Gateway Bands
 

What were your greatest gateway bands?

For me:
Noise - Sonic Youth
Electronica - Simon Guibord / Aphex Twin / Dntel
Acoustic - Elliott Smith / Bright Eyes (Not into Bright eyes anymore)
Heavy - Isis / Converge / Khanate
Metal - Goatsnake
Jazz - Sun Ra
Punk - Refused
Rock - Jawbox / Burning Airlines

i did not categorize them.. for me, the music seems to converge into one single entity, rather than genres going diffrent ways..

as a kid, i loved the guitar sound of dire straits - until i was 11..
sex pistols were the first band to break me away from the mainstream..

followed by my metal phase which lasted for 2 years or so with megadeth and slayer..

then i discovered sonic youth and pixies around the same time - i was 13 - and that defined music for me for the rest of my life..

That works as well. If I had to describe the overall progression of my music taste, it would probably be something like:

All those 90's boybands -> Modern Country -> Pop Punk / Rock -> Punk/Indie Rock ->Electronica / Math Rock -> Noise

Now I have a lot more diverse taste than I used to, but in 5 years I'll probably deny that I have a diverse taste now.

the one who got me interested in music is billy joel (:fuckyou: )

the ones that got me a step further were queen.

then it was guns n' roses.

then like 10 000 bands and still counting.

(one thing is i hated all that was folk or acoustic singer/songwriter shit until i heard devendra banhart, he opened me to stuff like six organs of admittance and fursaxa and also to older stuff like bob dylan, donovan and tyranossaurus rex; all of which i already knew but hated them because i did not understand them , which i didn't know right then but now i do.)

Nirvana:fuckyou:

The Violent Femmes got me into Country and Jazz. Sonic Youth got me into Sonic Youth. Beck got me into shit with heavy beats.

Isis, Electric Wizard and Sleep got me into Metal, which I am truely thankful for. Khanate are a really difficult band for most people, I love it but I can't see many people who aren't into metal (or people who are into metal) getting into it on the first few listens.

Moments/Albums that shaped my musical taste:

About 3 years ago buying Black Flag- Damaged and Sonic Youth- Daydream Nation.

About 2.5 years ago buying the Stooges- Funhouse, not liking it as much as the other two, then about two months later realising its the greatest album ever.

About 2 years ago, buying Pere Ubu- the Modern Dance, Rocket From the Tombs- the Day the Earth Met...

About 1.5 years ago, hearing Wolf Eyes-Burned Mind and laughing at how nuts it was, listening to it again and loving it. Hearing Sleep- Jerusalem (different version of Dopesmoker).

I dunno. I just slowly go from loving one genre to another. I hate a lot of noise bands and love a lot of others. No one really introduced them to me.

Gateway bands sounds like such a lame term.

For me it was mainly three artists/groups
nirvana --> sonic youth --> glenn branca

nirvana brought me to sonic youth.
sonic youth brought me to glenn branca and rhys chatham, along with noise, although branca had a larger influence on that. Chatham introduced me to the 'table of the elements lable'. Branca led me to a lot of composers like john cage and morton feldman. I found out about Virgil Moorefield drumming and found the tzadik lable through one of his records. blah blah blah

music in general the bee gees when i was about 4

Nirvana + Grunge FM got me into 'underground' shit.

Hendrix got me into noise.

nirvana

Classic Rock > Grunge > Sonic Youth
(Led Zeppelin)(Nirvana)



I can't really remember how I got from Led Zeppelin to Nirvana...

nirvana is the big one for me. as for punk rock, id say sex pistols.

I liked Isis on the first listen, I've heard a lot about Electric Wizard, but never got the chance to listen to them, and I love Khanate. I hated Khanate at first (I was never really big on really heavy stuff) and they were just brutal. Then I listened to Torching Koroviev full blast in the dark, and it blew me away. They got me into Boris, Sunn0))), WRAITHS and other similar bands. I definately found them to listen to at first, but then I heard Absolutego by Boris. That changed my interpretation of what's difficult to listen to altogether.

I loved Isis on first listen too, in the record store I work in we got some Southern Lord stuff in and all the Boris and Sun0))) stuff went but Khanate still sits there. When my boss listened to it the first time he liked it straight away. "the most brutal thing ever" where his exact words.

when i heard about isis, i went straight into the record store and bought oceanic, i even borrowed money, i was on a mission to listen to that shit. when i got thru listening to the whole album, i was spent but i couldn't wait to listen to it again.

with khanate i had a different problem because i heard sunn o))) first, white 2 actually and i was still over the moon with that one, then i got flight of the behemoth and was even more into that stuff; so when i heard khanate (s/t) i expected something with that sonic depth and dynamism and got this incredibly slow doom metal instead and i thought it was ok. then i heard capture & release and i couldn't get past the song capture because i would get incredibly bored, i choked it to not having things viral which was supposed to be their masterpiece. then a couple of months latter, listened to the s/t titled again, full blast and final got it.

and the funny thing is, i have been into heavy, brutal metal stuff (like death, grind, black, etc.) longer than pretty much any other kind of music, and when i hear this doom band that's heavy and brutal, i didn't know what to make of it.

Band that really got me into music were The Smashing Pumpkins and QOTSA.
Pretty mainstream I know but you have to start somewhere.

Definately true about C/R. I find that they're way more unfocused and boring than the songs on s/t.

All the bands I first started listening to that got me where I am now would consist of the following:

The Vines
The Hives
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Strokes
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS