What would be your 10 song album that foot printed your music life ?

tempo_n_groove

JustaPJFan said:

01. Pearl Jam - Even Flow
02. Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
03. U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name
04. U2 - Vertigo (First ''Real" Music I listened to.)
05. Green Day - Holiday (I hate that band now. Oh my god they are really bad.)
06. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication (Hate this band too now lol.)
07. Black Keys - Lonely Boy
08. MUSE - Supermassive Blackhole
09. Tenacious D - Tribute ('Cause it's funny and epic at the same time.)
10. Coldplay - Viva La Vida (Hate them too. I almost hate all the bands I REALLY grew up with.)

note: I'm 19 now. Suggetions are always welcome..

You've got a lot more songs to hear!!!

OffSheGoes35

^^You've got good instincts JustaPJFan. My only suggestion would be to keep hanging around in 'Other Music' and instead of only paying attention to the threads of bands you recognize, research the ones you don't. Also, the fact that you're open to suggestions speaks volumes. I wish I would've been more like that when I was 19!

reesdog

In no particular order...

AC/DC - Down Payment Blues.
My first favourite band from age 11 until about 16. Going to see them again this December.

Pearl Jam - Hail Hail.
My favourite PJ song and one that got a lot of play at parties back in the day. So much energy!

Nirvana - In Bloom.
Has been overtaken by Breed as my favourite Nirvana track, but this one was first back then. Amazing production from Butch Vig.

R.E.M. - Orange Crush.
I never tire of hearing this. Peak R.E.M. for me.

Grant Lee Buffalo - Mighty Joe Moon.
Love love love this, such a cool vibe, amazing lyrics and voice!

Weezer - Say It Ain't So.
What a passionate song. This got played a lot and of course, loudly! Cool video too.

Radiohead - Reckoner.
This reminds me of living in London and 'In Rainbows' being on repeat for weeks/months.

Pixies - Number 13 Baby.
From the album Doolittle, inspired me to get a Pixies tattoo. The second half of this song is just the catchiest.

Underworld - Shudder/King Of Snake.
London times again and usually on the stereo with friends as a precursor to heading out to all-night raves.

PJ Harvey - We Float.
Killer tune, holds special memories for someone very special.

As a lot of you have mentioned another 50 songs could be swapped out and replaced quite easily, but these are the ones for today.

pljam

AC/DC - Down Payment Blues.
My first favourite band from age 11 until about 16. Going to see them again this December.

Pearl Jam - Hail Hail.
My favourite PJ song and one that got a lot of play at parties back in the day. So much energy!

Nirvana - In Bloom.
Has been overtaken by Breed as my favourite Nirvana track, but this one was first back then. Amazing production from Butch Vig.

R.E.M. - Orange Crush.
I never tire of hearing this. Peak R.E.M. for me.

Grant Lee Buffalo - Mighty Joe Moon.
Love love love this, such a cool vibe, amazing lyrics and voice!

Weezer - Say It Ain't So.
What a passionate song. This got played a lot and of course, loudly! Cool video too.

Radiohead - Reckoner.
This reminds me of living in London and 'In Rainbows' being on repeat for weeks/months.

Pixies - Number 13 Baby.
From the album Doolittle, inspired me to get a Pixies tattoo. The second half of this song is just the catchiest.

Underworld - Shudder/King Of Snake.
London times again and usually on the stereo with friends as a precursor to heading out to all-night raves.

PJ Harvey - We Float.
Killer tune, holds special memories for someone very special.

As a lot of you have mentioned another 50 songs could be swapped out and replaced quite easily, but these are the ones for today.
Really good read ,great to see someone acknowledge GRANT LEE - MIGHTY JOE MOON a seriously brilliant album,not a bad song on it,great call

BrainofBGA

In no particular order...I was a late comer to music as I was more into sports an things growing up. My older sisters taste in music was a lot of cheesy 80s pop so that didn't leave much of an impression so I was left to find my own tastes in music along the way. And over the years it's been great to go back and discover so much great music.

