For me it was "Debaser" by (the) Pixies, which Kurt Cobain openly copied to produce Teen Spirit.

Portishead - Glory Box....aaah, wonderful

by The White Stripes really excited me when I heard it around October 2001. Nothing else they've ever done has really had the same effect.

Crowded House, from Temple Of Low Men. 1988;

'Don't stand around, like friends at a funeral,
Eyes to the ground, it could have been you.
And why do you weep, for the passing of ages?
You slip, with the back of your hand
You're taking it out on the one you love,
I couldn't believe it.'

Very special, still is.

The most recent one for me was The Girl Can't Dance by Bunker Hill which I heard on one of Bob Dylan's Theme Time shows.

...ner ner nerner ner nernerner nerner ner

"Are teenage dreams so hard to beat
Everytime she walks down the street"

If its good enough for Peel, its good enough for me. As the great man said "There's nothing you could add to it or subtract from it that would improve it."

playing me "I'm a man" by the Spencer Davis Group, followed by "Jimmy James" by the Beastie Boys and just finding them both ineffably exciting, I was not just excited by these songs but by the possiblity that there was so much music that I would love in the same way that I hadn't even heard yet. If I get even a fraction of this feeling from hearing something these days I know I'm onto a good thing.

What a noise? The problem with the premise is that I am uncertain as to whether "Smells like" was a noise as in unholy racket or wow, my life has changed in so many ways as a result of this new and unexpected auditory initiation. Previous posts from you suggest the former, but your respondents the latter.
Confused.
What a noise (unholy racket): Supertramp. Anything by.
What a noise (WMLHCISMWAAROTNAUAI): The 1,2,3,4 after the "gap" in "Born to Run", still potent after all these years.

My mum used to play The Byrds Mrs Tambourine Man single.

Every time I hear the intro to nothing to this day blows me away more.

That was my first Rock and Roll moment and nothing since has affected me the same way.

"Inside".

......lying in bed, aged 15, tiny tinny ear piece to transistor radio which never held the signal for more than a few seconds - and through the crackle came a simple guitar and "Well you're dirty and sweet clad in black don't look back...." hooked for life. I heard music befoer then but this was the first time I thought "this is IT"!!

.....before or after the repeated refrain on soprano sax, before the electric guitar bit, as so consummately whistled on your webpage?

"Didn't know what time it was, the lights were low-oh-oh"

On 'Lift Off With Ayesha' - NOT - as is often stated, TOTP.

Like something quite literally from another planet.

'Topping up' my love of music, over the years.
Age 7: Talk of the Town - Pretenders
Age 14 or so: Let's Go Crazy - Prince
Age 18: Cannonball - Breeders, Alex Chilton - Replacements
Age 25: Hey Bulldog - Beatles. Had (unbelievably) never heard it, & Fabs blew my mind all over again.
Age 29: NYC Cops (live) - Strokes
and I'm A Wheel by Wilco a couple of years ago made the hair stand up on my forearm as well...

...round my friend Graeme's house made me move from prog rocker to new waver overnight.

Thank the lord that The Sex Pistols' Something Else made the charts. I know, I didn't get out much.

I'm in my bedroom, under the covers (stay with me here), I'm supposed to be asleep and I've got head phones on (or possibly only one head phone to keep one ear out for my Mum coming near to my door) and I'm listenng to the Mark Radcliffe show. I thought it was funny but wasn't too keen on all the strange music they played between the banter. Then one night they played a song called Live Forever by a new beat combo called Oasis.

Nothing has ever hit my like that before or since.

I find to be pretty much as bad and meaningless as their other stuff.

It'd probably be Don't Look Back In Anger.

...heard Ben Folds Five "Underground" on the radio. Changed my life completely. I've never looked back.

floored me when I was about 8 or 9 and still does now.
More recently I recall the hairs on the back of my neck standing up when I first heard Cara Dillon singing There were Roses in the Billy Connolly tour of the UK TV series.It was a year or so after that that she put it on her Cd (i believe Sweet Liberty) - I bought the cd and it is still a very touching song but didnt have the same power as when I first heard it.

The first few bars of Oliver's army always works for me, likewise Come on, Eileen. And, because they were big hits, they are always in the collections of the dodgy DJs at birthdays, weddings, funerals etc. So I can request them, with more success, say, than asking for: got anything by the Dead or the Burritos.......
I did run a school disco night, just the once, alternating with a fellow scholar who played nothing but the Blackbyrds and the like, and slipped in "Wake Up Little Susie", Burritos version, and "Dark Star" from Live Dead. (I lied about the 2nd one)
One day, maybe my funeral, there will be the opportunity, nay it will be compulsory, for my i-pod to be on shuffle for all to enjoy

aged 15. Usual shite playing (this was 87, so it would be Stock Aitken and Waterman et al) and waiting for the obligatory school disco 'lads bit (The Jam/Smiths etc) and the opening bars to Made Of Stone were played. Changed my life forever. The next week I saw My Bloody Valentine play "You Made Me Realise" at Knights Disco in Chester and I've rarely ventured back to the middle of the road since. Still 2 of my favourite songs of all time.

