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

The vast, vast majority of the music I listen to (and own) was discovered when I was in my 30s and 40s.

 

I missed out on a number of notables b/c they were never played on the radio in my home town and I couldn't afford to buy records in my youth:

Like several other posters here, Big Star.

Around the same time I started listening to Gram Parsons. I had heard the FBB's "Wild Horses" in the mid '80s and liked it, but didn't continue on and I ended up not hearing anything else by him for almost 20 years.

Even though I was college age at the time I pretty much missed out on Cowpunk, except for a couple of Long Ryders cuts and The Beat Farmers' "Lost Weekend", which I heard on a college radio station w/o hearing the name of the artist -- I wouldn't discover it until about 20 years later. I was also at least 10 years late on Uncle Tupelo, 5 on Wilco, Whiskeytown, The Gourds, The Old 97s and others of that ilk. Make that 20 for The Silos, who I only learned about b/c someone on a political message board happened to mention Cuba. And that led me to The Vulgar Boatmen.

The Dictators. I cringe as I write this, but I dismissed them w/o a hearing after all their albums were panned in The Rolling Stone Record Guide. I only learned my mistake when I heard them on Little Steven's Underground Garage.

Fairport/Richard Thompson

I'm sure there are many others, but those came to me off the top of my head.

 

I had a pretty good working knowledge of progressive rock when I discovered Roxy Music in the mid 80's. A friend in NJ called and asked me to tape a WLIR-FM concert for him [Calderone, Hempstead NY 1976] and I was really impressed with what I heard. I bought their debut shortly afterwards and was blown away the first time I heard it. How did I miss this?

 

I'm nearly 30 now and I would say I have been going through a complete musical renaissance/reinvention over the last couple of years. I got rid of a large portion of my collection--tons of stuff that I never listened to and no longer felt any interest in at all. I've taken deep dives into artists I had no interest in during my teen years or early 20s. I wonder what I'll be interested in when I'm 50... While it's great being young and having tons of enthusiasm for music (I don't know if I'll ever *love* it again like I did when I was 16), I like being a bit older with more discerning taste.

Two in particular to mention: Steely Dan and Elvis Presley.

 

Will you joke around, and still dig those sounds?

 

The biggest one was the Velvet Underground. I had never heard anything by them except "Sweet Jane" until I was in my early 40's. Then I bought VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO and was knocked out by how great it was. Now I have a Box Set and consider them among by top 10 all-time favorites.

Some others I discovered at age 40 (or older):
Big Star
Kaleidoscope (both US and UK)
The Pretty Things
Creation
The Blue Things
The Leopards
Rodriguez
Fluffy

 

Roxy Music
Love
Big Star
Caravan
Colisseum
Fleetwood Mac (Green)
The Move

 

Definitely Bruce Springsteen for me.

I always kinda had him on my "off the radar" sensor growing up. I knew of his loyal fan base and his reputation for legendary concerts etc. I guess I just never got around to investing the time in his catalogue.

Well, one day, I purchased The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (1973) and loved "Rosalita". Then eventually fell in love with "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)". Fast forward a few years later and it is now one of my all-time favorite albums by any artist and, to date, my favorite Bruce album.

I eventually bought Born To Run (1975), of course, and have grown to find it a masterpiece as well. I just recently ordered the 30th Anniversary Box for the album with the documentary and concert footage.

I've also fallen in love with The River (1980) lately and have been collecting lots of live Bruce CD's in the hope of sequencing together the ultimate 4 disc Springsteen concert (a la the Bruce Springsteen Live 1975-1985 box set).

In short, it's a good thing I didn't listen to those who find him overrated or tiring. If I had, I might have never come to realize how great he truly is!

 

Outside of radio play my whole life, I have really delved into
Led Zeppelin
David Bowie
Judas Priest
Pink Floyd
Alice Cooper (the band)
The Velvet Underground
Queen
The Kinks
Discovered Motörhead in 2011 after seeing them with Megadeth on the Gigantour...only ever knew "Ace of Spades" the song. I was so blown away by that blaring rock and roll. Now I have a good ten lps, tons of digital, hoodies, posters in my man cave...hell I'd have the war-pig tattoo if my wife wasn't terrified of it..I was heartbroken when Lemmy died. At least I stood in the presence of a god.