1. Pearl Jam - Corduroy
My first PJ album and Corduroy I remember stuck with me as a rocking catchy tune. Still like it today. Vitalogy was the pre cursor to going back and buying Ten and Vs.

2. Crash Test Dummies - Afternoons and Coffee Spoons. I remember hearing this one on the radio. A catchy little tune from the first album (CD) I ever bought. I wonder what happened to these guys?

3. Kiss - Talk to Me. Had the Unmasked album on cassette and played it pretty regularly. Definitely not their best album. Still love Kiss today. A guilty pleasure especially their old stuff!

4. Smash Hits 88 - Nothing but a Good Time (Poison) A compilation album. Bought this on vinyl (my first) just before vinyl probably became obsolete. Not many rock tracks on here. Full of pretty trashy 80s Pop.

5. Radiohead - The National Anthem. Helped sway me to try other genres of music. That good music didn't have to be rock! Massive Attack, Beastie Boys, Moby The Chemical Bros etc. Love the Kid A album.

6. Tool - The Grudge. Got me into heavier music. First Tool album I bought. Went back and bought some Of their earlier stuff too. Also showed me that Heavy metal (if u could call it that?) music could be clever, measured and have meaning.

7. Silverchair - The Door. Along with Frogstomp this album Helped usher in a new wave of great Australian music along with Powderfinger, Regurgitator, Spiderbait Grinspoon and Jebidiah. Great track. Not their best song though!

8. Joe Dolce - Shaddap You Face. Apparently I use to go singing this around the house as a 3 year old. Obviously left a mark on me. The words were pronuonced like shut up your face.

9. Neighbours - TV theme. Been an Aussie TV soap for 25 plus years. Still watch the watch today (another guilty pleasure) Originally sung by Aussie musician Barry Crocker and was actually released as a single.

10. Cmon Aussie Cmon - sports advertising theme sun by the Mojo singers for Australian Cricket. For those not from Australia, cricket is a passion during the summer. This was a song devised as an advertising jingle to create excitement about the upcoming cricket season. Created during the 70s and 80s I think and was changed each year depending on which international sides were touring that year. Has never been bettered!! A high point in catchy advertising. When this was played you knew Summer was here and the cricket was starting soon!

HesCalledDyer

BrainofBGA said:

7. Silverchair - The Door. Along with Frogstomp this album Helped usher in a new wave of great Australian music along with Powderfinger, Regurgitator, Spiderbait Grinspoon and Jebidiah. Great track. Not their best song though!

Excellent choice! That whole album was killer, better than Frogstomp in my opinion (and Frogstomp was damn good!) The Door stands out for me as well. Pop Song & Roses are my other faves on the album.

HughFreakingDillon

1. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
2. Pearl Jam - Alive
3. Soundgarden - Outshined
4. Headstones - Tweeter and the Monkeyman (Traveling Wilburys cover)
5. Watchmen - Boneyard Tree
6. Alice In Chains - Rooster
7. I Mother Earth - Rain Will Fall
8. Mad Season - I Don't Know Anything
9. Mudhoney - Overblown
10. Radiohead - Karma Police

BrainofBGA

HesCalledDyer said:

BrainofBGA said:

7. Silverchair - The Door. Along with Frogstomp this album Helped usher in a new wave of great Australian music along with Powderfinger, Regurgitator, Spiderbait Grinspoon and Jebidiah. Great track. Not their best song though!

Excellent choice! That whole album was killer, better than Frogstomp in my opinion (and Frogstomp was damn good!) The Door stands out for me as well. Pop Song & Roses are my other faves on the album.

The Door is / was killer live too!

EBowie

Born in the U.S.A.---Bruce Springsteen
Jumpin' Jack Flash---The Rolling Stones
Smells Like Teen Spirit---Nirvana
Release---Pearl Jam
Ruby Soho---Rancid
Baba O'Riley---The Who
You Don't Know How It Feels---Tom Petty
Stairway to Heaven---Led Zeppelin
Under The Bridge---Red Hot Chili Peppers
Every Breath You Take---The Police

I can't say this is my definitive ten songs but this is the list I came up with right now. So many songs have shaped my life for different reasons---I could list on and on.

