Post "the first time I heard a song" cool stories

[KevShmev]

It was the spring of 1996, and I was just getting into Metallica. I already had The Black Album and Master of Puppets, and had heard good things about Ride the Lightning as well, so one day I bought it and came home in the middle of the day with it.  My young brother Mark (who was 18 at the time; I was 22) knew their 80s stuff from a few friends who were big into them, and when he saw the CD, he was like, "I think I remember The Call of Ktulu being a good song," so we went straight to it and cranked it up.  HOLY SHIT was pretty much both of our reactions.  We sat there for several minutes as the song destroyed us, before the phone rang.  We hit pause, I answered, it was his friend Jeff, and he took the phone and was like, "Uh, we are being murdered by a song right now; let me call you back in a few."  He hung up the phone, we quickly turned the song back on, and the destruction of us was completely within minutes. I can't listen to that song without thinking of how much it won me over on that first listen.

 

[Jaq]

The first time I heard 2112 in full-I'd heard the shorter version on All The World's A Stage and the bits and pieces that cropped up on Exit Stage Left-was in the spring of my sophomore year of high school. I decided, for reasons that escape me now, to have lunch outside near the student parking lot. I was sitting on the grass when a guy comes out and opens the back doors of his van. (This being the 80s, the van was likely a relic of the 70s. Hell, it likely had Frazetta artwork on the sides.) And he just cranks up his stereo, and what came out was the studio version of 2112. At obscene decibel levels.

I was tardy for my next class, but I stayed until the song was done.

[Anguyen92]

The first time I heard Alter Bridge's Open Your Eyes was while I was watching a fan-made highlight video of WWE's 2004 Royal Rumble.  While that match was great, marred by future tragic events sadly, the video creator had great timing with the song in flow of the video that I actually believed that song was the offical theme song of the PPV (It wasn't.  It was Puddle of Mudd's Nothing Left to Lose, a decent song).  On top of it, Open Your Eyes was pretty much the 1st time that I have ever heard a song that had an extensive bridge and solo.  Once I went a little deeper into Alter Bridge's catalog and found that they had more songs like that, I know that I found a band that I can personally get into without any outside influence.

[Calvin6s]

My life is a series of trying to find that new high in music.  It is like a drug, and unfortunately it gets harder and harder to get that same high.

My older cousin set up my first musical influences.  The first one was KISS, but I was so young that it had more to do with the showmanship of it all.  I grew out of KISS by about 2nd or 3rd grade    But my family has old video of me singing KISS songs including the whole in between song banter.  And I was a kick ass Gene Simmons for Halloween when I was in Kindergarten.

So I've always loved music, especially rock.  But it wasn't life consuming until a casual Christmas Eve ritual.  My family would always go out for a Christmas Eve dinner with the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  While the parents talked endlessly at the dinner table, my older cousin would drive me to the nearest music store so we could spend some of our Christmas cash.  He was a drummer for what was my entire life, so he put a tape in the car stereo and said "you have to check out these drums".  Suddenly George Lynch's Mr. Scary was blaring out of the speakers.  Everything I heard up until that point suddenly sounded like pure garbage.  This was the holy grail.  I needed to get this album and I had to set up a long term goal of buying a guitar.

The OMG moments kept coming, but not with the intensity of that until I read a Guitar World review of some album called Images and Words.  There was something about the review that made me go out and buy it as soon as it was available.  The entire album was a trip.  Obviously Pull Me Under was first, so it was the original wow moment, but Metropolis was the song that sealed the deal.  I played it for all my guitar buddies and gushed like a little girl.  Some of my friends got the same high.  One said he liked it, but it would never go anywhere.  A bit later he would call me "your band is on the radio".  Then he called me a month or so after that "your band is on MTV with their hair down to their ass."  Somewhere in between I&W, watching them live and Awake I recall having a conversation with a guitar buddy.  Everybody knew everybody's guitar hero.  This guy was Steve Vai.  That guy was Zakk Wylde.  This guy was Kirk Hammett (he was slow).  This dude was Eric Johnson.  Mine was George Lynch.  The conversation started with "I think George Lynch has finally been replaced."

