Story Time: How You Found Bands/Singers You Love

[Galadín]

Tripping across and falling face first into new music which may end up inspiring you for years to come, can bring with it an interesting story or two. We all have that band that we've loved since forever, or that singer that you didn't know from Adam who now dominates a corner of your iPod. For many, these chance encounters can result in hours of inspired work, a realisation of something fundamental or even just a commute that doesn't seem quite so gloomy!

Time to tell your story of "How I Met That Music"! If you have a story of how you found Bands/Singers you love, then share. You never know, you may introduce us to some legendary material along with your tale.

Oh, and keep the "I went onto Youtube and it happened" to a minimum please - that's not legendary

Go nuts!

 

[ZaXo Ken'Ichi]

I can't say I have any tales that I would consider 'epic' or anything like that. Most music I either got from my parents (the band Tesla was apparently the only thing that would put me to sleep as a baby), I heard on the television or radio, or I found on YouTube once that came around. I'm so musically obsessed that it's rare for me to be introduced to music by anyone else. The only major instance of that I can think of is Joe Satriani.

The best story I have is strangely enough for my favorite band, Kamelot. Learning about them taught me what truly great vocals sounded like, and changed my perception of music. Basically, back in my junior year of high school, I had an old Dell MP3 player. It was back when MP3 players were still literally just cases with screens and a straight up harddrive inside. Drop it, and you've lost your music collection, lol. I dropped it

Being nice, my dad gave me his 30gb iPod video and bought an 80gb one for himself... might have just been doing it so he could upgrade honestly, lol. Anyway, I carried on with that until halfway through my senior year. One night at a party put on by my mom's boss, my dad talked about getting my brother an iPod. His choice was either an iPod Nano, or my iPod. Luckily, he chose my iPod, meaning my dad gave me the 80gb and then got himself an 80gb iPod Classic. I got the 80gb Video that night. As my dad handed it to me, he asked a very important question... "Do you want me to wipe everything off of it first?". Knowing he had tons of stuff like World War II audio-books and such on it, I almost said yes. But he also had a decent amount of music on it that I would end up putting on it myself anyway. So thank all the Gods I chose to just take it as it was.

First thing I did of course was look through each and every artist on there. Lots of junk, some stuff I wanted, and then there was a band I'd never heard of before. My dad's friend was a bassist that was really into rather eccentric music for the time. Online video in it's current form was still rather new, meaning you couldn't find obscure stuff easily yet. You had to dig to find stuff. This dude did that sort of thing, and as such would occasionally give my dad obscure albums from obscure artists to listen to. One of those artists was known as Kamelot (which he of course never actually listened to at that point). Judging by the cheesy, misspelled name I assumed it would probably be some silly, poorly written junk.

... Then this came on...

Spoiler

The orchestral opening was beautiful. But I wasn't captured until the vocals came in. I'd never quite heard anything like them. I wasn't sure I liked them until the chorus hit and he hit some of those higher notes. That's when I fell in love. I listened to that song all day the next day. Every time a class got over, the iPod was out and the headphones were on. Passing period was just enough time to listen to the song. Something about those vocals was hypnotic.

Funnily enough, I was super, super un-receptive to screaming in music back then, because it was suddenly killing off clean vocals in metal. So after listening fervently to the Ghost Opera album for a few months, I decided to try the other Kamelot album on the iPod. I was waiting for the right time like it was a dang birthday present, lol. I turned the first song on and... was initially disgusted and disappointed.

Spoiler

I liked it, except for the fact that there was screaming in the first song. I assumed at that point that the album I'd grown to love so much was a fluke, and that everything else by them would just include a bunch of screaming. I didn't listen to the rest of the album for another month or so, until I needed something to listen to in the background while reading the final Harry Potter book. The Black Halo album is now permanently intertwined with that book. Reading about the quiet snow in Godric's Hollow while listening to stuff like this was just too perfect:

Spoiler

Physically hearing the crunch of snow underfoot while Harry and Hermione themselves did the same was... indescribable. And the dark tone of the album as a whole fit the book extremely well.

I've followed Kamelot closely ever since, and expanded into dozens and dozens of related artists. Unfortunately the singer from that era -Roy Khan- left music for personal reasons back in 2011, which devastated me. His voice is the most powerful, diverse, and beautiful I've ever heard. And it's saddens me to no end that I might never hear new notes come from it ever again. I know that's not a great story, but I personally think it's interesting that my entire outlook on life, music, vocals, art, Harry Potter (lol), and so many other things could've been different had I said "Yes" instead of "No", when my dad asked whether I wanted him to wipe the content off of that iPod. I've only been to one concert because I don't like concerts... it was a Kamelot concert.

In closing, I'll share one more song, which may not be Khan's 'best performance', but is still the most beautiful vocal performance I've ever heard. And this version is even live, showing off just how much of a mastery he has over his technical skills.

Spoiler

EDIT: I still own and use that iPod by the way, lol.

