In my early teens it was metal which first enthused me and turned me into a record buyer. By the time I was about 15 the passion had faded for all sorts of reasons. I already found that I had heard most of it before, the metal look was an effective girl-repellent, more song-based writing started to grab my attention, and, mainly, I started finding the sweaty denim'n'leather posturing too silly for words, and was too precious to revel in the silliness of it all.

To name a BIGOO? Probably Saxon.

And a hard one to reply to.

I'll have to say Simple Minds. I was about ten when Don't You Forget About Me got to number one. There didn't seem to be an awful lot of Scottish music success at that time, and in spite of the pop pages of the Daily Record being full of bands like Hipsway, Love and Money, Win et al no one seemed to be bothering the charts apart from Simple Minds. To a wee boy from Cumbernauld they were an blazing image of anything being possible.

And I have to say, miracle of miracles, the first album of theirs I got was a good one. Being short of pocket money I bought a cassette of Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings call because it had the most songs and cost the same as all of the others. This was pop but really weird in a good way. I'd sit for hours with a walkman on, playing and playing it. Plus the other albums were good as well. Hell at the time, I even liked Once Upon A Time when that came out.

The wobbles began with "Live In The City Of Light." I liked Simple Minds for weird pop reasons, this was clodhopping stuff. "Maybe they just aren't that good live" I thought. Then Street Fighting Years appeared.

It just sounded gauche to me. Simple Minds were getting political ("You talk about South Africa I tell you about the Irish children" Single worst lyric in the history of music) but succeeding in sounding idiotic. Belfast Child was actually painful. Then I saw them live.

Up till then I had seen Metallica, Anthrax and Iron Maiden. So explosions, robot zombies and crowd surfing featured. Simple Minds played interminably, it was just boring. But by this time, in that crowd I had an epiphany. No one liked Simple Minds really, this crowd were there just out of habit. Like me, they loved a band that had finished five years earlier, but they hadn't grown up enough to admit it to themselves. But I had.

Bollocks of course. Simple Minds had just "gone crap" as many bands do, but they were the first band who did that in my lifetime. I bid them a fond goodbye. Every few years I stick on my 12" of I Travel, the only tune of theirs I still have and remember 80's Scotland. Then I haul it off, shuddering with horror.

"you couldn't smell the zeitgeist over the salt and the seagull shit" is magnificent. Have an up.

What tended to happen with me was this: I grew out of bands that I had once taken terribly seriously because it dawned on me that they were ridiculous (Yes, ELP, Rush) and then years later realized that I liked ridiculous music and grew back into listening to those acts again. Glad I did.

Wait! Come back!

It all started before I ever heard a note. I saw the cover of Tarkus in the racks at Beatties Department Store in Birkenhead in 1971 and I was immediately smitten. What wonderful music could possibly lurk behind that cover?

I didn't get to hear Tarkus for years - but then 'Pictures at an Exhibition' came out, at a budget price of £1.50, I seem to remember. Which my pocket money would stretch to (assuming I saved up for a couple of months).

Brought up on a diet of T Rex and Slade, this was a different kettle of fish altogether. Based (obviously) on Mussorgsky's classical piece, it was a bit more challenging.

"If I listen to this" I thought, "People will think I'm clever. Girls will swoon and the big boys will want to be my friend".

Gentle Reader, they didn't. But I was undeterred.

I bought Trilogy, followed by Brain Salad Surgery. Wonderful stuff. Synthesizers! Polyphonic Synthesisers! Drum Synthesizers! Bass Guitars!

And then, one wonderful day, I got to see them. Liverpool Empire, on the 'Welcome Back My Friends...' tour. I bought the ELP medallion and the programme, and sat back in expectation. The Persian Rug was on stage, along with the BIG Synthesiser and the hapless Hammond, awaiting daggerage. There was a BIG GONG behind the drumkit.

The lights dimmed and the show began. And it was everything I expected it to be. Carl's drumkit rotated. Keith's organ got stabbed. He ran through the crowd with his ribbon synthesizer. Greg played bass and sang a bit.

I came out a happy boy. Had I died that night, I would have lived a life fulfilled.

And then came 1977 and the world changed.

POSTSCRIPT: Many years later, I went out and repurchased all the albums I'd traded back in 1977. And do you know, there's still a lot of fun to be had getting your prog on from time to time...

