As a kid, what was the first album that made you think "wow, this is different, and amazing?"

I was lucky to get into good music at a young age, around 4th grade in 1988. Had a sister that was 10 years old who was into everything that was great as far as UK imports, let me listen to her tapes, had tons of new wave stuff, got me exposed to so much when none of my friends really even cared about music. I went from getting Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet tape for Christmas one year, to a radical change and quick interest in bands like The Cure, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, OMD, The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen... The Cure completely won me over: the makeup, the hair, the vibe, the dark sound, all of it.

But the album that fits my "wow, this is different and this is amazing" was:



I'd heard a handful of songs by The Smiths, but when I got this from my sister, it was really the first time I'd heard anything like it. It was the first concentrated listen to their music in a full album, and I was just blown away. Morrisey's vocals and lyrics, the music in the songs, the opening track A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours, the album art, the first track on side 2, Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me, the upbeat songs, all of it. I had little available to see what Morrisey looked like, but this whole album was just a shock to my system unlike anything else. I eventually had the huge wall size poster of the cover art (would love to have that again for my music room). This album is such perfection, to this day I wish we could have heard what might have come next from The Smiths had they stayed together.

What's your "wow, this is different and this is amazing" album that had a similar effect on you?

 

Q: Are We Not Men?
A: We Are Devo!

 

Meet the Beatles!

 

The White Album. First heard it (and the Beatles in general) in 1974. A wonderful antidote to Shang-a-lang.

 

Borrowed a friend's sister's cassette copy of It Takes a Nation of Millions summer of 1989 and my 13 year-old brain was totally fried.

Three times this happened to me:

Public Enemy 1989
The Clash (US version) Christmas 1993
Attending a rocking rave after a couple misfires 1997

All three changed my life.

 

Either Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Abbey Road. The stereo remasters in 2009. Those were the first two Beatles albums I heard (don't remember which was first) and listening to them kickstarted my interest in music.

 

Lou Reed's Berlin.

My older brother's birthday is month before mine and I tended to get his castoffs from him as recycled presents for birthdays and Christmases. This was one of them and it was like entering a parallel universe. Fragile, Foxtrot and Yessongs certainly took me further out musically but Berlin was the all around cultural mind-expander. I would probably have got this on my 12th birthday or maybe Christmas of '73.

I already had For Your Pleasure which creeped me out on various levels that I couldn't articulate (though my big sister could and she absolutely hated it) but Roxy's world was less literal and more fantastical than Berlin so hit me less directly. Bowie was also all glancing blows rather than a kick in the gut. Even at 12 I could tell from the sleeve that Roxy were dealing in fantasies but Lou was all grim reality.

For years after as my tastes in other areas expanded I would pick up various Penguin modern classics in the green covers or watch some late night art house movie on tv and think "this is like Berlin".

 

Front 242 (Front By Front), Art of Noise (Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise), Metallica (Ride the Lightning). This was between '84 and '88 (ages 6 to 10).

 

'The Inner Mounting Flame' by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. I saw an article that mentioned it as a great album and it was 1972, so no internet, etc to find out anything about it. I had my 16th birthday upcoming, so I asked my mom to get it for me as a present. Mom was cool that way, and I played it every day for a month and I couldn't get the gist of it. I knew these guys were very talented, but it wasn't clicking for me. I went to see them at Central Park in NYC and everything came together. It changed the way I listen to music forever and turned me into a jazz fan.

 

The soundtrack to "Legend" by Tangerine Dream. Loved the movie as a kid bought the soundtrack and it opened a whole new world of music. From there discovering new age music from Vangelis , Kitaro and then later Enya . Now as I'm older discovering where that style came from ( a lot of bands from Germany ) the journey still continues getting into Brian Eno , Neu!, Harmonia . Cluster among others.

 

Wish I could point to some legendary album, or an artist that was just starting out a mission to change the world.

Alas, it was a Village People album. Might have been Go West. As a kid, their music and image was big and colorful compared to most albums in my parent’s collection. They didn’t have the Village People album... I probably saw them on TV and begged them to get it for me. Might have picked it when my mom did one of those Columbia House promotions... a bazillion albums for a penny or something like that.

 

February 9, 1964. The Beatles opened with All My Loving. I liked it right away, and it really was something I had not heard before. Soon after that, my brother got a copy of Meet The Beatles. I was seven. I'm still hooked.

 

Boston

Dark Side Of the Moon - Pink Floyd

 

Probably Remain in Light. That was coming from a whole different place than anything I knew at the time.

 

We’re Only In It For The Money - Zappa/Mothers

I was 14 in 1978. An older friend turned me onto Zappa with 5 of his albums.
I was just discovering the fact one could buy used LPs and I could further explore the 60s that I missed.
“Money” was a fascinating journey for me with the crazy edits, complex music, funny songs, and interesting liner notes.
“Absolutely Free” on this album WAS the sound of the 60s to me.

My love for this album has not diminished in the ensuing years!

 

Van Halen - Women and Children First.

It was uncharacteristically in my stepdad’s modest record collection and I found it one morning before school. We lived in a trailer out in the woods, so I turned up his stereo as much as I could every morning and absorbed it over and over without bothering a soul. The whole family left for work or school while I still had a long wait for the one and only school bus that picked me up. It blew my ten year-old mind when I first played it back in 1982.

 

"Are You Experienced" He wasn't imitating anybody. He was beyond everyone.

 

Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality

 

I would have to say The Yes Album.

I had 2 older brothers and they let me listen to it on 8-track with headphones.

I was quite young and it sounded awesome.

 

I'd have to say Tool's Lateralus was what really kicked the door off the hinges for me. I was a teenager when it was released and, up until that point, my musical tastes were primarily shaped by MTV and modern rock radio. It wasn't like they didn't have music videos or songs on the radio but if you really wanted to know anything about the band, including their names and what they really looked like, you'd have to dig a little deeper. I'm not really a Tool fan anymore, but I do feel like they're responsible for my branching out.

 

Easy one...

 

To be honest, it was probably the Osmonds Phase 3. Maybe age 4 or 5. This album had Yo-Yo and Crazy Horses on it. There were all these photos on the cover of the band playing live and it looked really exciting.

 

"David Bowie" (1969) by David Bowie

 

Awesome choice!

Mine isn’t nearly as cool, but hearing ELO’s Time in 1981 (when I was 10) was pretty amazing. It’s such a fantastic sounding record and I loved its time travel theme. I didn’t understand what a concept album was, but I did twig that all the songs were linked. I thought it sounded like the future.