If you could re-discover 10 bands, who would they be?

I was talking to a friend about this. If you could hear 10 bands and their catalog for the first time again, who would you pick? I went with bands with a lot of material because it would allow me to enjoy them longer.

Mine would be:

The Beatles
The Doors
Led Zeppelin
The Pixies/Frank Black
Ryan Adams/Whiskeytown
Wilco
R.E.M.
Van Halen
Luna
The Cult

It was very hard to get it to 10, and I'm sure I'd change my mind within a few minutes of thinking harder about it. Who would you choose?

 

The Beatles
Pink Floyd
The Doors
ABBA
Cream

Sorry that's it. I don't know too many bands where I'm completely experienced with their discography. I'd do Led Zeppelin's first 5 albums because I haven't gotten past Houses of the Holy even though I've been listened to that and everything before for years.

 

Sometime in the late 80's, I discovered Steely Dan's complete discography within a year (until then I'd only been familiar with a dozen SD songs + The Nightly).
It is an experience I'd like to live again.

 

ELVIS (1950s & 1960s excluding the 60s soundtracks)

Ray Charles
Dylan
Grateful Dead
Otis Redding
Pere Ubu
Buddy Holly
Roxy Music
Steely Dan
Velvet Underground

 

Queen
Pink Floyd
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Doors
R.E.M.
Chicago
Jimi Hendrix
Red Hot Chili Peppers
John Coltrane

 

Janis

That feeling when I heard Piece of My Heart for the first time...

 

Porcupine Tree

Allman Brothers

Led Zeppelin

Steely Dan

Jefferson Airplane

Gypsy

Pink Floyd

 

going through this right now with the guess who....my my my what an excellent band, and all i ever had was a best of set.

 

I don't think I'd want to do that. I like the way all my favorite music is tied to specific times/memories in my life.

 

I don't understand the question or why one would want to do that?
It's like wishing for a serious memory problem like dementia, it seems.

 

Jethro Tull, back in 1971 when the lightbulb went off, I became obsessed.
Bruce Springsteen, September 1974 another lightbulb went off.
Collectively, The Dead Boys, The Dictators, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols in 1976, plus or minus a year.
Leo Kottke.
Badfinger's Straight Up LP - OMG, the opening song "Take It All".

 

The Beatles
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Led Zep
Jethro Tull
The Stooges
Ten Years After
The Rolling Stones
NRPS
Spooky Tooth
Simon & Garfunkel
and literally hundreds more...

 

Relive the excitement of that first brush with something really great and exciting. Like if one could watch a great movie for the first time (after seeing it several times over the years).

Not at all probable and kind of impossible, but as an idea, many of us are craving that new thing that would blow us away.

I think that the ship has sailed, and new pop and rock is never going to reach that brand new album excitement like DSOTM or ATMP.

 

If we're going to go this route, then let me be born again and just start everything all over .. diapers and all !!


There are so many artists/bands that have been a thrill upon first-discovery .. and there are probably even more of which I did not immediately respond to, but gradually grew to love.

Artists whose music captured my interest immediately :

Beatles
Rolling Stones
Yardbirds
Pretty Things
High Numbers (The Who)
Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Cream
Ten Years After
Pink Floyd
David Bowie
Spirit
Deep Purple
Allman Brothers
Derek & The Dominoes
Savoy Brown
Fleetwood Mac
Shadows of Knight
Temptations
Funkadelic



Artists whose music I grew into :

Jimi Hendrix
Grateful Dead
Miles Davis
Chick Corea
Isaac Hayes
Billy Cobham


It's like walking under a tree in autumn.
A colourful leaf catches your attention the way a song does. You look up to see if there are more leaves where that one came from. You discover there are many branches, or artists that are connected by genre, and then you follow those branches to see where they connect to the trunk, and in turn, the roots .. and eventually you learn where the seeds that started the roots came from.

Two seeds started my journey into the
forest of trees .. at age three, my father played on his piano Chopin's Etude Opus 10, No.3 ~ I was moved to tears at that tender age, ensorcelled in dreams of pensivity. The other was at age four, and an instant love of pop songcraft upon hearing Petula Clark's hit record "Downtown" on my tiny transistor AM radio, which I promptly turned up loud enough for my neighbors to hear through open windows across the driveway that separated our houses.
I shall never forget those first-ever emotional responses to music ~ the one melancholy, the other pure exuberant joy.

edit:
apologies, I got lost in thought here...
the ten would be among the list in the top of my post ^

Ten Years After
Pink Floyd
David Bowie
Spirit
Deep Purple
Allman Brothers
Grateful Dead
Miles Davis
Chick Corea
Savoy Brown

 

My 10, in alphabetical order by artist:
1.David Bowie
2. The Kinks
3. The Monkees
4. The Move
5. Gram Parsons
6. R.E.M.
7. The Replacements
8. Richard Thompson (w/ & w/o Linda)
9. The Velvet Underground
10. Neil Young

 

Guided by Voices and all-things-Bob
The Wedding Present
Wilco
Pearl Jam
The Jam/Paul Weller
My Morning Jacket
Sonic Youth
Centro-matic and all-things-Will Johnson
Smiths/Morrissey
White Stripes and all-things-Jack White

bonus picks: The National, Green Day, Flaming Lips, U2, Felice Brothers, REM, and Fugazi

 

Sticking with bands:

The Beatles
Led Zeppelin
Genesis
Yes
Simon and Garfunkel
CSN/Y
Jethro Tull
The Moody Blues
Renaissance
Talking Heads

 

Interesting. Isn't this why marijuana exists?

 

Queen
The Beatles
David Bowie
Blur
Bob Dylan
Neil Young
Otis Redding
The Who
Led Zeppelin
Jimi Hendrix Experience

Ten of my favourite artists ever, but they've all been played a lot for years by me. The excitement of buying their albums gradually while in my teens was incredible. I haven't experienced anything like it when buying an artists back catalogue since.

 

Joni Mitchell
Bob Dylan
Sufjan Stevens
Ryan Adams

 

The Wedding Present - Excellent choice. They would probably have been my eleventh pick. They could do no wrong for me from George Best - Watusi. They've been fine since too.

 

none shall ever convince me there is no Divine Creation ...

 

Pink floyd
Zappa
Cold chisel
Iron maiden
Beatles
Stones
Zeppelin
Genesis
Hendrix
Dylan

 

I am going to stay in the rock arena for this list because I could do a list of 10 from Jazz and Country and I couldn't cap all 3 in a list of 10

The Beatles,...
...and the other 9 are
Allman Brothers Band
David Bowie
Aretha Franklin
Jimi Hendrix
Jefferson Airplane
Los Lobos
Joni Mitchell
Radiohead
Leon Russell

 

I didn't list The Beatles. As far as I'm concerned they are in another league.