Roeghmann

1. Pearl Jam - Alive
2. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
3. Kashmir - Lampshade
4. Suede - Still Life
5. Metallica - Master of Puppets
6. Soundgarden - Rusty Cage
7. QOTSA - No One Knows
8. Smashing Pumpkins - Mayonaise
9. Foo Fighters - Everlong
10.Temple of The Dog - Hunger Strike

dankind

1. "Daniel" by Elton John. I wouldn't have my name without it.

2. "Angie" by The Rolling Stones. Growing up, my mother used to tell me how well my father, who she believed was dead -- I did not (more on that later) -- played this song. I would listen to it over and over again with a huge lump in my throat.

3. "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC. When my uncle joined the U.S. Army when I was 5, he left me his record collection, and this was the first one I played.

4. "Shout at the Devil" by Mötley Crüe. While my uncle joined the U.S. Army, I joined the S.I.N. Club. In this case, I had an adult T-shirt with Allister Fiend on it that I'd fashioned into a cape and annoyed every grown-up on my block by telling them I was Crüeman. (Again, I'm not proud of it.)

5. "American Pie" by Don McLean. You know that Seinfeld episode in which Elaine has that weird boyfriend who asks her not to talk during "Desperado" by the Eagles? Well, I pretty much get the same way with "American Pie." It's fine if you sing along, but don't you dare try to speak to me.

6. "Welcome to the Terrordome" by Public Enemy. Terminator X is a fucking beast on this one, and Chuck D's flow is relentless: Rhetoric said/Read just a bit ago/Not quittin' though/Signed the hard rhymer or Check the record/An reckon an intentional wreck/Played off as some intellect or When I get mad/I put it down on a pad/Give ya somethin' that cha never had. Mind. Blown.

7. "Alive" by Pearl Jam. It's a long story, but luckily, I've already told it here. Forgive the length and the copy and paste.

The first time I heard "Alive" in 1991, I felt like I was hearing a painful chapter of my life story set to the awesome music for which I had been waiting. (I mean, acts such as Wilson Phillips, Amy Grant, Nelson, New Kids on the Block, Extreme, Color Me Badd, and so on were dominating the airwaves; it was truly a dark time for rock and roll.)

I'll explain. I was told at a very young age that my biological father had died while I was still a newborn. (He and my mother had already split up.) As the years went by, I learned that my mother received this news from a less-than-reliable source -- namely, a rival for her affection -- so I became more skeptical of the story and more hopeful that he was still alive. The story was still somewhat believable because he had a severe form of type 1 diabetes as a juvenile and wasn't supposed to live past age 18, but I had this shred of circumstance on which to hang my faith. So, when I first heard Eddie Vedder sing the chorus, the 16-year-old me always imagined it as my dead/missing father singing/pleading to me that he was still alive. (A misinterpretation, I know, but that's how I heard it.)

We tried searching for him and his family members a few times in the early 1990s but always hit a wall. Then, in 1998, I got a call from my mother -- she and my grandmother had found him. Not only had they found him but he was living 45 minutes away from where I was living at the time (Sarasota, Florida) -- in the town of my birth/conception (St. Petersburg, Florida), no less!

He was still alive!

It was pure coincidence. He and his wife had been living in Grenada, and she needed surgery, so they moved back to the U.S. They were only staying in St. Pete for a while, until she had healed from her surgery, at which time they were planning on moving to the town of his birth in western Pennsylvania.

During that brief window, I met my father for the first time as a 23-year-old man, and we were exactly alike. We looked the same, our mannerisms were the same, we spoke with the same voice, and we liked the same kind of music, with one exception -- he didn't know much about Pearl Jam.

Choking back tears at our first meeting, I told him about the song "Alive" and how I had always imagined it as him speaking to me. He said that he was very interested in hearing the song. I played it for him, and he loved it.

