Bands you didn't discover until you were "older"

Judas Priest in the late 90s (when I was about 25), even though I'd been into other metal like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath since the late 80s. I think that since I became a metal fan when TURBO was the most recent Priest album made me feel like I couldn't take them "seriously," sort of like a British version of Twisted Sister or Quiet Riot.

 

The Mekons
Read about them in the 80's and 90's
But a friend gave me a greatest hits so to speak this century when I was 60
Can't believe I ignored them for 30 years now have more than a dozen of their records in all sorts of combinations
One of the truly great rock n roll bands of all time
Anyone who likes all the New Wave punk bands of the late seventies early 80's should give them a repeated listening

 

I got into Slayer this year, at 39 years of age. I have their live album on my Ipod. The songs are on shuffle, so I'll get a nice mix. It will go from Fleetwood Mac's Sara, to Slayer's War Ensemble. Good times.

 

Beach Boys.... yeah I know them and many of their most popular song but discovered them in my '40

 

Since turning 40 I’ve discovered (and enjoy):

King Crimson
Frank Zappa
Guided by Voices
Roxy Music
Arcade Fire
The Temptations
Eddie Harris
Herbie Hancock
ELO
Quicksilver Messanger Service
Country Joe and the Fish
Savoy Brown
Canned Heat
Ten Years After
Mississippi John Hurt
Albert King
Peter Tosh
Son Seals

 

Bob Dylan? He has many moods- great title for a compilation, in fact. Including moods that groove, in styles ranging from semi-demented barrelhouse shuffles to alt-country to roots rock reggae...ex. "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream", the original version of "All Along The Watchtower", "Highway 61", "Motorpsycho Nightmare", "Watching The River Flow", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Meet Me In The Morning", "The Groom's Still Waiting At The Altar", "I & I", "I Got My Mind Made Up", "Political World", "Dreaming Of You", the live versions of "Cold Irons Bound" and "High Water (For Charley Patton)"...I'd venture that all of those songs exist on Youtube as HQ clips from officially released records.

I recommend going through that list in reverse order- I can't speak for his most recent tours, but c.2001-2005 Dylan was rocking out pretty hard in his live shows.


If you hear that tune on computer speakers, you'll get an inkling of the power of that band. Turn it up on an actual stereo system, and you'll get something that approaches the actual impact.

fwiw, when I saw this thread, Bob Dylan was the first guy I thought of. I started out liking bits and pieces, and then I got to noticing there was something special about other bits and pieces, an increasing number of them, and then at some point after a number of years they accumulated into a mountain, that fell on me...it's like Hunter Thompson says, Dylan has a way of speaking for the times that we live in. He has misses and throwaways, but his career track recordof doing that is formidable. And at his best, those lines just echo down the corridors. Turning up around at unexpected moments, like around the next corner.

 

I was almost 40 when I decided to check out Fairport Convention and the various artists involved and I fell in really hard. I picked up everything the band had in print (even later stuff), Richard Thompson, Richard and Linda Thompson, Swarb, Ashley Hutchings various projects (finding them is an adventure in itself) and of course everything I could find by Sandy Denny (an ongoing regret is missing the boat on the huge anthology - I thought I had a little more time to pull the trigger - sigh. ) I've tapered off a bit ... these days I don't really listen to Fairport stuff recorded after L&L but love those first 4 albums and assorted BBC sessions. I still listen to Sandy ... I particularly love her BBC sessions. From the Thompsons, "I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight" remains one of my favorite albums of all time. What an interesting Bunch.

 

Lots. The big ones that come to mind are Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, and the Beach Boys.

Edit: reading the thread, I see that many of you are mentioning the same artists!

 

Peter Bellamy

As a Dave Swarbrick fan, I had all the obligatory albums (Solo, Fairport, Martin Carthy etc) and like any self respecting fan crazy, had moved onto buying up all the albums Dave had made an appearance on as a guest....you know the idea....plays on a track on this album, a couple over there....there were quite a few of these.

The albums I knowingly left to the end were two by Peter Bellamy that Dave was involved in - The Transports and Both Sides Then.

I was semi-familiar with Bellamy prior to this - and as anyone who has heard him will know, his nasal, ornamented vibrato vocals are an interesting sound on first list and not always easy to digest. An acquired taste shall we say...

So at the age of 42 I picked these albums up for my "collection" and as I had paid good money for them, I put them on an gave them a chance over a number of plays....and it clicked...years of dislike, dispersed......I still cannot decide if he was nuts or a genius...but the collections still growing...(thankfully he didn't play on too may other peoples albums)

My wife on the other hand will still not allow me to play them in the house when she is home!!!

 

Television - was part 35 'til I listened to them properly. Marquee Moon now in my Top 10 of all time
King Crimson - took a while but I got there
Jethro Tull - was aware of the "Living in the Past" 1993 remix but only discovered full albums in the last few years
The Band - seemed too weedy when I was in the my early 20s but I've grown to like them

 

Kinks-
Always loved the 45's but got into deep album cuts at 29 with the catalogue relaunch around 1998.
Especially on Arthur lp.
Who-
Loved 'em in my teens though finally bought Who Sell Out on CD when it came out with tons of bonus tracks 2 odd decades later and it works superbly as a whole.
Charlie Musselwhite-
Never had a thing but just tonight received an original lp 1966 or 67 on Vanguard of his debut with Harvey Mandel and it is a keeper!
Sly Stone-
Had the famed 1970 Best Of CD in my 20"s but gave it away as it sounded terrible. Embraced the band in 2004 with the 2cd Essential collection.
Peter Green solo-
Loved his F.Mac killer cuts and standout singles in my 20's but took longer to get into him in his Splinter Group guise, until that is i bought a well priced cd at a fair.

