clutnuckle

I got into Joanna Newsom because my friend had complained about terrible her voice was, and how bloated and repulsive her compositions were. He compared her to an elf and called her music 'the kind of stuff you'd hear on Runescape'. He linked me "Emily" as proof.

As of this day, I'd never been more happy to have listened to elves playing Runescape music (It should be noted that the next week, that same friend had a change of heart and warmed up to everything she'd released).

DoctorSoft

I got into Nirvana because I wanted to know where the Weird Al song, Smells Like Nirvana came from, haha.

GravitySlips

^ true!!

Nirvana are great, I prefer many of their influences however.

Got into Fugazi, Rites of Spring, Embrace through Minor Threat. Also discovered Wire through their cover of 12XU.
Got into Captain Beefheart after hearing Sonic Youth's cover of Electricity.
Got into The Verlaines after hearing Malkmus' cover of Death & the Maiden
Got into Deerhoof after seeing them live, that's when they clicked with me.

GravitySlips

Also worth noting... I got into countless jazz artists through hearing them on Mike Watt's old radio show. I'll need to check if he's still doing that...

downwardspiral

i got into dinosaur jr. purely because i loved the name, also because halloween 08, me and my friend dale went to london on the train and he played "blowing it" and i loved it. same with sonic youth on the name front.

got into pixies after hearing where is my mind? at the end of fight club and also hearing u-mass on accepted. also, speaking of accepted, i got into the cure mostly 'cause close to me is played during a scene in that movie, and also because i heard dinosaur jr.'s cover of just like heaven and fell in love.

same with james for meat puppets, got into them after hearing nirvana cover plateau on the unplugged dvd.

got really into deftones and interpol after going the cinema to see house of wax. minerva is played on the opening credits and roland is played during the scene where they're setting up camp, both of them really caught my attention and i went home and downloaded some more of their stuff.

i got into team dresch after listening to a sonic youth bootleg, and kim goes "this is for bikini kill and team dresch" and then played bull in the heather. i wanted to know who team dresch were after this, since they had such an awesome song dedicated to them.

got into jane's addiction cos i remember about 6/7 years ago, i was watching Q and they done a mash up of just because and a song by that r&b singer ashanti? and i thought the guitar was super awesome but for some reason the name of the song didn't come up at the end, so i searched for ages on the internet and finally found the name and then i bought "strays" from music zone and loved it.

i remember going to leeds festival in 2007 and seeing the very end of the nine inch nails set when they closed with "hurt", i'd never listened to them before, i knew the name but i thought they were similar to lamb of god and similar bands for some reason so i steered clear, but i remember this song being the most emotionally driven thing i'd ever seen. gutted i didn't see their full set but i've seen them now which counts i guess, and that's how i got into nin.

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GravitySlips

I got into Pavement because I met a hot girl at a Dinosaur Jr gig with a Pavement t-shirt on... she was there herself, which impressed me a lot, and I was there myself too. I'd already listened to Pavement but never really enjoyed 'em. Went home after the gig that night, listened to them again and (surprisingly enough) I found myself enjoying them a whole lot! However much it was to do with the fact I was an extremely horny 16 year old guy, we'll never know.

ThePhanastasio

I got into System of a Down because I was an 11-year-old kid who listened to mostly classic rock (from my parents) and basic stations that played the 70s-90s music. My cousin listened exclusively to hard rock and metal, that sort of thing, and was about 15 at the time. He won System of a Down's debut album from a radio station, then was scandalized because it was the censored version. SO he gave it to me.

Janszoon

I got into Mates of State because I heard their song "For the Actor" in a cell phone ad. I liked it so much that I googled the lyrics to find out who it was. Sad but true.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Engine

I got into Ween because a friend of mine who had lived near where they did in PA had a hand-made cassette of theirs from like the mid-80s. It was probably the weirdest music I'd heard at the time.

I got into Ride because a friend bought their Smile EP and played me two songs over the phone.