In 1999, he moved up to Pennsylvania, and I moved to Boston. We were farther apart in distance, but we became closer as father and son. We continued to share music, buying/burning each other CDs and exchanging them in the mail or in person -- every time one of us made a trip to visit the other, we always had a few discs to exchange. He really dug [i]Binaural[/i] and got what Pearl Jam was up to on that record before I, the longtime fan, did. (I found it off-putting at first.)

I caught the band for the first time in a long time (six years!) on that tour (with Sonic Youth!) and told my dad that even though I was stuck on the lawn at Great Woods -- my 10 Club membership had long expired by then, as I had lived too many years on a student's budget -- Pearl Jam still had the uncanny ability to make it feel like you were close and part of the show. Also, they flat-out rocked my fucking face off!

His health was getting worse -- in addition to the type 1 diabetes that was supposed to kill him before he reached manhood, he was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis -- but he said that he'd like to see them live before he died.

He never got to see that show. I went to see him in a nursing home for the holidays in 2002, knowing that it would likely be the last time; it was.

The next time I saw Pearl Jam was the middle stanza of the Mansfield experiment on July 3, 2003. They opened with "Release." You can imagine how it felt to hearing that song. It was like hearing it for the first time. And when they closed the first encore with "Alive," I felt like things had come full circle. It was an intense night for me, and as hokey as it sounds, I felt my father there with me.

8. "Don't Forget Me" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I grew up with the Red Hot Chili Peppers -- Freaky Styley was my go-to record in fifth grade -- but after growing up a bit, I've always been ambivalent toward Anthony Kiedis. When he's on, he can write some of the most deeply soulful and heartbreaking song lyrics that resonate with anyone who's ever combed their psyche for some semblance of truth. When he's off, he writes song lyrics about some kind of flower child fantasy or going balls deep in a teenager. See where my ambivalence comes from? Well, to me, "Don't Forget Me," belongs in the former category for Kiedis. It's a soul laid bare -- ugly and inviting, beautiful and revolting. And musically, this song is so layered and nuanced, every note and every beat, short or sustained, just creepy crawls its way into my brain and then crumbles away during the chorus crescendo.

9. "This Is the Sea" by the Waterboys. I've always loved this song, but I can't even begin to describe how much meaning it took on when my wife was pregnant with our first child. I didn't have a father growing up, and I felt like I was going to fail miserably at being a father myself -- so much so that I told my closest friends that I gave my marriage about six months after the birth of our child. I was almost positive that I would fuck up so terribly that my wife would leave me. And this song helped me to get over my fears. It put things into perspective. All of my life up to that was "the river"; all of my life from the day I was to become a father was "the sea." And when the nurse said "it's a girl" and handed my daughter over to me, the first words I said out loud were "behold the sea."

10. "After the Gold Rush" by Neil Young. This man is a hero of mine, so it was very hard to pick one. At this point, I went with the one that I have used as a lullaby to get my kids to sleep.

***

dankind

***It was hard not adding "Long Haired Country Boy" by The Charlie Daniels Band, "In Liverpool" by Suzanne Vega, "Silent All These Years" by Tori Amos, "Thick as a Brick" by Jethro Tull, "A Passion Play" by Jethro Tull, "Something I Can Never Have" by NIN, "Running to Stand Still" by U2, "Bodies" by The Sex Pistols, "Untitled" by The Cure, "Waiting Room" by Fugazi, "Boulder to Birmingham" by Emmylou Harris, "Tiny Town" by The Dead Milkmen, "We're Going to Be Friends" by The White Stripes, "Machine Gun" by Jimi Hendrix/Band of Gypsys, "Interstellar Overdrive" by Pink Floyd, "Southern Accents" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Raining Blood" by Slayer, "Caffeine" by Faith No More, "Angel From Montgomery" by John Prine (also love the Bonnie Raitt version with him), "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, and so many more. All of these are just as, if not more, important songs to what made me who I am today, but it's a little harder to articulate why.