And that's no comment on the quality of their music, which I still rate extremely highly. They were the first band I was properly obsessive about, and that obsession lasted well into my twenties (I was thirteen when Nevermind came out). My friend Roo and I used to, as 20-year-olds, see kids with the smiley-face t-shirt on and long to go up to them and give them a quiz to check if they knew anything about the band. We had a phrase for it: "out-facting". That's the kind of fans we were. We had every recording we could get our hands on, devoured every book we could find on them, placed them on a pedestal of Trafalgar Square proportions.

But at some point, possibly five or six years ago, they stopped connecting with me. Perhaps that's the point at which I stopped being a teenager: twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

Because they are for teenagers, are Nirvana. There's a solipsism and a self-conscious introversion about them which is uniquely teenage: the sense that your "problems" and "pain" are unique and special and that you are exceptionally sensitive, and that your sensitivity and intelligence are being deliberately attacked by the adult/corporate/mainstream world. You wallow in it. Nirvana are the sound of wallowing.

When I was sixteen, "I Hate Myself And I Want To Die" meant something. Now it just means I need to contact my GP.

Led Zeppelin.

I thought they were the bee's knees when I was a teenager (in the early nineties) and got all their vinyl and was blown away by the playing and Percy's howls. What Is And What Should Never Be was the best song ever made. LZ3 was the best album.

No.

With each passing year they have sounded more and more dated, tired and boring. I much prefer Page's session work now and wish he would find a new project that looks to the future rather than the past.

I was struggling to think of a single entity or name that captures how I have drifted away from band culture.

Then I found it!

Whilst I'm a folkie at heart, there's nothing more dispiriting than standing in a field with thousands of people all wearing the same T Shirt watching a group of people who are doing their level best to look like lecturers from an open university summer school.

Still great musicians, no question, but I've seen and heard it all before.

Don't want to be all negative today, and so turning it around, I ask myself what is it that does appeal to me these days?

I think it is about creativity and fusion. Creating something new by taking a musical form and developing it in some way. I'm so looking forward to Womad this year.

I saw him do Starman on TOTP and thought he was fab. Bought the singles, the earlier albums, Ziggy Stardust, etc. Tip top. Even tried the daft hair look once. Then one day at a party I had a road to Damascus moment and saw straight through the whole shtick to the calculating geezer behind it, and he was suddenly as all others, only in silly clothes. Bye bye David. I bought "Station to station" recently after a thread here, and it's OK, but nothing more. Magic long gone.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, “Children begin by loving their rock stars; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them”

The name probably doesn't mean a thing to 95% of the people on this blog, but when I was 15 or so, I absolutely LOVED them. They were the first non-chart band I really got into, and as a result, it really felt like they were mine. At a time when lots of people were listening to horrific nu-metal, I thought (and still do, to an extent) that they were a cut above. Also, there were a select few of us at school who listened to them a lot, including my friend who I took GCSE Music with. Instead of diligently working on our projects, we used to spend Tuesday mornings in the (crucially, soundproof) practice room, blasting out Morning View or Make Yourself.

Their lead singer is a "surfer dude" looking chap named Brandon Boyd. I'll be honest here; he's an extremely attractive man and has a tendency to perform topless (this may explain why they always seems to have more female fans than male). His lyrics are pretty opaque and hippie-ish. As a teenager, I thought he was the epitome of cool. Now, I think he's the kind of guy who would be your mate, then sleep with your girlfriend without remorse and say, "There was a lot of unresolved sexual energy between us because of the alignment of the planets - what were we supposed to do? Plus, it was inevitable; we're both Scorpios."

Occasionally, I dig out some of their older albums and give them a spin. Any enjoyment I get from them is purely nostalgic, as the music itself is never as good as I remember it. By the time I was 17, I was discovering different music, older music, interesting music. I'd stopped reading Q, I'd started reading Word. My most-played albums became The Queen Is Dead and Forever Changes. I still bought the Incubus album that came out that year (the appallingly-titled, A Crow Left of the Murder). I'd moved on; sadly, they hadn't.

As a postscript, they have a new album out next month and I volunteered to review it for a website. I listened to it earlier this week; it is utter, utter balls.

God, the money and time I spent on that band. I had everything they ever did when I was about 14. Albums, singles, rarities, bootlegs, t-shirts. The lot. Saw them live in 1992 at Brixton and I swear it was the best day of my life.