[bout to crash]

Cool stories bros 

First thing that comes to mind for me is Metropolis. I was sleeping with the local metal station on, like I often did as a teenager (this was probably early-mid 1999 so I was 13/14), and I woke up in the middle of the night to the strangest thing I had ever head- the instrumental section. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or what, but it was tripping me out and I had to stay awake to find out wtf it was. I had never heard of DT before so I wrote it down, went back to sleep, and forgot about it. Months later I was listening to the same station and Home came on. I was like  ... and when they announced the band I was like "Oh shit, it's that same band I heard when I was sleeping." SFAM had just come out, and the rest was history.

The second thing that comes to mind is hearing Porcupine Tree play Anesthetize on the tour before FoaBP came out, so nobody had heard it and it was so haunting and beautiful and awesome and it stuck with me for a long time. Had a similar experience with SW's Luminol years later. Hearing a new song live for the first time is always so cool!

[KevShmev]

Cool stories so far.

Keep 'em coming.

[JayOctavarium]

[JLa]

Years ago, a high school buddy dropped a discman (yeah, that many years ago!) in my lap and said "hey, listen to track 5". So I did. I had never. Ever. EVER! heard music like that before. It was this weird rock/metal/jazz fusion-thingy. There were no vocals, but that didn't matter because the guitar made all kinds of beautiful melodies. And the keys. Man, those keys. I remember sitting there, listening, watching the timer pass 4 minutes. 5 minutes. 8 minutes. 10 minutes, won't this ever end?! When the song finally ended after almost 17 minutes, I was just...speechless. I gave the discman back and asked "dude! What was that?!" I knew I had to get this cd, and everything else by these guys.



You've probably guessed what it was, right?

[KevShmev]

No idea.  A 17-minute instrumental that is track 5?  Hmmmmm.

[bl5150]

LTE 2

[KevShmev]

Oh yeah. Duh. Although that song has never struck me as being fusion at all.  I think that is what threw me.

[Ben_Jamin]

Tom Sawyer, I heard on a drive into town. I was about six. Since I turned 12, I never knew whom the band was that played this awesome song. I have and will always love Tom Sawyer, its just a good song.

[JayOctavarium]

Alter Bridge's "Find The Real"


Back in '08-'09 my buddy's then band decided to cover the song. I had never heard any Alter Bridge before... They whipped it out at one of their shows and I was hooked. I immediately had him burn me the album. Upon hearing the actual studio version, I was in love. Still took me another year to get in to Alter Bridge as a whole but Find The Real was

[lonestar]

Hmmmm, the only one I can really recall well is Pull Me Under.


I was an expecting father, and working two jobs (around 70 hrs a week) to stockpile cash for baby time. The morning job was at a small bar and grill, and I was the only cook working the lunch shift. If it got busy, there was no one to help, I just had to suck it up and cook faster.  I usually had KSEG cranking, the local rock station in Sacramento (bosk knows this station I'm sure), where they played a good spread of 70s and 80s with the occasional new flash in the pants band.  The shift was a busy one, and I was moving, when out of my tiny broken assed boom box came those distinctive bass lines we all know and love. I thought little of it at the time, and kept busting ass. When the chords came in though, that shit got my attention, slowing down my pace a bit, I kept my focus on the work. I nodded agreement with the music, and kept becoming more and more rapt with what was happening. The next six minutes passed in a haze, and I had pretty much stopped cooking so as to not miss the name of the band and song so I could pick this shit up. When I heard the name, it was all over with. Dream Theater, finally, a band to separate me from fifteen years of following in my brother's footsteps and riding their coat tails. A band to call my own.

