'.sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind'

[bunnyben]

The song had a huge impact on Bruce Springsteen, who was 15 years old when he first heard it. Springsteen described the moment during his speech inducting Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and also assessed the long-term significance of "Like a Rolling Stone":

The first time I heard Bob Dylan, I was in the car with my mother listening to WMCA, and on came that snare shot that sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind ... The way that Elvis freed your body, Dylan freed your mind, and showed us that because the music was physical did not mean it was anti-intellect. He had the vision and talent to make a pop song so that it contained the whole world. He invented a new way a pop singer could sound, broke through the limitations of what a recording could achieve, and he changed the face of rock'n'roll for ever and ever "[63][64]


we all know the springsteen quote but waht song was it for you that made you go 'all the music i listen to is shit, this is music!' and then continue from there to ammass from there your current collections. mine was about to get into the shower listening to radio 1 and hearing the last 30 seconds of a song and going 'wtf was that??' then finding out it was a song called 'whatever happened to my rock n roll' by a band called 'black rebel motorcycle club' and then next sunday sitting next to the radio for the top 40 with my finger poised over the record button for a few hours till it came on. ah the days before mp3s...

[spzretent]

It wasn't a band for me. My Dad was a veterinarian. He used to take me to work on snow days. I'd go shovel the snow at his vet clinic and he would buy me something. One snowstorm is was my first AM/FM radio. Until this point I only had an AM radio. AM was all top 40 pop/rock/r&b around here.
That seriously blew my mind. Album tracks, not just hits. Lots of late night craziness.
Also:
Tommy James & The Shondells Crimson & Clover
Tommy Roe- Dizzy
Richard & the Young Lions- Open Up Your Door
I still have all three 7"s.

[angelsighs]

for me it was Hendrix, i think. i was into Britpop and poppy rock stuff, but i bought Electric Ladyland (in hindsight the first album may have been more digestible). it was the first album that really blew my mind and made me see what was possible with music just beyond having a good tune.

the fat, trippy sound of the album blew me, as well as the guitar playing obviously. and the ambition of having huge jams on there like Voodoo Child, as well as sound paintings like 1983...

its still in my top 10 albums ever to this day

[runcible]

Sex Pistols 'Pretty Vacant' on Top of the Pops in 1977 - the famous video clip. Time stood still for those precious minutes and my life changed.

[scratch]

but waht song was it for you that made you go 'all the music i listen to is shit, this is music!'

heard and listened to lots of great music from the day I was born (unfortunately my parents had good taste making the cliched "emancipation through music" a lot harder) so never had this big revelation happen to me, almost envious since I quite like the idea of reinventing myself..

I guess survival and uprising were my first roughly contemporary records since they had been out for less than two years, but bob marley did not make me have an american style bonfire burning all my beatle records.. although he did help me realise the fab four wasn´t actual gods <-- something I was unaware of even though you´d think Lennon dying a year earlier should have tipped me off

then bobby died too.. surprised jason has survived having me as a fan for 19 years or whatever it is now

[jadams501]

The instrumental part of Paranoid Android in the first minute or so, Pink Floyd's Any Colour You Like, Jeff Buckley's guitar solo in the Australia version of Hallelujah in 1996, the switch to the uptempo part in I Think I'm In Love, and McCabe's guitars from Beautiful Mind on Storm in Heaven.

Those are probably the biggest taste-setting moments in my early music listening.

[shalloboi]

'to here knows when' comes to mind. i remember hearing it when i was 16 and thinking i'd never heard anything even remotely like it before in my life. i still think that a lot when i listen to it.

[redcloud]

At age 16 I discovered four albums that completely changed my world:

Country Joe & The Fish-Electric Music For the Mind & Body
Country Joe & The Fish-I-Feel-Like-I'm Fixin'-To-Die
Pretty Things-SF Sorrow
Pretty Things- Parachute

Before these albums music was about releasing energy and rocking out. I had discovered the Grateful Dead before the two CJ & The Fish records but it was via their two country rock albums. Both Dead LP's are wonderful but back then I didn't appreciate them like I do today and I was still new to collecting their live stuff. When I heard those first two Fish records I had never heard anything with the blatant LSD/drug references found on 'Bass Strings' or 'Acid Commercial'. The tripped out instrumentals 'Section 43' and 'Eastern Jam' totally blew me away while the haunting, introspective beauty of 'Grace', 'Who Am I' and 'Magoo' were meaningful and deeply profound. They are saturated in lysergic acid and arguable the two most acid inspired albums to come out of the Haight-Ashbury (via Berkeley). Both records from start to finish quickly became my stepping stone for all things psychedelic and led me to many new discoveries.

Not long after that I was at a friend of a friend's house smoking when I heard the two Pretty Things albums. I think it was via the 1976 reissue "Real Pretty" that packaged 'SF Sorrow' and 'Parachute' as a double LP. It was one of those epiphanies where everything you are doing doesn't matter and you literally just LISTEN to the music. I left that night with a C90 of both Pretties records and wore that fucker out until I eventually tracked the actual records down.

I probably listened to those four albums more than any other records during high school and the first couple years of college. They became close friends and pretty much inspired the entire collection that I own today.

[sonic124]

That classic live 'Something Else' performance of Joy Division playing Transmission. Sometime in 87 i guess. Just discovering 'indie' music Wedding Present, Soup Dragons etc via an older cousins boyfriend. Totally blow me away as I saw in front of my eyes one of the most intense performances I had ever seen.

[sunray]

The Jesus And Mary Chain Psychocandy album and in particular "The Living End". Total "What the fuck is that?!!!" moment. Life was never the same again.

[JakeCardigan]

For me it was going to Glastonbury in 2000, before this I listened to albums at home and at the few nights when the bad nightclub where I lived played Primal Scream, Stone Roses..

But that weekend I was immersed in music... The Beta Band live as the sun was setting was amazing, a moment during Chemical Brothers were I looked around and there were people as far as I could see, that moment in Hey Boy, Hey Girl were the music pauses, everyone paused, kicks back in and thousands of people kicked back into life

Death in Vegas followed by Leftfield, bass which shook my ribcage..

This was followed by a move to London and all of a sudden my access to music just grew, coupled with an introduction to Spiritualized, started buying records.... 11 years later we're still going strong

[bbbhenko]

i was born in 1981 and started out as a beatles fan until I discovered reggae in the 90s... didn't sound like anything my parents did play at home, it had a totally irresistible flowing feeling to it and it certainly changed my world.

a couple of years later i heard pure phase as it had just been released, and from there i discovered spiritualized & spacemen 3. the first sp3-track i heard was wwj from the revolution or heroin bootleg; i was caught. also recall listening to the studio version of take me to the other side for the first time and being amazed at how the song just turns into a drone in between the quite catchy verses/choruses. that made me realize, for the first time i think, that musicians actually could break free from any form of traditional "this-is-what-a-song-should-be-like" rules or guidelines. it felt wierd and yet extremely exciting. have been excited about this ever since