listening to your choices you might like Dalbello - Tango
Joe Robinson - Royal Flush. I think I prefer the album version, as it’s cleaner and played slower [this recording feels a bit rushed], but regardless, this song is both beautiful and jaw-droppingly difficult.
Love them, but they weren’t quite jaw-dropping to me because I was already familiar with that Balkan polyphonic style from the soundtrack to Time of the Gypsies(which did make my jaw drop) and just Trio Bulgarka, before I first heard Voices.
Someone mentioned Blue Man Group upthread, this ‘warming up’ of one of their songs gets me in the feels. Folks call them derivative…but man, I can go for this kind of derivative.
BT + Michael Doughty = awesome (Never Gonna Come back Down)
In the 'video is almost cooler than the song, and the song is Very Cool - Walkie Talkie Man
There’s a bunch of other ones, but I’ll stop now.
I was lucky enough to see Stevie Ray Vaughan perform live several times and at least once in every show there was a transcendent, jaw-dropping moment where I could hardly believe what I was seeing and hearing.
Once it was the first time I heard him play an extended version of Life Without You, another time it was Texas Flood- which was never one of my favorite tunes of his, until I heard him play a version like this one. It just blew me away.
I saw his last show as a headliner, two nights before he died. It was at the Kalamazoo County Fair in Michigan (ticket price $10). At one point Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton left the stage. Stevie brought out a chair, sat down and played Riviera Paradise solo. He was wrapped around his guitar with his head down, his nose two inches from the neck. He played a 10+ minute version of the song and it was mesmerizing. Damn that guy could play.
I have this as my ringtone. 
For me, Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium.
The first time I heard Alex Lloyd singing My Way Home it was a live recording.
If you like soulful, dramatic, passionate crooning, please check it out:
PS Listen to the end, it builds.
The first time I heard “Welcome To The Jungle” by Guns 'n Roses. I was a hair metal guy - Poison, Ratt, shit like that. Jungle changed me almost immediately. It was so much harder and rawer, it was real music.
Same with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.
That’s a good one! I didn’t have the jaw-drop, but it was a “Lift my head and see what was coming from my radio” moment. Almost the same with “Rolling in the Deep,” but “Rehab” was better.
What, no James Otto?
oops, didn;'t read the whole thread. Whew. For a second, I thought no one would have mentioned James.
A lot of show tunes, too many to list. No matter how many times I hear ‘Tonight’ or ‘Music of the Night’ or ‘All That Jazz’, I gotta turn it up.
‘Working My Way Back To You’ by the Spinners.
‘Love Shack’ by the B-52s.
‘The Mummers Dance’ by Lorena McKennitt.
‘The Thieving Magpie’ by Rossini.
It was love at first sound by these songs for me.
My jaw didn’t drop about Nirvana until after I saw them live. I had seen other trios play. I was used to various different types of rock, from Punk to Psychedelic to pure Metal. But, it was just how effortless Kurt Cobain was with all the transitions that their songs had.
And I had even seen it before with other musicians. I guess I just wasn’t expecting it from his “type” or whatever.
And the drummer was just a god. A minor deity, to be sure, but a god none the less. (See the Foo Fighters)
A lot of “alternative” music hit me really hard when I was first getting into music on my own as a teenager. I was raised in a pretty strict Christian environment – Baptist school, Sunday morning and evening church, Wednesday youth group, etc. – that considered virtually all music a sin. I tried listening to popular music of the day, but discovered the alternative stuff that MTV and Jukebox played at night struck some kind of chord with me. It disturbed me, and I liked that music had the power to do that to me. Cities in Dust and Peek-a-Boo by Siouxsie and the Banshees, Hello Skinny by The Residents, and Death Valley 69 by Sonic Youth all punched me in the gut in one way or another. Once I hit 18 and got out on my own, I began making friends who introduced me to stuff I loved; Just One Fix by Ministry and Last by Nine Inch Nails blew my mind the first time I heard them.
In a completely different vein, I was a big fan of house and dance music, dancing weekends at clubs and raves for most of the 90’s and 00’s, then branching out into normal dance clubs that played pop. That era of house/dance and pop often doesn’t hold up, but a brand new song that hit just right (thanks to a good DJ who knew how to work the floor) could send the dancers into ecstasy. The first time I heard Silver Screen Shower Scene by Felix da Housecat and Miss Kittin on the dance floor, the place went electric; something about the beat was just pornographic, and the dancers responded accordingly. Similarly, Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue fired up every person on the floor, with all the club kids who had been dancing solo suddenly locked together.
Yeah. I was just getting into blues (mid-'60s) and Albert King’s “Crosscut Saw” came on the car radio.
I had to pull over to listen to it.
Man, the great ones seem to flame out early. For some reason I was never aware of him until after his death. I turned on the radio and the song was in the middle of one of his guitar riffs and I thought “Hendrix”.
This. It’s a cliche now, but the first time I heard it-wow.
Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah” by Cohen
“Me and a Gun” by Tori Amos
For sheer virtuosity, this:
(Jerry’s Breakdown by Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins)
The most recent example I can think of that “made my jaw drop” and forced me to listen over and over is one I just happened upon on YouTube:
[PIANO] Michel graillier - Aicha
The whole idea of songs that “knocked me for a loop” the first time I heard them has made me examine my tastes and wonder what about certain pieces of music “grabs me.”
Might make for a follow-up thread on that notion…
Shania Twain, “If you’re not in it for love, I’m outta here.”
Jo Dee Messina, “Heads Carolina, Tails California”
Kenny Loggins, “I’m Free (Heaven Helps the Man)” (from Footloose)
Lara Fabian, “Love by Grace”
Evanescence, “My Immortal”
I couldn’t walk away from this chat, so yeah, I tell about the song here that made me the fan of James that I have been for almost five years now.
God bless you and him always!!!
Holly
P.S. I am blown away at how fast time has flown by!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Moya
SWANS - The Sound
The Legendary Pink Dots - Just A Lifetime
Skinny Puppy - Testure