OffSheGoes35

:clap: :clap: :clap: Very much enjoyed your thorough list! Also loved your hidden tracks anthology. Very well done!!! You put a lot of heart into that and it came across beautifully.

pljam

Some really fantastic response's ,very detailed and a great read,really brings to life the power of music,
Thanks for sharing

gangwarily

The Clash - London Calling
Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing
Radiohead - Reckoner
U2 - Bad
Pearl Jam - Rockin in The Free World (yeah, I know)
Psychedelic Furs - Dumb Waiters
Led Zeppelin - No Quarter
The Specials - Too Much Too Young
Tragically Hip - Blow at High Dough

rollings

dankind said:

1. "Daniel" by Elton John. I wouldn't have my name without it.

2. "Angie" by The Rolling Stones. Growing up, my mother used to tell me how well my father, who she believed was dead -- I did not (more on that later) -- played this song. I would listen to it over and over again with a huge lump in my throat.

7. "Alive" by Pearl Jam. It's a long story, but luckily, I've already told it here. Forgive the length and the copy and paste.

The first time I heard "Alive" in 1991, I felt like I was hearing a painful chapter of my life story set to the awesome music for which I had been waiting. (I mean, acts such as Wilson Phillips, Amy Grant, Nelson, New Kids on the Block, Extreme, Color Me Badd, and so on were dominating the airwaves; it was truly a dark time for rock and roll.)

I'll explain. I was told at a very young age that my biological father had died while I was still a newborn. (He and my mother had already split up.) As the years went by, I learned that my mother received this news from a less-than-reliable source -- namely, a rival for her affection -- so I became more skeptical of the story and more hopeful that he was still alive. The story was still somewhat believable because he had a severe form of type 1 diabetes as a juvenile and wasn't supposed to live past age 18, but I had this shred of circumstance on which to hang my faith. So, when I first heard Eddie Vedder sing the chorus, the 16-year-old me always imagined it as my dead/missing father singing/pleading to me that he was still alive. (A misinterpretation, I know, but that's how I heard it.)

We tried searching for him and his family members a few times in the early 1990s but always hit a wall. Then, in 1998, I got a call from my mother -- she and my grandmother had found him. Not only had they found him but he was living 45 minutes away from where I was living at the time (Sarasota, Florida) -- in the town of my birth/conception (St. Petersburg, Florida), no less!

He was still alive!

It was pure coincidence. He and his wife had been living in Grenada, and she needed surgery, so they moved back to the U.S. They were only staying in St. Pete for a while, until she had healed from her surgery, at which time they were planning on moving to the town of his birth in western Pennsylvania.

During that brief window, I met my father for the first time as a 23-year-old man, and we were exactly alike. We looked the same, our mannerisms were the same, we spoke with the same voice, and we liked the same kind of music, with one exception -- he didn't know much about Pearl Jam.

Choking back tears at our first meeting, I told him about the song "Alive" and how I had always imagined it as him speaking to me. He said that he was very interested in hearing the song. I played it for him, and he loved it.

In 1999, he moved up to Pennsylvania, and I moved to Boston. We were farther apart in distance, but we became closer as father and son. We continued to share music, buying/burning each other CDs and exchanging them in the mail or in person -- every time one of us made a trip to visit the other, we always had a few discs to exchange. He really dug [i]Binaural[/i] and got what Pearl Jam was up to on that record before I, the longtime fan, did. (I found it off-putting at first.)

I caught the band for the first time in a long time (six years!) on that tour (with Sonic Youth!) and told my dad that even though I was stuck on the lawn at Great Woods -- my 10 Club membership had long expired by then, as I had lived too many years on a student's budget -- Pearl Jam still had the uncanny ability to make it feel like you were close and part of the show. Also, they flat-out rocked my fucking face off!

His health was getting worse -- in addition to the type 1 diabetes that was supposed to kill him before he reached manhood, he was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis -- but he said that he'd like to see them live before he died.

