What band or artiste has influenced your life most?
 

Music affects us all, and for some of us hearing that one song or album or band can change our lives completely. So it was with me and Marillion: this band opened up whole new vistas of imagination I had never before envisioned, and every album was a journey of discovery.
So what music artiste(s) would you say influenced your life (in a positive or negative, but hopefully positive) way, and how?

Stabbing Westward opened my mind to new styles of music way early in my youth. They influenced me to want to expand my taste in music and look past the radio.

It's hard to find Stabbing Westward fans nowadays. I used to obsess over them when I was way young as well.

Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea changed my life the most. Its track progression and eclectic lyrics changed the way I write, read, and experience entertainment. This is why I obsess over it :P

Iron Maiden-Live After Death. It created a friendship that is now 22 years old and set me on my musical path.

Thelonius Monk.
Made me play the piano 20 times more as a kid, and still does to this day.

Probably Ray Charles, Van Morrison and Led Zeppelin

My parents Ray Charles records got me into music

and Morrison and Zeppelin are two of my earliest influences and still in my top five, probably 1 and 2.

Morrison is amazing.
I assisted for an engineer who recorded his most recent. - Keep It Simple...

Probably Radiohead. I had a hard time delving into bands that did things different before I listened to Radiohead. Now I'll give most anything an honest listen.

Probably Fall Out Boy, reason being that they did alot of covers and as I listened to their covers and other bands' covers of songs, I had to listen to the original songs and really liked them so it broadened my taste immensely.

The Sex Pistols, the first band that just hit me as being fresh, timeless and had a proper X factor feel to it. I've found better bands as times gone on but they properly started it really.