have considered those bands to be “college music,” or something – but it’s not like the chasm was that wide.

Amazingly, with most of the instances I can think of "radio" is still the answer. Followed, in second place, by research into artists and genres that I might be expected to like given existing predilections. (That would include searching the ILM archive, etc. :) ) The latter has definitely been important with classical stuff. I can think of few instances where a close acquaintance has personally played or recommended something.

For at least some of mine, the answer is "first heard them on a listening station in a used-CD store after having read a good review of them." That's definitely how I first encountered Fountains of Wayne and The Negro Problem in the late 1990's.

I had pretty good luck as a kid with people making me tapes and wanting to get me to listen to some music. Did not really learn much from my first guitar teacher, but I gave him C-90s and he gave me the first Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Pat Mentheny, Jaco Pastorius, Weather Report, Mahavishnu I ever heard.

In probably a total 80s scene, there was a rock t-shirt/head shop and a health food/vitamin store next to the comic book store that I both hung out in and worked at in high school. The old hippy dude that ran the vitamin store and the old rocker dude that ran the head shop regaled us with all sorts of war tales. I got a C-90 with Nektar's Journey to the Centre of the Eye and the first Captain Beyond album out of the vitamin guy. Lots of tale of Black Oak Arkansas and who opened for Kiss and tripping at shows with The Eagles opening for Yes.

As a 14 year old I was given pink Floyd and talking heads tapes from a family friend. Definitely started rolling the ball

Parents listened to abba and moody blues. Which I love now

Echoing previous posts, as a teenager in Britain in the 80s it was through listening to John Peel that I first heard so many great things. SNUB TV was also important as it where I first encountered Ultra Vivid Scene and Galaxie 500. Also of great importance was a Homestead compilation LP called Human Music (1988) - it introduced me to Yo La Tengo, Big Dipper, American Music Club and a host of New Zealand wonderfulness (The Chills, the Clean and the Verlaines) who remain my all time favourites.

I got the Blasting Concept in like 1983 and got things by Meat puppets, Minutemen and Saccharine rust on there it did take me a long time to really pick up on the last 2 of thsoe but Meat puppets were a band I loved throughout most of the 80s.

PIcked up Henry Cow by listening to the Concerts lp on the local 2nd hand record shop turntable. LOve the impro stuff on there.
It did take me a long time to get into the Pink Fairies whose What a Bunch of Sweeties was another record I was trying to decide on when I picked up Concerts, not sure what el;se was around taht day but the 2nd hand record shop was great.
I stumbled on Omar Khorshid while going through teh entire shop on a different occasion.
Probably other things by going through the same process too.

More or lass chronological, far from complete:

• Nick Drake, a review by Franz Schöler in "Die Zeit"
• Keith Jarrett, probably an article in "Der Spiegel" on the Sun Bear Concerts
• Brian Eno, I read an article in the monthly culture mag "Merkur" on minimal music around 1980.
• The Smiths, Jacques Brel, Austrian radio, Ö1
• Joni Mitchell, Lloyd Cole, Electronic, Massive Attack, The The, Neneh Cherry, at friends houses
• Mary Margaret O'Hara, I think I listened to "Miss America" first in the music shop WOM in Munich
• Laurie Anderson, Velvet Underground, The Wipers, Sonic Youth, Bavarian radio Bayern 2
• Yo La Tengo, New Order, My Bloody Valentine, House of Love, French radio France Inter (Bernard Lenoir)
• Cocteau Twins, Serge Gainsbourg, my girl-friend
• Pixies, Breeders, Throwing Muses, Blue Aeroplanes, Dinosaur Jr., an English friend
• Gun Club, read an obit on Jeffrey Lee Pierce in French music mag "Les Inrocks"
• Swell, Red House Painters, Tindersticks, Cat Power, Belle and Sebastian, "Les Inrocks"
• Joy Division, Talk Talk, Meshell Ndegeocello, I Love Music (I knew Joy Div before but had not got into them)
• Giant Sand, the album was "Chore of Enchantment", no clue where I heard it first
• Elliott Smith, I think I heard a clip/song via Jorn Barger's weblog robot wisdom

My first Genesis album was "A Trick of the Tail" which I got at my birthday when it had just come out. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" I listened to first at a friend's house. My first album ever was "Destroyer" by Kiss (birthday present), I think, but my fandom faded soon.

I totally forgot The Cure which I listened to first on Bayern 2 radio again, roundabout 1986, the song was "A Forest" and I was a fan after about ten seconds in.

Brave New Waves, late-night radio show on the CBC in Canada, was a major gateway.

I am A: American and B: old, so I was first exposed to several of my favorite bands (Sparks, Roxy Music, Sensational Alex Harvey Band) via Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, in the pre-cable days of network television.

