Musical Connections
Reading the thread about first records got me thinking - my response was :
"This Ole House by Shakin' Stevens.
Not the best, admittedly, but it stoked a huge interest I developed in later life for 50's/60's obscurish doo-wop and rock'n'roll."
I consider this to be a fact as there was something about it that stayed with me, and introduced me subtly to a genre I otherwise wouldn't have given a stuff about.
Similarly, I don't think I would have got my naive teenage head around Public Enemy if I hadn't had the entry level Credit To The Nation to attune my ideas to the very idea of rapping, and Goodbye Mr Mackenzie's Nick Cave lite act (yet still quite nice in it's own right) opened up The Birthday Party for me as something to investigate when they mentioned it once.
Have any 'entry level' bands lead you onto other tracks/genres which perhaps you otherwise wouldn't have cared for ?
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Training wheels
It took me until I was past 30 to appreciate Bob Dylan. I had always been put off by the volume of work available, had the idea that he was somehow 'difficult' and had the common stumbling block of the nasal voice.
It was only when I listened to one of those cover versions cds beloved of certain music magazines that I started to appreciate how fantastic the songs are. After that it was back to the oroginals, starting with the big-hair-and-drugs trilogy, and the fairly rapid realisation that not only had I neglected one of the great songwriters but one of the great singers too.
musical mentor (sort of)
he may have got a good slagging in the press but gary numan's constant name-checking (ripping off) of kraftwerk, john foxx's ultravox and human league stripped me of pocket money for years
Weller
I got into Weller - like a lot of people - at a pretty early age. And his habit of namechecking influences, and being pretty open about them when he was musically inspired, led me to a lot of music that I might not have heard. It's not necessarily that I wouldn't have cared for it, but certainly I might not have gone on the musical adventures that I did: Mod, 60s soul and pop, punk, jazz. I owe some of that to Mr Weller.
For instance, I love Patti Smith. Without Weller I wouldn't have gone down the punk route (this was 1984 after all) and found out about the American side of things. So no Patti, no Television. Which would probably have meant no Iggy, No Lou Reed.
I probably would have found other routes to all of this, but The Jam and The Style Council were such a mixed bag of influences that they were like a bomb going off in my tastes in music...