[JayOctavarium]

Brings a tear to my eye

[King Postwhore]

So I had my boombox in the kitchen at my parents house.  My mother and girlfriend were there watching TV as I made my girlfriend wait so I could tape on cassette the new Rush song "Show Don't Tell" that I heard was on the radio.  So I finally got it and when I was recording it, the tape self destructed and I was going nuts.  My girlfriend started to laugh at me about my obsession.

She then saw my uber, totally nuts, Rush fan side as I tore her apart for mocking me. My mother and girlfriend sat in the other room quiet until I got the song on another station.

[Orbert]

Early 90's, and I had managed to escape the dying cesspool which is Michigan, for a job in Maryland making almost twice the money.  Don't get me wrong; I was born and raised in Michigan and will always love it, but it's gone seriously downhill lately.  Anyway, my best friend John (subject of many other stories here on DTF) had also escaped, to Tennessee, also for a new job.  We decided to take a road trip and go visit.

Got there, settled in, introduced the kids (our son was two, their daughter was one), then went out back to smoke some non-tobacco.  Also, I got to check out the backyard, which was very nice.

Came back in, totally fried, and he said he had some new music he had to play for me.  He put on Images and Words.  I'd never heard anything like it.  Heavy metal, yet keyboards, elaborate arrangements, it was like... Prog!  (The term "Prog Metal" hadn't even been invented yet.  Dream Theater is pretty much credited as starting/defining the genre.)  We sat and listened to the whole CD, and when it was done, holy shit, I needed a cigarette.  We came back in and he played Awake, their new one at the time.  Even heavier!  Damn!

Dream Theater had come to their town and was playing at some local festival.  Tickets were pretty cheap, like ten dollars each, but it turned out that according to some weird local law, they weren't allowed to charge admission for this kind of event, so it was announced that admission was free, but seating was limited.  John had heard the commercials on the radio and so they got tickets and saw Dream Theater on the Awake tour for free.  He then went to the store and bought both Images and Words and Awake.

When I got home, I too immediately picked up Images and Words and Awake, ordered When Dream and Day Unite, and have bought every Dream Theater CD since then.  I can't say I'm as big a fan now as I was at first, but I'm proud to say I was a Prog Metal fan before it was Prog Metal.  And I still buy every Dream Theater CD when it comes out.

[bout to crash]

 

[KevShmev]

[Orbert]

1972, I'm ten years old, sitting in my bedroom at night listening to the AM/FM clock radio long past the time I was supposed to be in bed.  Well, technically I was in bed, but I'm pretty sure I was supposed to be asleep.

Some song comes on, it starts with like a slow Spanish guitar or something.  Plays a little bit, then goes into some riff and the rest of the band kicks in and the song really starts.  Whoa.  Crazy song.  The singer's got this high, clear voice (contralto, although I didn't know the term at the time), and they bust into three-part harmonies at times.  Then, instead of going to a solo, the song changes into some even weirder thing with lots of percussion, and there's those harmonies again.  Then the whole thing stops... almost.  It gets really quiet again, but the Hammond keeps things alive with this weird arpeggio (another term I would learn later) and the Spanish guitar thing comes back.  Then the chorus again, only this time really slowly to fit with what's going on.  Then it finally breaks loose and the Hammond organ takes a solo.  Then the guitar takes a solo.  Then another keyboard solo.  Then another guitar solo!  What is going on here?!  Then some crazy build-up, and they finally come back for the third verse.  Then it goes into a coda (musical term, etc.) with layered three-part a capella (etc) vocals, and it finishes with that Spanish guitar, only this time it finally, finally resolves to a major chord.

I just sit there, blown away.  Did I just hear acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, fast and slow movements, and three-part harmonies, all in the same song?  On the radio!?

The song was "Roundabout" by Yes.  Full album version, because in 1972, they can only do that late at night.  I had no idea that rock music could be like that.  That you could really stretch out and do that in a song.

Pretty sure that was when I became a prog fan.

[KevShmev]

Great story! I can't recall my first listen of Roundabout, but I do remember loving it immediately.