He never got to see that show. I went to see him in a nursing home for the holidays in 2002, knowing that it would likely be the last time; it was.

The next time I saw Pearl Jam was the middle stanza of the Mansfield experiment on July 3, 2003. They opened with "Release." You can imagine how it felt to hearing that song. It was like hearing it for the first time. And when they closed the first encore with "Alive," I felt like things had come full circle. It was an intense night for me, and as hokey as it sounds, I felt my father there with me.

***

wow,

thanks for sharing

rollings

JH6056 said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7EeMu6ORq4

beautiful.

I am grateful my son turned me on to Hozier.

his voice and song-writing talents are something else

(the band is awesome too, the backup singer and violin in this song....wow)

GM17961

Awesome thread. Thanks for posing the question OP.
Came across this thread and have been thinking about this more than I probably should though. But if nothing else, I now have a new playlist. Sorry if it's long but this somehow seemed important as I started on it. I did end up choosing the 10 songs but probably got there in a roundabout way and maybe cheated the rules a bit...my bad. Could have added so much more. Please note all of the below are chronological relative to me, not release dates.

The 80's: The Prequel
Thriller - Michael Jackson: first album I bought and I listened to it, and this song, over and over. My father got a Billy Joel album, Innocent Man, I think; and thankfully they were sold out of the Culture Club cassette my mom wanted.

Piano Man - Billy Joel: When I was a child, if I was given a choice of what to listen to with my parents (from their music library), it was primarily 3 artists -- Billy Joel, The Beatles, and the Beach Boys. I grew up on Long Island so…

It's Tricky - Run DMC: I didn't think my parents would let me get this if it was for me (didn't want me listening to that "rap crap") so I bought the Raising Hell cassette as a birthday gift for a friend but I opened it and made a copy before I gave it to him. First "high-speed dubbing" copy I made. Thought that was the coolest at the time.

Fight for Your Right - Beastie Boys: Might have listened to this complete album more than any other until PJ many years later. Everyone in elementary school loved this and I prided myself in knowing all the words. Now I don't even know all the words to most of my favorite songs somehow. Oh to be a kid again.

Home Sweet Home - Motley Crue: Hey, I grew up in the 80s and Motley Crue was my favorite band for a few years there. Not proud of it, but true. This was on just about every mix tape I made back then. And I made a lot of em. Glad none of them survived. Likely quite embarassing.


The Beginning
1) Black - Pearl Jam: There is music before Black and then there's music after Black as far as I'm concerned. I liked their first songs I had heard on the radio and MTV but when I heard this on the radio, I was hooked for life. I remember being mad that I missed recording it (I always had recording on pause) because it was one of the only times I had heard it and they didn't talk over any of it and they played the entire song (rare on the radio). Still my favorite song.


Mid 90's: The Formative Years
2) Interstate Love Song - STP: This reminds me of a simpler time and going to the beach during summer break in high school, which we did almost every day. I always drove and Purple was my go-to CD since my different groups of friends somehow all agreed to listen to this and not much else. STP was also my first concert -- saw them at Jones Beach during the Purple tour. Good show, even though they didn't play Wicked Garden. I was pissed off about that at the time.

3) How High - Method Man / Redman: My freshman year college roommate had different musical tastes than me but I was thankful he introduced me to this song. Reminds me of freshman year every time it pops up on my iPod. A good reminder of a year of change for me as a person.

4) Breathe/On the Run/Time - Pink Floyd: This might be cheating with multiple songs but the first time I (really) heard this I thought/felt it was one song. Blew my mind. Had listened to them before and thought they were ok, but then I went to college and understood. Saw things differently after that night.

5) Indifference - Pearl Jam: The closer to my first PJ show, in the rain at Randall's Island. Knew that this was the end of my first show and just closed my eyes and let myself get bounced around in the pit and just soaked in the final moments of this fantastic show. Still get chills any time I hear any version of this during the "scream my lungs out" part.

Alternate) In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel: My first love's favorite song. Needless to say I had to listen to it a lot. Would have been before (2) above chronologically.


