How did you first hear your favorite #bands?

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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.