A cassette dub of 13 Songs, Repeater, & Steady Diet by Fugazi was pressed into my hand at an end of summer party right before I started my first yr of high school in 1992 (I think that's when it was, I don't think it was any earlier) and was told very conspiratorially I need to make myself familiar with these records.

I first heard Death Cab for Cutie when “Title and Registration” was used as interstitial music on an episode of Car Talk.

in a car, somewhere on Long Island, summer 1997

my mom played me merzbow in the womb

hell yeah

Genesis (1990): my mother had a copy of Invisible Touch, which I loved. She also bought a copy of Peter Gabriel's So, which I grew to love. When I saw Peter Gabriel's name on the back of the Selling England by the Pound jacket, this seemed too revelatory to be true. For an eleven-year-old it was pretty striking how different all of these albums sounded, and took some work to get into them.

Talking Heads, Brian Eno (1990): My older brother knew about them. I liked "Burning Down the House" and wanted to know who did it; he had the knowledge, and through him I learned the connection to Eno. The Cure (1991) were a case where my brother had a couple of albums but I actually bought Standing on the Beach without ever having consciously heard anything in order to discover the band "for myself." The inclusion of surprisingly great non-LP B-sides on the cassette made you feel like you were being admitted to some exclusive club (if not cult).

Wire, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Can, Residents, Velvet Underground, Television, Clash, XTC, Siouxsie, PiL, etc. (1992-1994): My parents got me a copy of the Trouser Press Record Guide (3rd ed.) for my thirteenth birthday, and for a couple of years I discovered an enormous amount of music through it (and the fourth edition that shortly followed). Some acts profiled there, most notably The Fall and Sparks, I wouldn't get around to exploring till years later (2000 and 2005, respectively); this was partly to do with it being difficult to find their albums, or at least the ones that came recommended. I also spent a lot of time reading the 1992 Rolling Stone Album Guide, which dutifully provided a map for classic rock and got me to investigate some jazz, funk and soul I might not have otherwise.

Sonic Youth (1992): partly Trouser Press, but I think the initial impetus was an Entertainment Weekly review of Dirty. I didn't really love that album, but I kept trying, and Sister really clicked.

Stereolab (1998): a friend from high school who later worked in a record store told me they were his favorite band; I investigated and was thrilled to be getting into an act that wasn't defunct or past its prime.

Scott Walker, Serge Gainsbourg (2001): Roni Sarig's The Secret History of Rock, which served as a sort of supplement to Trouser Press at a time when I was returning to rock music after largely listening to classical and jazz for a couple of years.

Pet Shop Boys (2002): a friend mentioned being excited to attend Closer to Heaven when I was in college, and I didn't know anything about them (presumably having forgotten the disgust accorded them in Trouser Press). I investigated after the 2CD reissues came out in 2001 — in fact, the novelty and quality of the 2CD reissue packages was part of what drew me to them (IIRC PSBs were the first to do this kind of expanded reissue, at least with most of their catalogue).

Yes (2002) My brother had been a fan, but I didn't really start seriously investigating until I was out of college. I think the generally... affirmative? egalitarian? approach to reviewing on the All Music Guide removed some of the stigma attached to prog by the Rolling Stone guide and Guterman/O'Donnell's The Worst Rock n' Roll Records of All Time (I was self-conscious about these things for a lonnnng time).

Chic (c.2006): I don't really remember. I was curious about disco, and Chic was the most celebrated albums act in the genre. Maybe a Pitchfork '70s list? These lists did introduce me to a lot of music in the '00s (Arthur Russell being the main example that comes to mind).

Nara Leão, Jorge Ben (2007-8): I think I got into Brazilian music in general through David Byrne connections (and flipping though pages of "customers also bought..." on Amazon), but the Slipcue website, however indifferently "informed," helped map out a lot of the territory, which I still approach a bit too much like a tourist. The Loronix blog put a ridiculous number of albums in easy reach, and then there was the fun of trying to track down affordable physical copies....

Ariel Pink (2012): Before Today was blasting in a late-night coffee shop, and "Fright Night" instantly seduced me in a way few things have. Googled lyrics, realized I'd read about AP in Simon Reynolds' Retromania (his self-professed favorite act of the '00s, no less!), but from the book AP sounded like he wallowed in nostalgia like it were filth. He did, and I didn't realize how much I would like it.

My first exposure to Talking Heads was in Revenge of the Nerds.

Talking Heads: An older colleague who became a bit of a mentor to me was an ex-punk who recommended TH to me. I listened to Stop Making Sense but it didn't click - sounded very thin and dated. But I came across a copy of the DVD in Fopp, brought it home and was absolutely spellbound. I must have watched it about 15 times now. Later I read Rip It Up and Start Again and got heavily into the new wave/post-punk vibe and now I run a night where we play music from the new wave era exclusively.