Don't think I've heard a tune of theirs in 15 years now. I reckon their synth sound did lead me towards the stuff I like now though.

At 17 I was convinced by the "Jim Morrison as a poet" thing, plus I really liked the fact that their music was dominated by keyboards rather than guitars. For some reason I had never heard "The End" but it was built up by friends and stuff in the music press as the band's finest piece of work.

Then one day at Uni, about a year later, I borrowed an album with The End on it. After hearing Morrison's stentorious declamation of such puerile lyrics, that was it.

I did try listening to them again, when the Oliver Stone film came out, but was left wondering what I'd ever seen in such pretentious nonsense. These days I share Denis Leary's view

When I was 14 (in 1981) I began to think that I ought to like a band which was sort of cool, and buy some of their records (instead of just listening to whatever was on Radio 1). I wanted a band which was serious enough not to make my prog-rock big brother laugh at me, but also one which the kids at school had heard of.

Thus started my year and a half of being an Ultravox fan. My entry point was "Vienna", one of those records, like Bohemian Rhapsody, an album track designed to be admired rather than enjoyed, which had somehow ended up at the top of the chart. I bought the LP and the one which followed it, "Rage In Eden".

I think what appealed to me was that they had some post-punk cred (Midge Ure had been in a band with Glenn Matlock) but they were REAL musicians who could REALLY play their instruments. I stuck with them as my Favourite Band until about the middle of '82, when I thought, actually they're pompous and a bit boring.

I'd also moved on to bands like The Associates, Scritti Politti, Echo and the Bunnymen, New Gold Dream-era Simple Minds, lots of which I still listen to today.

PS A few months ago, I played "Rage in Eden" on Spotify. It was a bit like looking up your first girlfriend on Friends Reunited. But actually I thought there were a couple of half-decent songs there.

... were the first band I liked who I felt I "should" like.
Now that's a notion most of us succeed in outgrowing if ever there was one...

mates thinks that music starts and ends with the Doors. I take great pleasure in winding him up about how crap they were, how over the top, leather trousered rock god, pompous in a truly up his own arse way Morrison was and that the only reason they are revered is because he croaked. He goes mad. We once had the row in a packed Indian restaurant after a night on the beer. Eventually, after drawing in blokes at surrounding tables to gauge their opinion, I stood up and took a straw poll of the entire room. I won 46 to 7. I will never tell him that the intro to Riders On The Storm is one of the most spine-tingling moments in rock, still. But they were crap.

(rather than the opportunist dig at the Doors above) a lot of the posts show that this is more to do with the passing of time and becoming more self-aware and forming your own opinions, rather than some 'lightbulb' moment where the sheer futility of the God you once worshipped is revealed to you. I think Gangle has spotted the whopping great head of the nail and come down on it with the force of Thor, God of Thunder in his post a couple up. The band I felt I 'should' like is a telling phrase. Peer pressure is a huge deal when you're 14-16, less so as you get older. I adored Wishbone Ash when I was 14-16 but something died for me when Ted Turner left - things were never quite the same. Now, 35 years later, I will very happily spend a couple of hours in Andy Powell's company and find his band to have made some strong albums recently. I will not go and see Martin Turner's version of the band. AP stayed with the band, kept the flame alive if you will and he was always my favourite member, anyway. Martin could never sing, simple as.

Next amnesty I might change my login to "Thor, God Of Thunder"!

*struts about like he owns the place*

I was born in Liverpool in 1952.

In 1962 I was 10, just the right age to be blown away the HJHs. I wasn't really.

In 1963 I was 11 and decided the DC5 were THE band. They had everything that the HJHs didn't have - they were from that London, they put the drums front & centre, and they had that massive four on the floor beat.

When 'Glad All Over' knocked 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' off the top of the charts, I was all over the kids at school.

In 1965 I was 13 and Rubber Soul came out. All of a sudden 'Catch Us If You Can' seemed a bit limp really.

Give DC his credit though, he was a better businessman than any of the Fabs were until the 1970s.

Well, not so much growing out of them musically, for I still get a little thrill when I hear "Viva La Revolution", more of growing out of walking around dressed like them.

I realised that nobody really takes a Droog from A Clockwork Orange very seriously in Reading, Farnborough or Basingstoke. The Paras and Squaddies in Aldershot garrison certainly didn't anyway, except when using me to practice their latest self-defence or martial arts moves that is.

