All true. I suppose I'm being a little hard on the Beatles. Even though they aren't a rockin cool avant-garde band or anything, it's still a legit answer. :laughing:

For me it was Mr. Bungle, and I found Mr. Bungle through Faith No More, and I found FNM through Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. While I had heard songs like "Epic", "Midlife Crisis", and "Evidence" on the radio as a child, I didn't really ever associate band names to songs, so my early-to-mid teens were spent sifting through old songs and seeing if I wanted to get into the band. Faith No More was one of the rock bands that really broadened my horizons, and after having a record store clerk tell me a little more about the band, he recommended Mr. Bungle's 2nd album Disco Volante. It really took a few listens to appreciate it, but I was determined to like it because I liked FNM and Mike Patton so much, and eventually I hit this point where I could just zone out and listen to it on the bus, train, ferry, etc.

Later when I was 17 I was desperately trying to get into the pants of this really hot punk girl at my school and doing my best to school myself in the genre (until then I only knew a few bands I felt comfortable enough sharing) and I stumbled upon Sonic Youth. Now they were a band that I had known about for quite some time, but never knew where to start and always forgot about, but one day I grabbed Dirty while out at a used CD store and I really enjoyed it. I then kind of worked my way back a few albums, and then forward. With their discovery I learned about The Velvet Underground and started trying to find their music (although I didn't take to it as much as some of the more modern stuff).

Then I pretty much ignored experimental music for a good two years, I felt that I had enough to carry me through a conversation with most people and I was really starting to dig into extreme metal at this point. In my digging I found the band Green Carnation and the album Light of Day, Day of Darkness which really changed everything I thought I knew about metal. I was also far more computer savy at this point and was getting better at finding bands through sites and forums so I started doing more research and a whole new world opened up. I really started getting into the Avant-garde metal and post-black metal scene, while learning of some of the old bands I missed like Estradasphere.

This... right here was my first taste of avant-garde. It took a bit for it to sink in, but when it did, things were never the same.

I guess it would've been through Pink Floyd and then to Frank Zappa and then on to Captain Beefheart and the desire to find music more interesting.

neo-psychedelia bands like Flaming Lips, then started dabbling in early abient stuff like Brian Eno and then some 80's post punk and No-Wave before discovering some awesome experimental stuff by caribou and animal collective then discovering DRONE

Laurie Anderson. I'd never heard anything like her.

It's pretty hard to draw the line between what is experimental / avant garde and what is not. For me it's been a step by step kind of process diving deeper and deeper into different underground scenes and going through all kinds of genres and subgenres.

In the 90s I started by listening to a lot of indie rock and some of those bands were quite experimental and noisy. Fugazi and Shudder to Think were very big things for me when I was 18-19. I guess you could tag both of them as "experimental" and "indie rock". Those bands taught me that just about anything is possible in music, not that they themselves did anything that was possible. But they made me realize that any golden rule in the rock music cook book can be broken or reinterpreted. And I guess that applies to any other genre as well. These bands gave me one of the first "Oh, I never thought you could do it this way" experiences. I guess the most important music on a personal level is that which changes the way you think or feel about music.

First I'd like to apoligise for necrobumping this thread, but I do think it could be interesting for old and new members alike who haven't seen this, to comment.

As for me, it started a few years ago when I met someone at aikido training. He came to try it out and happened to be a guitarist. We started talking about music but we didn't see each other after that. Then one evening I ran into him when Mahler Haze was performing in a local pub. We started talking, which led to a discussion about alternative music such as musique concrète, soundscapes, prepared instruments, etc. Keeping in touch with him then led to more conversations and eventually he became my guide in the world of circuit bending and sound synthesis.

Some guy called Frownland.

A couple things I guess. My love of industrial rock lead me to true industrial like Throbbing Gristle and my love of Mr. Bungle lead me to John Zorn.