I recently joined the 1001 Albums You Should Listen To Before You Die list that a friend sent to me. It was more out of curiosity, but it's been a mixed bag of humble pie and disappointment. He's probably the biggest music nerd that I know of personally, and that's saying something considering how long I've been on this board. He worked in the music industry up until a few years ago, and has some wild stories about some of our favorite musicians.

Anyway, I joined this silly music list, but there's some good stuff on it. I realized I missed out on some albums and artists that I would have absolutely loved, but was turned off by whatever was on the radio.

The band I'll start with is Yes. On the list was The Yes Album. It has that one song that's always on the classic rock radio station that is kind of lame. The rest of the album is a banger. I love prog, but I always turned my nose at Yes.

cakes wrote: I love prog, but I always turned my nose at Yes.

there is video from Yessongs, the 3 disc live set from...'72 I think. seeing that busy shit played live is a bit of mindblower.


All the Yes and other prog I was listening to in '78 when I was 13 kept me from the Zep until I was about 18 or 20.

There are so many bands I discovered well after the fact, often because of this forum.

The one band I'll mention now is Six Finger Satellite. Up until this past year, I had only heard of them via their contributions on Just Fred. The Brainiac vs. 6FS dome got me interested and now I am totally hooked.

Thank you all.

GRATEFUL DEAD

Kate Bush. In the 80s and 90s, her music struck me as cloying, and it irritated me to no end.

But something changed. I finally “got” it.

I didn't really listen to much classic rock besides the Beatles when I was in my teens and early 20s, and didn't really get more than passing exposure to FM classic rock radio, so when I got into AC/DC and ZZ Top and Led Zeppelin and Sabbath in my late 20s/early 30s I didn't have as many terrible cultural associations with them that folks I know who grew up with that stuff and got into punk and indie later. Glad I went down that route. I'm certainly way more likely to put on Powerage or Tejas these days instead of Doolittle.

Metal escaped me COMPLETELY as a kid (i'm 50 born in 1975) but to be clear, it was a conscious choice for me - the people into ACDC and metallica and shit were normally the mouth breathers I was trying to avoid, so I associated that music with those people. Which, in hindsight, clearly a mistake - now I love lots and lots of it. Mouth breathers are everywhere lol. Good music and bad music - also prevalent in every genre pretty much.

I think a concept I discovered later than I would have liked is that almost all music has valid examples of it that I will probably love - from country and classical to extreme punishing noise.

Genres are silly.

Too many to list, and as someone said, many as a result of this forum.

I'll go with Wire. Can't remember when I first heard them, but I was well into my 30s, maybe even 40s.

Hawkwind, rectified by the old Fallnet list-serv.

Frankie99 wrote: Mon Dec 08, 2025 12:15 pm Metal escaped me COMPLETELY as a kid (i'm 50 born in 1975) but to be clear, it was a conscious choice for me - the people into ACDC and metallica and shit were normally the mouth breathers I was trying to avoid, so I associated that music with those people. Which, in hindsight, clearly a mistake - now I love lots and lots of it. Mouth breathers are everywhere lol. Good music and bad music - also prevalent in every genre pretty much.

I think a concept I discovered later than I would have liked is that almost all music has valid examples of it that I will probably love - from country and classical to extreme punishing noise.

Genres are silly.

I was way into metal, until Nirvana busted out. At that time I was looking for more punk stuff, and I really liked The Dead Milkmen, Descendants and Minor Threat. I forgot about metal until my early 30s and fell back in love with it. When all my punk friends in high school had their typical patches and stuff on their jackets, I had a Led Zeppelin Swan Song t-shirt patched to the back of mine. I would get shit for it all the time, because I didn't stay in a box about music or maybe it was that the people that liked that kind of music were lame. All I know is that I thought the music was awesome, it didn't matter to me.