Bowler hat isn't shown very clearly in this pic...

First 3 lps - played to death, saw them twice and they were brilliant both times. 'Life's Rich Pageant' triggered the doubts, and by the next lp my interest was gone. Still toss on 'Murmur' and 'Reckoning' occasionally and still love them, but have no desire to know what they do now.

Reject the above and you reject a significant proportion of rock and pop surely? The absurdity and stupidity is part of the appeal that means that unlike other art forms you can never take this music too seriously and look like a bit of an arsehole if you do, even though it is an art form as good as any other really. Mind you some stuff does become wearing - I've lost interest in The Pixies somewhat, not because it's noisy but because it doesn't interest me enough to replay endlessly. Other things I once loved then left behind as being a bit naff I now see as worthy of my time - like a bit of Wings or some 'easy listening' material my parents liked. So I am not sure who I would say. I even like some of The Doors - I can overlook laughable lyrics, they're everywhere in music anyhow, often on otherwise very good records, I even enjoy them, perversely.

I would go for avant garde stuff I once worked hard to get but now I think it wasn't worth the effort - some Beefheart, some Zappa, that kind of thing.

A so-called friend pursuaded me to buy a Collins-era Genesis album once but I don't think that counts.

OH WAIT. I was stupidly keen on the twiddlings of Eric Clapton for yonks. I think there may even be copies of August and Journeyman kicking about in a cupboard somewhere. Thinking of them makes me flinch.

Should I have just lied and said Ned's Atomic Dustbin instead?

I was pretty keen on Bon Jovi when I was 11.

Keep it to yourselves.

I thought they put on a good show.

my fav artists were Brinsley Schwarz, which is a good start as I still am a huge Basher fan. Led Zep,who I still like but never listen to. Roy Harper, nothing changed there other than his output & the elephant in the room Frank Zappa. I was besotted with the moustachioed one collecting evey single record he put out, produced or appeared on. In those pre cd days you could easily pay £30 for an original Mothers LP & I did. I must have spent thousands & I would bore anybody who came into my orbit with Sofa No.2. But now I look at my bloated collection of FZ & know I will never play it again. I could compile 6 cds of the best bits & sell the rest. But I doubt I ever will.

Sorry.

I'm struggling to think of bands/songs/albums I was really fond of & now don't. Simple Minds, for example, were good up to & including New Gold Dream. 10cc's first 3 albums are marvellous.

The only one that's a possibility is Oasis. I thought the first was alright (a bit too one-paced & derivative for my taste). The second I enjoyed more. On the strength of those two, I bought the third, played it once & never again. Neither of the first two make my iPod containing 1200 whole albums. I don't think I grew out of them as such. It's more that I didn't actually like them that much in the first place.

They were the last band that I became hermetically sealed in with as a fan. When I was younger my devotion to certain artists and music was suffocating but at that age you lived off a kind of airless symbiosis in a bedroom sealed by hormones and limitless possibilities that music played loudly promised. These acts were more than just about their music, they became extensions of my personality, my imagination, my life choices, my ego.

Radiohead were the band that affirmed all the musical choices I'd made up until their appearance. They represented all that was cool about being a rock band. They were dynamic and had ideas that weren't linear or too obvious but they also had an ear for melody and arrangement. Their guitars made the right kind of noises, their singer had the right kind of edginess, their lyrics had the right kind of ugliness. They were so fucking special. They were that last band I got into before I moved in with my girlfriend.

Creep was like Britain had finally found a retort to Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, had finally grown some and punched the US grunge bands in the gut. It was so hyped up as a track you could see Radiohead were never going to be able to follow it up. Pablo Honey didn't smack you in the chops as much as you hoped it would, Creep stood out like a beacon. And then I remember one day when I must have played the closing track Blow Out about 10 times, revelling in the intensity of its feedback drenched coda and I decided that this band were more than just one song and this closing statement of intent proved that.

Some time later I vividly remember walking into Omega Records in Northwich and being struck in the ears by this treated wobbling sequence of power chords over which sang a bruised androgynous voice. The surging cacophony led to a chorus that sounded like Macca's Live and Let Die as if it had been packed into in a shoegazer's blender along with some Meddle era Pink Floyd. The shop had an advance 'mini-album' copy of The Bends and the track was Planet Telex.