I got into Anthrax because a kid in 8th grade let me borrow his 'I'm the Man' tape. I was intrigued by the tape cover.

I got into other 80s thrash bands because I liked Anthrax.

I got into The Cure because I saw a creepy advertisement for Head on the Door and wanted to hear it.

I got into the Smiths because all the girls in my school who liked the Cure also liked the Smiths.

I got into.. o fuk it this could last forever.

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Like an arrow,
I was only passing through.

thirtiesgirl

Cocteau Twins were kind of my "gateway band" into everything 4AD, which I was into for many years, and through 4AD Records, I discovered many of the other indie pop bands I've come to love. I was mostly listening to Depeche Mode, the Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Cure and a little bit of Siouxsie in high school, with the occasional more popular '80s band (Flock of Seagulls, Psychedelic Furs, Spandau Ballet) thrown in, which is mostly what I heard on the radio. But I'd never heard anything like Cocteau Twins until my junior year of high school.

I was taking a humanities class with an old hippie of a teacher. The main point of the class was to study and discuss different philosophies, religions and art, and to tie them all together through the course of history. One day when the teacher didn't have much of a lesson plan, he invited these two local college guys who were studying film design to come to class and talk about their major. To give us an example of what they did as film design majors, they showed us a video they'd made (this was 1986, when video design was still a big deal), and the song they used was Cocteau Twins' "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops." Of course, I didn't know who the band was at the time, but I was so intrigued by the music that I went up to the college guys after class and asked them who it was. I was a very introverted kid in high school, with not a lot of confidence, so that was pretty unusual for me. I thought the guys said "Dec o c ktoo Twins," and that was it.

I wouldn't have known where to begin to look for their music, so I started listening to my local college radio station in the hopes that I might hear them again. Most of DJs played punk, early grunge, and a lot of industrial music. But not a lot of more romantic, ethereal stuff like Cocteau Twins. Some of the industrial DJs would occasionally throw in stuff like Clan of Xymox, Bauhaus, Front 242, and This Mortal Coil, which I discovered after I got seriously into 4AD Records. Most of the DJs were guys, too, so I didn't feel very confident about calling them up and requesting "Dec o c ktoo Twins," when I really didn't know what I was talking about.

One Tuesday night, I finally got up the courage to call up the one female DJ who seemed to have a regular spot on the air. She played mostly pop punk stuff - Ramones, Meat Puppets, the Melvins, etc. So my request for "Dec o c ktoo Twins" was totally out of place on her show, but about 30 minutes later, she honored it and played "Love's Easy Tears," which I taped on my ancient boom box and listened to over and over again on my Walkman for the next 6 months. It's still one of my favorite CT songs, along with "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops."

I didn't actually buy any CT music until I was a high school senior. I got my driver's license kind of late and wasn't able to drive until I was a senior. But once I had my wheels, I drove to the local big record store where I found two Cocteau Twins tapes: the Love's Easy Tears ep, and The Pink Opaque compilation. (I didn't have a CD player yet, and wouldn't get one until christmas of that year.) I listened to those two tapes in my Walkman on a near constant basis. Reading the liner notes of the Pink Opaque, I realized there were more CT albums out there and finally drove myself down to the little indie record store in a slightly shady part of town and bought up everything else on tape they had.

By the next year, I was a serious 4AD-head, had discovered Clan of Xymox, Dead Can Dance and This Mortal Coil, and bought up all their albums. That expanded into Bauhaus, the Wolfgang Press, the Birthday Party, Throwing Muses...and the rest is history. My musical tastes were forever shaped by those early 4AD albums, and by '91, I was a regular DJ and had created my own show, the Pipedream Asylum, Saturday nights from 8-10 p.m., on the local college station. I played so much 4AD music on my show in my early years there, I became known as the 4ADj. Heh.

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Even in my darkest recollection, there was someone singing my life back to me. ~Neko Case