Summer of 1989.  It was the first of two summers I cut grass with my cousin Tim.  He's 10+ years older than me, and he grew up on classic rock, so that summer was my introduction to a lot of classic rock, as that was what we always listened to when driving to the many yards we'd cut.  One day, this song came on that left me in awe at its awesomeness.  It was Boston's Foreplay/Long Time.  That chorus was literally the catchiest thing I had ever heard, and I took some of that money I had earned cutting yards and bought the first Boston album on cassette - yes, cassette - that very night at Best Buy.  On my short list of songs that destroyed me on that first listen - a list that includes The Call of Ktulu (Metallica), Miracles out of Nowhere (Kansas) and The Spirit of Radio (Rush) - Foreplay/Long Time still sits at the most life-changing, considering it really launched me towards getting into classic rock, which then enabled me to then get into classic prog.

[Orbert]

[Calvin6s]

Summer of 1989. that very night at Best Buy.

I didn't even know Best Buy was around in 1989.

[bout to crash]

Me neither! Apparently it's way older, too.

Kev, I remember being blown away by Foreplay/Long Time as well, many years later

[King Postwhore]

I remember being blown away during Foreplay/Longtime.

[lonestar]

I remember being blown away during Foreplay/I'm in my mid forties and last about ten minutes.

Fix'd for reality.

[Fluffy Lothario]

The first time I ever heard Bat Out of Hell was when my high school girlfriend took me to her room late at night and put it on in the background while we, uh, did stuff.

I don't think I will ever not associate that song, or I think Meat Loaf in general, with that evening.

[King Postwhore]

I remember being blown away during Foreplay/I'm in my mid forties and last about ten minutes.

Fix'd for reality.

More like 15 and it took a few minutes.

[bout to crash]

 

[Lucien]

Not-so-instant Erection!

[King Postwhore]

No very instant for both!

[bout to crash]

Leave it to you to take this thread to the gutter. I'm appalled.

[Cool Chris]

... flash in the pants....

Isn't it 'flash in the pan?' I am not sure I would want a flash in my pants.

No real cool stories here. The only 3 songs I can vividly remember hearing the first time are:

1) Pull Me Under - Typical "Friend gave me the cassette and told me to check it out." The chords sounded familiar from something on the radio. Then I heard "Watch the sparrow falling...." and then I decided to had to own this album.

2) 2112 - Holy shit I had never heard a song that long, with different sections, all different, yet similar in their ass-kicking. The song that opened up the most musical doors to me.

3) Don't Follow by Alice in Chains - A bit random, but I remember hearing it on the car radio on the way home from my friend Matt's house, on HWY 512. I wasn't in to grunge so did not recognize the sound. Something about the chords and the vocals was so beautiful and haunting. I was so pissed they didn't itentify the song/artist, and didn't have internet to try and look the song up. It took me weeks to hear the song again and find out who sang it.

[Calvin6s]

Isn't it 'flash in the pan?' I am not sure I would want a flash in my pants.

Isn't that a funny thing about slang?  We hardly ever verify whether it actually works.  We just know the context it was originally used the first time you heard it.  And if you heard it wrong the first time, you picked up a bad habit slang.  Who sits around trying to find the origin of most slang?

Even funnier, sometimes you have it right, but you see it wrong in print from somebody else and you start to question your accuracy even though you are right.  I remember getting an email from a boss that said "treat this with kit gloves".  And I told him it was kid gloves.  He was so sure he was right, I started to question whether I was wrong.

[Orbert]

People use sayings incorrectly all the time, and it always bugs me.  But I always have to consider the person, and whether or not it's worth it to correct them.  Sometimes I can, but sometimes I either know it'll lead to an argument (because they're never wrong) or I decide it's more fun to just let them say it wrong and look like an idiot.

If my boss sent an email and said "kit gloves", I'd leave it, and let him look like an idiot.  Unless the email was only sent to me, which would be frustrating because I still can't correct him, but no one else gets to see him look like an idiot.  Life can be cruel sometimes.