I knew there and then that all my emotional investment in this band had paid off. They were making music that proved they were more than just one song. My heart was racing as I stood and listened to the 5 or 6 tracks on the sampler. Each track was different but each one was imbued with an epicness that was nothing to do with stadium rock but everything to do with state of the (he)art.

By the time of OK Computer my devotion to Radiohead was unbreakable. I could even justify Fitter Happier because with Radiohead there was always a context, always a reason, no matter how cryptic and besides if you didn't "get it" then you patently weren't trying hard enough.

Then one day, prior to the release of Kid A, something in me switched. It was like the old break up cliche, "It's not you, it's me". Their music and my attachment to it all seemed too intense, too exclusive to be healthy. My passion for music was being monopolised by a sound and a band that, whilst still important in the annals of post-rock, were not so important to me that I could justify sustaining the intesity I'd previously brought to them as a fan. My ears were listening to other types of music, sounds that were attractive because they were being made simply out of joy and a love of life; music that didn't require analysis or detailed footnotes to help you to understand it.

It got to the point about 10 years ago that Radiohead just became annoying to me. A reverence had grown around them that was littered with fawning apologists justifying the band's every utterance and music release as some kind of cultural event. I became bored of the circus around the band, the unwarranted mythologising and the strained superlatives. Their music became tainted by the hype where before their music had been able to transcend the hype. Pronouncements about the band either by the band or by the media seemed to be more important than the music itself. Ultimately the band sounded bored both with themselves and with their career. Where once the music gazed up at stars it now gazed directly at their collective navel. Every facial tic or body spasm by Thom Yorke or Jonny Greenwood just elicited a sneer from me. It all seemed so mannered and artificial. My reality no longer had anything to do with theirs.

Madness

Boney M

Bands kids like. Now of course I think they're all brilliant, but in my teens and twenties I thought they were novelty rubbish.

Smuggling in a "Bands you grew into" thread. Good one F-C..

Loved them 1982-83; I was 16 and they were MY band. I loved the way they looked, sounded, their whole attitude -- everything. I sat on the edge of the stage at Dingwalls in Newcastle satring up fondly at the sainted Edwyn. They lost their way a bit over the next few years, but I stuck with them, as one does. But now I find even the good, early stuff entirely unlistenable, even the rough and ready Postcard singles before their first album. The sound seems trebly and slight, and Edwyn's voice doesn't sound so good to these 45 year old ears...Whoever above likened the whole thing to seeing an Ex is exactly right: you can just about imagine what you once saw in them, but can't imagine ever going out with them again.

...not sure why, just can't really listen to her voice or songs any more and I used to a lot. I still 'appreciate' the talent that was there, but I'm just done hearing it, I think.

In the mid-90s, Oasis were the biggest band in Britain; they had the look, the attitude and the songs. Girls wanted to shag them (except Bonehead, probably) and boys wanted to be them (because girls wanted to shag them, I assume?). For a nine-year old boy, who's knowledge of music went as far as TOTP on a Thursday afternoon, I thought they were great; much better than Blur. I heard my Dad's copy of 'What's The Story' and, I too, was swept away by the nation's aduation for 'Wonderwall', 'Don't Look Back In Anger' and all things Gallagher.

'Be Here Now' came and went, yet I didn't really remember it at the time because it turns out my Dad was cleverer than the rest of England. He didn't buy it. Fast-forward to the turn of the millenium and I've started to buy my own records. Oasis are about to release a new one, and it'll be the first one I own. The trouble is, if you're going to recommend an album to start with, it's not going to the 'Standing on The Shoulder of Giants' is it? They couldn't even get the title of the album right, that's how shit it is!.

Still, I was an impressionable 13/14 year old, and I gave them a chance. I eventually purchased the rest of their catalouge, they became my favourite band for the next three years as I conveniently ignored SOTSOG. I gave up on them after 'Heathen Chemistry' though, as I realised they were never going to get better, despite every subsequent release being favourably compared to 'Definitely Maybe'.

A recent interview with Gallagher the Younger in another music magazine confirmed my beliefs about the band. It's not cool to be 'cool' when you're nearly forty, Liam.

Thank fuck they split up, even if it was ten years too late.

My god, I loved Genesis. Loved them like a first love. They were the centre of my musical universe and everything else revolved around them. It was probably the most obsessed I've been about anything, ever - thank goodness there was no internet in those days.