 

THE SEEKERS. I was 42 when I came across their music by accident.

 

kayak
jane
can

naming a few i found out about the last 3-4 years

good stuff

 

I remember when I was about 15, I borrowed Crosby, Stills & Nash's debut from my local record library and thought it was terrible. about 10 years later (mid 90s), I was in a record shop in Oxford & they were playing some fantastic music across the store. I asked them what it was & it turned out to be CSN&Y's American Dream album. I bought it on the spot (I'm in the minority I know but I still love it) and worked my way back through all their stuff, collectively & individually, including the debut which of course, then made perfect sense to me.

If I hadn't gone in to that shop at that particular time, I would have missed out on a ridiculous amount of good music.

 

Sonic Youth - though I was in my 20's at the time of Daydream Nation and had heard "Bull in a Heather" on Alternative radio in the 90's, I did not really discover them until a review of the new Murray St LP in 2002, which I bought and loved, then continued

 

it's always been a slowly developing thing and new bands come around that i didn't know of.
In the last couple of years I have discovered, or learned to appreciate

gentle giant
devin townsend
uriah heep
yes
elp
king crimson

some of those due to the wonderful 5.1 formats

 

Pink Floyd. I'd been aware of them since I was a preadolescent, but was never into them until I was almost 30 and started checking out their pre-Dark Side catalogue after reading The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music (a book that ended up costing me some money). I still think that album was the beginning of the end, but I love a lot of their older stuff, the era(s) up through Meddle covered by the Early Years box.

 

The big one for me is Roy Buchanan. I first heard of him 10 years ago when I was 39. He just never came up on my radar until a friend played some of his music for me.

 

Pink Floyd.

In my younger punk-influenced days, I rashly rejected them along with most of the other so-called mainstream rock, although I always liked "Piper" - but, you know, that's Syd's album, not the Pink Floyd that was played on FM radio!

A few years ago I found an LP of DSOTM in a thrift store for a buck (!!), bought it, and decided I liked it a lot. Since then I've been acquiring their other albums when I find them, and so far have added "Saucerful," "Meddle," "Atom Heart Mother" and "Obscured By Clouds" to my collection, and I think they're all terrific. Their music has held up very well.

 

This will blow your mind: Roy Buchanan in 1964 doing faux-British Beat.

The guitar playing is definitely more creative than what was typical of the era.

 

I'm 56 and though I was a bit young for the peak of the '60 music revolution (in real time that is)I was at the epicenter (like many others here too)of what would be later known as the "Classic Rock" period for sure and have that era(or so I thought!) well covered but,did I? Nope not even close
I've been spending the last 10 years "discovering ' Bands/Artists right under my nose as a teenager back in the day. A casual listen at a friend's house to the occasionally noting it on the radio I started searching for these as my "Standard '60s/'70s Rock/soft Rock/ect...was fairly covered. And man oh man there was (and is ) a plethora of UN-mined great music out there from my POV here!!So, I started digging in and haven't found the bottom yet LOL.It's great!The un earthing of one leads to more buried underneath my layers of complete ignorance of this music when I was younger...

Terry Reid is one artist that comes to mind for me.Incredible voice and story behind this individual that left me saying why am I just learning about this guy's existence in the year 2016!!!

Fleetwood Mac (Bob Welch era)- knew the radio (later re-done on Bob's Solo albums)tunes vaguely recall hearing the "Bare Trees "LP at a buddies house(late '70s). So, I tracked down a copy and that opened the door ..in the year 2014

Little Feat-same general story /outcome as the above Fleetwood Mac discovery...2014

sooooooo many more......

 

Grateful Dead - they were a little past their prime by the late 80s/early 90s when I was getting into music and I never could really appreciate the improvised jamming. Some time spent getting into jazz over the past 4-5 years has made me a fan.

 

I am 61 now and, as many have pointed out on this thread, I discovered an overwhelmingly large number of artists after I was 30. However, it was a real leap for me to buy music by The Monkees and Slade as both bands seemed more commercial than substantial to my somewhat less developed sensibilities. Even more embarrassing was my passing on a (at that time) comprehensive stack of Beach Boys vinyl offered to me by my older brother in 1969. I even saw the Beach Boys in 1976 and thought of them as some kind of nostalgia act. Of course now I love these bands and wonder about my younger self's lack of insight.

 

Couldn't agree more on this. Except for me it was after ...40

 

It has been said that it is no accident that many of us relate most strongly to the music we experienced and loved at 16.
I can relate to your post as i was deep diving like you in my late 20's as i have already partially stated on here so some deja vu reading for me. Your rhetorical question of what you will be listening to 20 years further down the track? I would strongly presume the core of the great stuff you already like now with plenty more gradual musical signposts you continually pick up on the way. You won't throw as much away again due to your stated discerning tastes. One can always Love music at any age but for me the ecstatic teen years of musical discovery were so powerful and all consuming as they were welded to personal identification directly through the music.