 

Ditto on the "East Street Shuffle". Heard "Kitty's Back" blaring down the hallway in college and thought it was fantastic.

 

Can
Neu
Radiohead

at age 65

 

I've really been into doom metal and other more extreme metal sub-genres in the last few years. 44 years old feels like an odd age to get into this kind of music.

 

The really cool 60's Sunshine Pop bands who are rarely heard (good old Spotify has em all) - Eternity's Children, Millennium, Sagittarius, The Holy Mackerel, The Parade, The Cyrkle, The Free Design - don't think these bands charted much if at all in the UK back then

 

Nobody ?
Some of us reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllly old coots have definitely heard of them.

 

Yeh I reworded it whilst you were hot typing- knew I would be in trouble - read it again now reworded

 

Love
Herbie Hancock
The Meters
The Music Machine
The Kinks
The Pretty Things
Charles Mingus
Harvey Mandel
Mcdonald and Giles

...all in the past couple of years or so.

 

You have been quite busy getting a fine education.

 

Of Montreal (at least their early poppy-psyche LPs). I just heard them for the first time this summer and I'm over 40.

They started in Athens, GA the fall after I graduated from UGA. I was heavily into the Apples in Stereo but somehow I didn't go past that band into the Elephant 6 associates. I talked to a friend of mine who was in Athens at the same time and his comment was something like "you were too busy into the Beatles, Stones, Kinks etc.. to get to Of Montreal" I'm always about 20 years behind.

 

Pretty Things
Grateful Dead (really started listening to them a lot this year).

 

Black Sabbath. I was a musician playing in a band doing original material at the time that they broke.
I and the people that I hung out with dismissed them as pretty much a "novelty" act and ignored them.
Believe it or not, it wasn't until around 2000 when I saw a cover band do a set of Sabbath tunes that
I realized that I actually like those songs that I had been hearing on the radio for decades and went out
and bought the 2 CD Best Of Black Sabbath album. I've been listening to that album on a regular basis
ever since.

 

Like many here I didn't discover many bands/artists as a teenager because local radio didn't play 'em. I'd heard ELP but not King Crimson, Badfinger but not Big Star, Gordon Lightfoot but not Nick Drake, The Kinks and Yardbirds but not The Creation and the Pretty Things.

I had to be willing but as I got older, I discovered that Free had other songs besides "All Right Now", The Small Faces had songs other than "Itchycoo Park", Pink Floyd had easily a half-dozen lps before Dark Side and Fleetwood Mac had another LP entitled "Fleetwood Mac" that had no female vocalists whatsoever. Imagine that.

Oh, and the woman on 'The Battle of Evermore' made some great music with a guy called Richard Thompson in an obscure English band called Fairport Convention. Surprising, none of Fairport's music has ever troubled the local classic rock station's playlist.

 

This year I got into the Cocteau Twins big time. Got all nine singles. Eight of the E.P.s and five albums.
No idea how I missed out on them first time round.

Plus Big Star. The three albums and 'I Am The Cosmos' - Chris Bell. That's thanks to this forum.

Happy Days

 

Reading a Talk Talk article earlier this year, the writer mentioned another vocalist who reminded him
(in an emotional kind of way, not "sounds like") of Mark Hollis - Stuart Staples.
So at age 64 I discovered Tindersticks 20+ years after their debut album.

Through this forum (joined a year ago), Chris Knight, Gretchen Peters, other Americana artists.

 

When I was a teenager in the Eighties I was lucky to have access to a local library with a pretty good LP section so I came across stuff like Love, Zappa, Amon Düül II, King Crimson and ISB right when I started getting curious about things beyond punk and heavy metal. In addition to the usual Doors, Hendrix, Stones and Beatles etc of course. But I remember Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and Live Evil proved to be a bit too much to digest at the time and I was well into my thirties when I properly got into Miles' works (and jazz in general).

More amusingly, I developed a limited taste for early death metal and black metal in later life as well. When those genres originally surfaced I dismissed them as plain ridiculous but ten years later I was surprised to find out there was some impressive music in there too. Should have known better by then that there are talented people making interesting music in all "genres".

Still, my most obvious late-to-the-party moment so far must be Grateful Dead. Hope there's still many more to come.

 

Last year at age 36 I discovered the Beach Boys and I'm so glad I did.
This year I've discovered The Zombies, a band I didn't even know that existed.