That lasted from 'Seconds Out' for another 5 years or so.

And then one day it happened - they released Abacab and I stopped loving them.

The spell was broken, it all seemed rather silly and I don't think I've been able to bring myself to listen to an album of theirs since.

However I think I'm still waiting to grow out of all the music I was into when I was a youngster.

Of course I don't listen to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Misplaced Childhood and Thick As A Brick as much as I used to, but I'm pretty sure that's not possible

We had an album of theirs. They may be at Glastonbury this year, but I can't say I've missed them.

originally Chicago Transit Authority, they had so much to say, their first releases were all double albums. The songs and arrangements were terrific and that first album from 1969, especially, still stands up as the sound of hot young musicians who knew their way round their instruments. Then Terry Kath died, the band discovered schlock and blow-dried big-hair AOR, and the magic was gone.

I presume they're still around. I couldn't care less.

moved into my twenties i got into what i now refer as my "retrocentric rock classicist phase"..i embraced led zeppelin, entered my most extreme beatles fixation and bought records with which my fifteen year old self would have been horrified..
common..i know..but cue ahead another decade and i had rejected these things all over again and was writing to mojo bemoaning their "retrocentric classicsm"..
needless to say they printed an edited version of the letter, pedanticly(sic) pointing out a spelling mistake...

...was I *really* a member of the Tori Amos Fan club...?

up until Fish left. Went to Milton Keynes to see them the same day that Wham! split up at Wembley. I've always smiled at the thought that I passed my future wife on a motorway somewhere as we sped to our respective gigs.

Growing up in N.Wales, exposure to non-chart music tended to be difficult. The Music Papers were too scary and grown-up, John Peel was too weird (if you even knew who he was) and so older siblings tended to be the guide. At my school the bands were Cheap Trick, The Meteors, U2, Depeche Mode, SpandauDuran and of course, the chart stuff.

Marillion checked a lot of boxes that pretentious poetic-sorts(ahem) could get behind -
*Brow-furrowing lyrics (Chameleons, Kimonos, Punting)
*Larger-than-life frontman (Scottish! Tall! Likes a drink! Swears!)
*Long Songs (Best mulled over with over a cuppa and some custard creams)
*Completely Undanceable (But you could jump up and down to them)
*Album sleeves demanding attention (Why's the lizard crawling out of the TV on the "Fugazi" sleeve?)

The last Fish-era album, "Clutching at Straws" had the shortest, most direct songs they'd done (and the worst sleeve). I didn't mind it, but I wasn't as mad on it as I had been with "Misplaced Childhood". Aside from "White Russians" I think it's the one that's aged the best now, ironically.

They fell apart as a friendship I'd had also fell apart. Over a girl. The mate who I'd taken with me to two Marillion gigs took his new girl and didn't ask me to see them do "Clutching", which may, just may, have coloured my reception to the album.

When they reformed with SteveH I had a go, but wasn't mad on "Season's" and just gave up on Fish after "Vigil". They didn't speak to me anymore about my reality. Time for a change.

I did come back to them about the time of Brave and Afraid of Sunlight and marveled at how much better they are. I'm not a fan, don't buy everything they do, but try to check in occasionally when I'm not furrowing my brow at deciphering the meaning of Altar of Plagues' newie.

...who collect everything Marillion have done but ONLY the post-Fish version. Which is truly baffling to me. Not that I think the Fish era was great - it's just not my kind of thing but at least it had personality. The post-Fish era just seems like a chasm of unloveable pointlessness to me, as a casual observer...

that I outgrow, I usually revisit after a period of time. There has been long periods when I have not listened to a certain band but something will trigger in my head, and I will listen to say Abba or like the OP Queen again, and in both cases enjoy, but I can't say that there are any bands that i've completely abandoned.

Mind you i've still to revisit Showaddywaddy and the Bay City rollers yet

I loved their first two albums, I recorded cassettes for my best friend and she became a big fan too.
Then War was released and it was impressive and catchy but...they were beginning to get on my nerves.
I bought the next two albums out of a sense of loyalty but never actually played them. The singles that I heard on the radio were really awful and boring. "I still haven't found..." actually made me want to beat them up.
My former best friend stayed a fan, and became an animal rights activist who was convinced that she had all the right answers to every question, I lost touch with both her and her hero Bono.
I don't mind Bono's grand ambitions, I just don't like the musical pomposity, the We're SO bloody worthy-ness of it all.
As to my friend, she just lost her sense of humour. The deadliest of sins.