 

[Miko]

I remember having certain songs I liked growing up, though most of them were influenced by what was on the radio or what my parents would play. Nothing really ever stuck to me though, and I believe my first investment in trying to find the music for me was when I started listening to video game orchestra music from the games I was playing.

Middle school & most of high school I got my music from my brother. I tried experimenting with music that people would post online in threads similar to our "What are you currently listening to?" threads but I really didn't find my true interests till my last year of high school thanks to a friend of mine I was chatting regularly with online. They suggested a lot of music to me that I still listen to currently and it really inspired me to start finding music that I actually liked. 2009-2010 was my prime of experimenting what worked for me based on my own tastes and not what my role models liked. And while I still like some of that music, it definitely isn't all within my actual taste of music.

I think my rabbit hole started with Myspace actually, back when it was used as social media I was on a band's page that I like and started 'friend' hopping onto other band pages. Example, Hadouken!, Pendulum, The Prodigy, Innerpartysystem - These were my regulars for a while. It kinda expanded out after that, but that was my first circle of bands I loved. Then Youtube helped of course, I think a lot of us used Youtube in that way. It really helped that online radio stations started up too because I was able to find some more bands after that. Now that I'm using Spotify I'm able to find a bit more music tailored to myself as well.

Anyway, yeah, I have a weird mix of music I like. I stick mostly to Electronica but there's a lot floating in there from just shopping around for my interests. Thanks Myspace!

 

[Sashikiru]

I was searching for music artists to learn and write about for an assignment but I could not find a truly unique one. A friend introduced me to Lindsey Stirling, a dubstep violinist and I fell in love with her music and have been obsessed since.

 

[Daenoxiis]

I was 20 when I first found them. They were in their garage days at the time, and this was the first thing I heard from them. I told my ex a t the time that if they ever came to America I would find a way to take us to see them because nothing I'd heard at that time sounded like this did. In May of 2012, I got that experience and got to see them live, it would be the first and the last time I ever saw them because SL committed suicide in 2014. The initial draw, was the triple layered guitars, you don't see a lot of bands that use 3 guitarists, let alone doing something in the style of a sort of Psychedelic Hard Rock and Metal splice. Ya know that one annoying dude who's really into Rock & Metal? That's me, I'm that guy.

 

[Jack's Smirking Revenge]

For my favourite band, it's as simple as a friend's recommendation really. A good friend from uni and I both had very similar music tastes so I could usually rely on liking a new band that he'd found. When we were working on our final project in third year he was playing The Airborne Toxic Event's first album a lot in his car. I loved it, went out and bought it and have never looked back since.

Perhaps a better story is how I got into MisterWives. There's a solo female artist my partner and I had seen a little while back and really liked, called Kimberley Ann. She put on Twitter that she was opening for a group that we had never heard of and tickets were pretty cheap, so we decided to take a punt, and if we didn't like the band we could easily just leave as we'd already have seen her. We ended up getting to the gig later than planned (can't remember why now) and just missed Kimberley Ann leaving the stage. We stuck around to watch MisterWives and it was possibly the greatest gig I've ever seen. They've got such good stage presence and energy, you can't not enjoy them.

 

[Dionysos]

This is a good thread! Unfortunately I don’t have many interesting stories.

I’ve had a number of key musical influences in my life. Childhood friends and high school friends influenced my earliest tastes, as I suspect will be the case with many people. Video games like the Grand Theft Auto and WWE Smackdown (etc) franchises introduced me to wider varieties of music at a time when I wasn’t likely to hear a variety anywhere. I’ve never been one to be drawn to the music that was considered to be current on the radio, at shopping centres, etc. Playing Final Fantasy also helped me to appreciate a variety of genres (and opened me up to classical music).

But as a young adult a key influence ended up being my dad (once I got over myself and allowed myself to open my mind and actually listen to his music: things like Genesis and David Bowie were then unlocked to me), and my closest friend before he passed introduced me to a vast amount (Dead Can Dance, Oingo Boingo, Absurd Minds, etc). From there I discovered a lot on my own too. Once you discover how varied music can be, you start to tumble down a sort of rabbit hole. Or multiple rabbit holes.

A few other random things which I wouldn’t say is the ‘main music’ I listen to, but might have more of a story behind them. I went to Dublin and listened to Irish folk music in a bar, so the following day I walked into a music store and bought a ‘Best of’ album for The Dubliners. It contained a number of the tracks this other band had performed, and when I listened to it when I got home I loved it. I think it all ended up on my iPod and I’ve never not had it on my iPods. Similarly, when in Greece I obviously bought some Greek folk music. Naturally, that also is on my iPod and I love it.

I really wish I could say something cool. Like I fell into an alligator tank at a reptile sanctuary and the keeper had to blast music from a soundsystem built into the walls to scare the alligator off to prevent it from devouring me, and that from that day onwards I’ve really loved that track. That would have been a cool thing to say. Sometimes life just isn’t like that though.

 

[Shadowrazor97]

anna tsuchiya easy from nana's soundtrack.