What are you listening to right now, and when did you first hear it?

Pretty simple, right?

I’m listening to “H.” by **Tool **. This album, Aenima, came out in October of 1996, when I was sixteen. I had left home (or been kicked out) the year before, and I finally had a place of my own, though I was a ‘caretaker’ and not paying rent. I had somebody’s old stereo, and a friend got me a copy of the CD.

I remember standing there in this dark room, empty aside from me and the stereo and the music because I didn’t own anything else to put in it, when this song came on. I hadn’t given much thought to the band in a couple years. They weren’t much like my favorite bands at the time - Pixies, Jesus & Mary Chain (especially the album Psychocandy, which I used to dream of going home to listen to when I got off my shift at the drugstore), Elvis Costello, Pink Floyd, PJ Harvey, Soul Coughing, Depeche Mode, Violent Femmes, Dire Straits, The Cure, Massive Attack…okay, I always have a lot of favorite bands. And some of those are still on the list. :wink: But clearly, Tool’s place on it was a little odd. Yet within a month the album had become my BFF, and stayed that way until a couple years later when I finally heard Radiohead’s OK Computer.

And whenever I hear it, it doesn’t take much to be right there again, hearing it for the first time.

You?

“Ill Wind” by Flanders and Swann

Probably I first heard in in the 60s on the TV special, but I don’t know. I did hear it last December 31 at First Night Saratoga, and knew I had to get an F&S album.

“My White Noise,” by Blur. I first heard it when I got the song probably sometime last fall, or maybe last summer.

“Back to the Earth” by Rusted Root --I first heard it when my brother left for college and left a whole bag full of cassettes behind; mostly live Dead shows, but this one was mixed in.

Death Cab for Cutie, Soul Meets Body (radio edit). Never heard it before.

I’m not actually listening to any music right now. But sitting on my desk are newly arrived CDs of:

Can - Soon Over Babaluma
Egg - The Polite Force
Popol Vuh - Aguirre

All three are recent reissues of prog LPs I originally bought from the import racks in the '70s.

“Opera Singer” by CAKE.

I think I first heard it live last year, as I only really started listening to them about a year and a half ago and didn’t have this album yet.

“Banquet” - Bloc Party

Heard it on the radio a lot a short while back, and last week “borrowed” my brother’s album. :slight_smile:

Right at this moment

Blind Melon - Galaxie

First song off their Soup album (which is my favorite of theirs)

“Bodies” by The Smashing Pumpkins.

Me and my friend Scott got real big into this album, Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness, and recently we started talking about it for the first time in years. I just popped it in a few minutes ago and remains as good as it ever was (which is to say great) and is back up in my top 10 list of favorite albums (The Pumpkins are in my top 10 bands, but they never left).

“On the Road Again” by the Grateful Dead (off the acoustic album Reckoning). I first heard it about fifteen years ago when I was in high school.

Baro Foro by Gogol Bordello.

First heard it about three weeks ago when Mr. Bunny and I ordered the album, Multi Kontra Culti Vs. Irony from Amazon after seeing them live in Las Vegas and realizing they had other albums besides the 2 we already had.

Tommy february6 - Wait Till I Can Dream

Heard it for the first time probably a year and a half ago, maybe 2 years. When Cliptrip (international music show on Much More Music) and Hit List (music video show on YTV) both did J-Pop specials in the same week. I THINK I heard it on Hit List. Yes, Hit List was Tommy february6, Cliptrip was The Brilliant Green…

I LOVE Gogol Bordello. So happy to see some GB love on the boards. I saw them in Chicago a few months ago and they were amazing.

Did you see them on tour w/ Tegan & Sara, CAKE, and Eugene Mirman? I had tickets to the Cleveland show but decided the trip from Chi-Town wasn’t worth the trouble.

“Atom Bomb” by Fluke, and I heard it in the last episode of House. :slight_smile:

The Paul Harris Show, KMOX, St. Louis via the Internet. I’ve been listening to the guy since he was a local DJ paired with “Dave the Predictor”.

The Winks - Abalone.

First found it the other day, looking up the label to The Robot Ate Me. Was working on some stuff, and my hear fell faster than it takes ramon to go from incredibley delicious to super incredibly delicious.

Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

I downloaded the torrent mentionned in the SXSW thread and found this song in the mix (it’s mislabelled). I’d heard so much hype about them that I figured they couldn’t match up to it. So I never gave them a shot until now. And wow, I’ve had this song on a loop all day. I love it.

Yay!! So happy to meet another fan. Yes, that was the tour we saw them on but they were on first and we figured nothing could possibly compare to that, so we left the show without seeing any of the other acts (except for Eugene Mirman’s first 10 minute stand-up). I am so glad we did, because throughout the course of the evening just wandering around, we ended up meeting Oren, Elizabeth, Eliot, the spanish singer (I didn’t catch his name unfortunately but in the album credits it’s listed as Pedro), Sergey (HUGE for my husband, who is also a fiddle player) and Eugene (HUGE for me, as I am obsessed with him :smiley: )!

They told us they have their own tour coming up beginning in April, Mr. Bunny and I have already agreed we’ll travel wherever necessary to see them again.

off to listen to Voi-la Intruder. Again.

[/hijack]

“Think (instrumental)” by Curtis Mayfield from the Superfly soundtrack. I guess I first saw the movie in college over a decade ago, and I bought the soundtrack about three or four years ago, and it came up on my iTunes shuffle…now.