They were the perfect vehicle for the vain, exhibitionist drama queen that was the teenage me. They looked striking and amazing, (or 'daft' if you were my Dad) they had screaming guitars and great fizzing banks of feedback, (or sounded terrible, if you were my Dad) and the lyrics were mysterious and enigmatic, (or were pretentious tripe, if you were my Dad). Looking back, I think the old man may have had a point. Apart from 'In the Flat Field', which still sounds ace.

music for teenagers with chips on their shoulders is great when you are a teenager with a chip on your shoulder. Not so good, when you are a proper adult with job and mortgage and stuff.

I thought crashing into the tree gave Marc Bolan a legacy that wasnt entirely deserved, musically he was spent 4+ years before he died.

Personally, I didnt like his "Hippy stuff", & nothing from 73 onwards didnt do it for me either, so I only rate his 1971/ 72 stuff as being of any worth.

I realise I will probably be declared a heretic for this, but for all of his talent, his recorded output doesnt bear close scrutiny IMHO.

.... the Doobie Brothers, i stick on the Capn'n'me...........
nope.. after nearly 40 years... i still love it !

Loved them when I was seventeeen to nineteen, saw them half a dozen times, got all the albums. But haven't felt inclined to play any of them for nearly 30 years.

Huge Bowie fan, went to see the Glass Spider tour the same week as Prince was due to arrive to play Sign of the Times. No doubt which album was better and the Glass Spider show was awful. Just gave up on Bowie there and then.

It took me until about 2 years ago to regain any interest in him - but normal service now resumed and I would argue for Bowie v just about anyone else.

First heard Number Of The Beast in 1982. Immediately got the two preceeding albums.
Bought everything as soon as it came out (singles, albums, videos, T-Shirts etc).
Saw them live at least twice a year

Until 1992
I bought Fear Of The Dark but wasn't moved by it. Saw them headline Donnington 1992, and haven't bought anything new since.

Aged 12 to aged 22 - best band ever
Aged 22 onwards - a bloody good band, but not as interested in them anymore

This probably doesn't count but a couple of years ago I really loved Top Gear and alll the 'crazy' stuff that went with it : being chased through the Southern States of America by George Bush loving men with guns, risking their lives by driving vehicles on thin ice in the Arctic, etc etc Not to mention all those off the cuff quick remarks and insults to each other.

Suddenly I realised it was all scripted and pre-planned to the nth. degree as were all those quick ad-libs. Can't watch it anymore!

Too many to mention.

Far too many.

How much money did I waste?

Worrying, when you think about it.

All for a few silver discs, now sitting unloved in the garage.

Haven't really grown out of anything much since I turned 16, but there was an early flirtation with Kiss around the 13-14 sort of time frame which is fairly embarassing to recall. I moved on. To Quo and Boston. But I found AC/DC soon after, so that was all right.

(bracing myself) The Beatles.
Purely through overuse in childhood.

but I'm not sure if it was me or him that
out grew his music.

May 1979
Prior to this my 12 year old ears had been little troubled by popular music, obsessed as i was by liverpool fc and star wars. i was aware of punk, the bigger kids in my street were into it but i didn't like them much so i didn't have a lot of time for their music. i kind of liked the sex pistols, buzzocks and all that but not enough to spend my pocket money on them. after all i didn't really have anything in my life to get that angry about.

But the first time i saw Tubeway Army on TOTP i knew are friends electric had to be in my house on demand. Replicas was the first album i ever bought with my own money.
I'd just gone to secondary school, surrounded by peple i didn't know, feeling anxious and a little paranoid - who exactly was i here? Numan's perplexed pout and electronic whines and drones caught my mood perfectly. And my mum was an Avon lady so there was no shortage of eyeliner.

Looking back, i now know i should have given up after the Dance album (particularly after being thrown down a flight of stairs at a party for wearing a Numan t-shirt - i believe it may have been a party at Andrew Harrison's house though the memory is a little blurry), but i soldiered on. Soldiered on through the Mad Max phase, through the blue hair and blue lipstick, through the bow ties - red and black - all the while telling myself that one day soon, another hit would come, while amassing ever more picture discs and ltd editions etc. I gave up after Metal Rhythm (87?) - the lyrics were regurgitated and the songs just, well, weren't that good.
Along side this i was discovering New Order, Prince, REM and the world of music was opening up ever wider.
Sorry Gary, you got squeezed out never to return, but thanks for getting me interested

...was the first single I bought too... and 'Complex' is spellbinding... but beyond that, alas, Gaz ran out of interest...