Late 90's/2000s: Figuring it Out
6) Three Days - Jane's Addiction: I liked them before but it completely changed after I saw them during the relapse tour in 1997. Amazing show and seeing them live (and this song in particular) cemented them as one of my favorite bands. This reminds me of the crazy times in college and my roommate for my last two years, one of my best friends.

7) At My Most Beautiful - REM: My wife and I had just started dating and REM was her favorite band and this album just came out and was heavy in the rotation. Can't hear this song without being taken back to her crappy college apartment where we got to know each other -- great memories.

8) Where is My Mind - Pixies: I somehow missed out on them when they were actually a band (the first time) but when I heard this at the end of Fight Club I absolutely had to hear more from them. Now one of our favorite bands. Glad we got to see them (twice) live before Kim left.

9) Mariner's Revenge Song - Decemberists: I joined eMusic back in the mid 00s and it really opened me up to bands I didn't really know. If I hadn't clicked on The Decemberists album Picaresque I would have missed out on a lot of great music as I was about to cancel after one month because it was more obscure bands and you had to spend a lot of time to find stuff. It was worth it-- Frightened Rabbit, Arcade Fire, Okkervil River, Cold War Kids, The Hold Steady, Bright Eyes, Tapes 'n Tapes, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc. With satellite radio so popular now a lot of these bands are now known but they weren't on my radar in the mid-late 2000s.

Alternate) Blue Orchid - White Stripes: Didn't really listen to them beyond what was on the radio then went to a festival in '05 and was blown away. It was kind of unbelievable that it was only the two of them onstage with the sound that was produced. Went out and immediately bought all their albums and have been a big fan of Jack White stuff since. Would be (8.5) above listing chronologically.


The Pinnacle:
10) Release (at Wrigley) - Pearl Jam: Made the trip from Charlotte, NC with my wife, was our 8th show and we hadn't seen this yet. Perfect start to a memorable night. I had an ear-to-ear grin and chills throughout the song while my wife had tears flowing. Now after 10 shows probably my favorite concert moment...just Awesome!

This was fun. Hope more people start posting on this thread.

EchoesOnMars

1. The Beatles- Get Back (The first band I ever fell in love with in 7th grade, they taught me what it meant to be to listen to music)
2. Pink Floyd- Fearless (This freaking band dominated my life in 8th grade and I always listened to Meddle)
3. Led Zeppelin- Going to California (This song made me appreciate acoustic music)
4. Foo Fighters- These Days (I heard this song at work when I was 16 and was my gateway drug into 1990's and alternative music)
5. Pearl Jam- Daughter/ Even Flow (Also heard both of these songs at work and I was like "wow this music is incredible" and now its a addiction 4/5 years later)
6. Nirvana- All Apologies/ Breed (I feel like everyone has that Nirvana phase, mine was junior year in high school)
7. Soundgarden- Zero Chance/ Dusty/ Jesus Christ Pose (took me wayyy too long to get into Soundgarden but when I did, it was a burst of awesomeness)
8. Kings of Leon- Knocked Up/ Radioactive (This band made me appreciate modern music)
9. Pearl Jam- In My Tree/ Given to Fly/ Who You Are (These songs are what made me see that I'm going to follow this band to the end of the line)
10.Jack Johnson- Good People (my current obsession)

Thirty Bills Unpaid

Chronological order:

Hard Luck Woman (Kiss)
More Than A Feeling (Boston)
Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
Walk This Way (Aerosmith)
You Got Another Thing Coming (Judas Priest)
Young Lust (Pink Floyd)
Waiting on a Friend (Rolling Stones)
All Over Town (April Wine)
New Years Day (U2)
Jeremy (Pearl Jam)
Rooster (Alice in Chains)

* Big apologies to many old friends that at various point- like randomly hearing them at a bar or from car window- will become a flood of warm memories that make a guy feel really swell.

** Further apologies to all those great songs that have kept my love of music alive after my roots grew solid (early 90s onwards).