The one that always springs to mind for me was when I heard Genesis' 'Watcher Of The Skies' for the first time when I was about 10 at a keyboard lesson around 10 years ago. I'd been aware of them prior to that and liked them but this turned me into a fully fledged die-hard fan which I remain today. That Mellotron introduction was just something else for me, I remember demanding to hear it again in the lesson as I found it so extraordinarily beautiful and otherworldly.

In recent times, I'd have to nominate various Van Morrison tracks. I bought 'Common One' on a whim last year and that album continues to 'knock me for six', especially 'When Heart Is Open' which is gorgeous. Also 'Fair Play' from 'Veedon Fleece'. These are the type of things which turned me into a massive Van fan. Was really knocked out by 'Sleepwalkers Woman' by Scott Walker when I heard that last week.

I'd agree with 'Hot Burrito #1' and the description of it mentioned here; first heard it on Stuart Maconie's 'Critical List' show and was knocked out by it. I think I first heard something from Isaac Hayes' 'Hot Buttered Soul' on there too, another favourite of mine.

Probably 1993 and after an NME article on Scott Walker I bought Scott 2 on cassette tape out of Fopp in Cockburn Street, Edinburgh. From the first moment I heard 'The Amorous Humphrey Plugg' something changed inside of me and I've never been the same since. I kept badgering my friends: 'Listen to this! Have you ever heard anything as amazing in your life?'

Some music reaches out to us because we think it's about our lives, our frustrations and our joys, but there are other songs that resonate because they offer not the life we live, but the life we dream about.

Excuse me - yet again I seem to have got something in my eye.

Teenage Fanclub entered my radar, melted my heart and made me fall in love.

The girl is gone now but the song punches me back to the very night.

Incidentally, they were bloody awesome last Thursday and Saturady even if they didn't play December!

My ex boyfriend had in his possession at the time was the new CD by Oysterband "Holy Bandits" and we sat at breakfast listening to it. We thought was a normal run-of-the mill Oysterband CD until....it came to "Gone West" he almost choked on his tea and I dropped the toast (sod's law it landed butter sided down). We both went "what the **** was that, sounded just like The Levellers?" We then discovered it was produced by one Al Scott who had produced both bands.

On my suggestion he played "England My England" by The Levellers and then "Gone West" by Oysterband on his radio show the next night!

Hearing "Oh Superman" by Laurie Anderson for the first time, played by the late Kenny Everett.

Gavin Clarke is someone you should all check out if you haven't already.

Sunhouse, Clayhill, most of Shane Meadows film soundtracks,the latest Unkle album. He blows me away every time, he has this amazing soulful emotional voice & should be huge. Marvellous. He is also one of the nicest most humble people I have had the privilege to speak too post gig.

Neale Casal is another who blew me away first time I heard him on Eddie & the Diamonds

Check out Basement Dream (on Basement dreams, funnily enough, and a later retrospective), a beautifully constructed voice, accoustic guitar and keyboard killer of a song. Am I alone in thinking it's a waste of a voice having him as your guitarist, Mr Ryan Adams, however good that guitar is?
File under bread on table, as in the Sobule trail, I guess.

Hate To Say I Told You So. Heard this once in HMV by Covent Garden when it first came out and thought what a great racket.

Going back in time - seeing and hearing Neil Young for the first time on OGWT in the 70s doing Hurricane really blew me away (he looked like he was nearly getting blown away too on the film).

Ryan Adams is a lucky man to have a backing singer with a better voice than him. That will make me most hated woman in Britain then!

Retropath2 - have you checked out the Hazy Malaize stuff too? Give it a whirl.

Woman reads the Word! Where now can I turn to feed my prejudices?
(I will certainly do as you bid, Laddie, tho', as I share your view, and, however prolific Bryans younger brother is, not so sure his songwriting is that much better either)

over the years have been stopped in my tracks by far too many, er, tracks (!) to remember off the top of my head. maybe because I can't remember them means they weren't quite the showstoppers I thought?

The most recent track with a wow factor was Neil Young's "Ordinary People" which I listened through awestruck before listening to the whole thing again, all eighteen minutes of it!!

'Common People' Robert Elms played it on GLR a couple of weeks before it became available,and I just couldn't wait to here it again (and again and again).