Loved them as a kid - all space ships and catchy tunes....then, one day , I just got 'embarrassed' about them for want of a better word!
With hindsight can only suggest i began to 'grow up' a little ( emotionally speaking ) and realised how vaccuous and empty their records were - style over content. Can't remember what I moved on to -probably something equally un hip....it might have been Queen!!
I gave Out Of The Blue a spin recently and you know what....I really enjoyed it! Me and the kids had a good bop to Mr Blue Sky and the wee one loved Jungle. Guess I'm now afflicted with MAERS - Middle Age Emotional Regressive Syndrome!

Must have been about 1986. I had my first cassette player and had about 5 tapes all compilations. I heard Hunting High and Low on TV, don't know why that one grabbed me. As with most things we don't choose the ones we fall for I guess! I collected their first four albums on tape,one of which got tangled in said tape player. Then they "grew up" I hit my teens and discovered the joys of Peel my second great love Carter USM - how can you be 13 and not like a band who's album starts with a song chanting "You fat b****rd"? Once CD's killed tapes off I never replaced the albums apart from their greatest hits that I would periodically annoy my now wife with. Then last year i heard a-ha were retiring and went to see them live (dragging along previously annoyed wife) One quick splurge on I tunes later and my 5 year old wanders around the house singing "Touch me!" at inappropriate moments (From The sun always shines on TV) having heard it so much. young love revisited!!

I would buy into that one carabara.
For years I couldn't listen to the music of my youth-Oldfield, ELP et al; however, always have loved Queen,ELO and The HJH. Now I am revelling in the rematers of all the aforementioned. Am I just hankering after a youthful spring in the step and a head of hair.
I think what we all really grow out of is 'chart music' apart form the occasional song. Pretty much how I remember my parents being.
The only problem I find with going back all the time is the strange juxtaposition of listening to Never Mind The Bollocks whilst doing the ironing!

followed Elvis Costello well into my thirties (the mid-80's) but sometime around "Spike" or "Mighty Like A Rose" I began to weary of him and realised that he wasn't, after all, incapable of being involved with anything less than 100 per cent essential.
Up to that point, I had devoured every last 12-inch single for the obscure additional tracks and generally found even those to be of uniformly peerless standard.
While I still probably acquire most of what he puts out and enjoy bits of it, nothing will ever compare to that run of albums from My Aim Is True to King of America, nor will my 50-odd year old incarnation ever again be able to be so enthused, as I was probably on more than 40 occasions between 1977 and 1994, by the sight of the bespectacled one walking on a stage, plugging in and kicking arse.
If I bother to see him again, I'll be an oldish bloke in a room full of other oldish blokes and women watching some oldish blokes onstage -and I have to concede that part of the utter thrill of rock n'roll is often the youth itself of those who play or listen to it.
If Bruce Springsteen puts out any more bollocks like "Outlaw Pete" "Queen Of The Supermarket" and "Surprise Surprise" I'll be growing out of bands while nudging 60!

From the moment I heard 68 Guns onwards, I bought every Alarm 7 inch, 12 inch, album, EP, tshirt I could get hold of for about 4 years. I remember my brother once saying about me to one of his mates that "he lives, breathes and shits The Alarm."
My first gig was The Alarm at the Southampton Gaumont. My 2nd gig was another band I grew out of after a couple of years, Big Country at Wembley Arena. (Kate Bush came on to sing a song called The Seer with them)
Had loads of stuff by both bands but all on vinyl (sold years ago) so I can't listen to either of those bands again to see what I think of it now.
However the other day, this video came up as a suggestion on the Youtube sidebar thingy. I watched it and was surprisingly moved, but probably not so much by the music and more by what has happened in the years since to the 2 lead singers of those 2 bands.

God help me, but as a 12 year old my big sister gave me copies of 'Tales of Mystery and Imagination' and 'I, Robot' on cassette

I wore those tapes to a frazzle

Then she gave me a copy of 'Eye in the Sky' - what feeble, warbling AOR crud...

fail to live up to the standards I set in stone.
I haven't changed a whit!