Albums/artists friends got you into.

[acoustic rob]

My wife is my friend, right?

She mostly listens to folk music and female singer-songwriter types so when we started dating she turned me on to people like Nanci Griffith (RIP) and Emmylou Harris. But she also had a Lou Reed box set and a couple of Velvet Underground tapes for some reason and I really dug 'em. Thanks, Laura!

 

[Jim W]

RJtwangs turned me on to Kris Kristofferson, Waylon, Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks DeLuxe and Dr. Feelgood.

 

[loopfinding]

 

[Cali Dude]

Allman brothers live NYC Fillmore

Yeah, me too. My first guitar teacher got me to listen to it. I have been into them since.

 

[Mark617]

A childhood friend got me into the Kinks, with School Boys in Disgrace.
First sing we learned was Hard Way

 

[wacolo]

A friend back in the day hipped me to Tom Waits. I got a lot of mileage out of that.

The day after Prine passed I had three people call to tell me thanks for turning them onto him.

 

[1guy]

Back in the day, it was called "Putting you up on something"

You had clout if you put your friends up on cool stuff.

 

[willie ray]

My brother in law was a guitarist in a band and turned me on to a lot of great music,
I was a young teenager when he first played a Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee album,
Changed my whole taste in music right there.
And I'm forever grateful.

 

[Spox]

The first I heard of Harold Budd was back in the 80s when I copied a friends girlfriends tape of The Moon And The Melodies album he recorded with Cocteau Twins.

 

[Dismalhead]

Best friend growing up. His mother was super into mainstream music; had the killer '70s stereo and a ton of albums - as opposed to my parents who were listening to Rogers and Hammerstein musical soundtracks and Johnny Mathis. So he got me into Elton John, Yes, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Stones, Frampton - all your rock staples from the '70s.

Rush and Kansas were my first musical discoveries on my own, probably around my junior year of high school.

 

[Texicaster]

I had older sisters so...Beatles....

But I had one buddy...same age as me who had THE complete cool album collection at 14!

Some titles I recall are:

Hendrix: Electric Lady Land, Axis Bold As Love
Jethro Tull: Benefit
Neil Young: Time Fades Away
Fleetwood Mac: Then Play On
Zappa/Mothers: One Size Fits All

It was a pretty good sized collection for a 14 year old. He was oldest in his family and I never asked how he got all them great albums!

Had a real stereo too! Military parents but respected his privacy! I went over one time, we were probably 16 and he mom says "he's in his room" I go in and he's got a full pound of Mexican weed laid out on the floor cleaning it up! I was like WTH!!! I was panicked but he was confident no one would come in.....and they didn't! I don't know how they couldn't smell it!

 

[Alex_C]

A multi-instrumentalist/songwriter introduced me to Porcupine Tree/Steven Wilson. Huge talent.

 

[Cjteleforum]

When I was at Valley High in the mid '80s a dude gave me a pirated cassette. On one side was "Never Mind the Bullocks", on the other side was "The Clash". I never listened to Styx again.

 

[Toast]

The one I remember is driving with my friend in his car talking. He puts in a cassette tape as background music while we're chatting. It was the Violent Femmes first record. That album blew me away. I had to stop the conversation and ask who the band was. I got out of his car a short time later, got into my car, drove to Tower Records, and bought the album.

 

[Maguchi]

I was thinking recently about albums and therefore bands which I got to know via friends.

When I was fourteen one of my best friends from school was an absolute Pink Floyd nut and through him I heard The Wall but he was going back the way to the Syd Barret era so through him I also heard Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and A Saucerful Of Secrets along with Meddle etc. Through his circle of friends I heard the Peter Gabriel melt album, Lynyrd Skynyrd Pronounced and one of the guys was a Rolling Stones nut so it was the Rolled Gold comp and Still Life live album. This is 1983, pre internet and cds, it was all vinyl or tapes. At the time of hearing these all I was really listening to was stuff like The Clash/Sex Pistols/The Jam.

It should be interesting to hear which bands other people got into this way.

The Pretenders, the B-52s, Devo, The Normal, The Flying Lizards

 

[TheFuzzDog]

I was usually the one introducing my friends to stuff, but the one important album I remember that I didn’t have first is the Velvet Underground’s first album. Thanks, Roger!

 

[Geoff738]

Nirvâna, Nevermind. Bought it on a friends recommendation. Two weeks later Smells Like Teen Spirit was everywhere.

Cheers,
Geoff

 

[drewg]

When I was in high school I was watching TV and some news magazine show like 60 Minutes or 20/20 was on and they had a segment on Bob Dylan. My dad said "You should watch this, Dylan is someone you should know about."

Now my dad is a Republican businessman, he was a 'straight' in the '60s, he's about the last person I'd expect to be boosting Dylan. So I watched the segment. The next day at school I asked my friend Bill Turek if I could borrow one of his Dylan albums. He lent me "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and I never looked back.

I haven't seen Bill in more than 30 years but my dad's still with us, so thanks to both of them.

Did you give Bill back his album, or did you keep it?

(Great album. That one I pulled from my mom's record crate, along with New Morning, Highway 61 Revisited and Kris Kristoferson's The Silver-Tonged Devil and I

 

[drewg]

A friend back in the day hipped me to Tom Waits. I got a lot of mileage out of that.

The day after Prine passed I had three people call to tell me thanks for turning them onto him.

My girfriend at the time turned me on to Tom Waits. Yeah, one of my all time favorites. I discovered Prine only a couple years before he passed– another good one.

 

[drewg]

In 7th grade Audio-visual class, some boy I don't even remember anymore said, "You should listen to this. I think you'd like it." It was U2's The Unforgettable Fire. Still my favorite album of theirs...

(In that class I made a video of a long fade out of the extended version of Major Tom– That 80's version by I-don't-know-who. Not the Bowie song.)