alex maiolo wrote:

bassdriver wrote:The Kinks. I was 12.

Then you had exceptional taste.
-A

well as kids we were listening to the usual charts stuff (abba, beatles, elvis). then I heard "You Really Got Me" on the radio. and for the first time I was hooked on music. still get this feeling when I hear this song.

Tears for Fears. I was six or seven. My best friend Aaron and I LOVED them. For my birthday, he got me "Songs From the Big Chair". My first cassette tape. His sister got me "No Jacket Required" by Phil Collins.

I have very vivid memories of my babysitter watching MTV and being completely enthralled with Prince. She was cool as fuck for letting me watch those considering I was probably 4 or 5.

My dad still had all of his old albums...everything from Black Sabbath to Supertramp to Kansas to The Doors...and I really like some of those as a kid.

But, honestly, I didn't really get into music until 6th or 7th grade. A friend of mine gave me a Nirvana bootleg cassette and a copy of Flipper's Gone Fishin' and I was instantly transformed into a music geek.

blondie, rod stewart, elo, beach boys.

The Smashing Pumpkins when I was 9.

I'm glad there's a wide variety of ages on this board. It's just weird to think how old I was when some people were getting into their first bands.

I find myself using the explosion of Nirvana as kind of a dividing line. There's something difficult to describe, but I almost feel a difference in people depending on when they got into independent/punk rock; pre or post Nevermind hitting.

Ben Adrian

Kind of hard to say. I know the 1st album I ever bought was "Through The Past, Darkly" a Rolling Stones greatest hits compilation, that I bought in the very early 70's,(I was 11 or 12) but I know I was buying 45's before that. I suppose the Stones were the 1st band I really loved, up to and including "Exile on Main St.".