I had a PC before IBM. Came in a kit to assemble, and you had to supply your own wire.
I discovered Napster way early - I thought to myself that there was no way it’d last more than a month or two, since it was so illegal.
::shame smiley::
I learned about Napster from my high school English teacher.
But I was into “Touched by an Angel” when it first started. I thought it was a cool, interesting fantasy show. Until it got co-opted by Christian Fundamentalists as some sort of faith-affirmation!
Never heard of them. Must have been before my time, old man! 
I asked my husband (we are both class of '89), and he never heard of them either.
Went to see Foo Fighters in a small venue ( <200 people) when they first started touring. Even though Dave Grohl had been in Nirvana they didn’t hit the big time here for a year or two after that.
Was into Napster fairly early on, had an MP3 player before anyone I know, when I was a kid I got the piss taken out of me because I was into manga/anime, they’re alot bigger now. I doubt I was the first (since my brothers were the ones who got me into it) but when I got into Akira, aged about 9 I was cutting edge. 
I don’t know how big Josh Ritter is going to be but I’ve seen him over half a dozen times, including in small venues. He’s predicted to hit mainstream with latest album, but it’s not a certainty.
Damien Rice, I was a fan of his original band Juniper, which split into him solo and Bell X-1, a band relatively popular here in Ireland.
I’m not quite as old-skool as you, but, yeah, I remember the Onion from… shit…more than 10 years ago. It was the greatest zine EVAR.
My others are Wrestling and Bon Jovi. Somehow, I got into wrestling just before the Iron Shiek beat Bob Backlund. THEN, when Hulk Hogan beat the Sheik, it blew up. Same with Bon Jovi, although it helps having grown up in New Jersey…
Joe
I was using desktop (HP25) computers at work several years before the concept of the PC existed.
At a previous job (a railroad, of all places), I used Xerox telecopiers years before people decided ‘Fax’ was a better term and they became everyday items.
Can’t really say I was on the bleeding edge concerning bands that later made it big. Closest I came was missing seeing the Police play at a tiny venue in Johnstown, PA, about a month before ‘Roxanne’ hit the charts. A friend of mine who worked at a local music store sold them some guitar strings the afternoon before the show.
Oh crap, forgot about wrestling. Me and my siblings watched ‘Studio Wrestling’ on Pittsburgh’s Channel 11 religiously back in the '60s, and were in awe because Bruno Sammartino lived just up the street from my cousins in the North Hills area.
Ditto. I never saw her perform, but I was a fan as soon as my local indie station started playing “Here With Me.” It was months before it would be used as the theme for Roswell and at least a year before “Stan.”
When it comes to music and fashion, I am always considerably behind the trends.
That said, I read the Straight Dope before it was a message board. I used to read the column in a weekly alternative paper when I was stationed in Newport, Rhode Island in the mid '80s. The same paper also had the Bloom County comic strip – as I said, it was a weekly, so it would have the whole weeks worth of strips on a page. So there’s two things I was ahead of the curve on – Bloom County and the Straight Dope.
Oh, I just remembered another one: we had cable TV in 1968 or '69, thereabouts. There was no cable box, the available piped-in channels came in on the 12 analog-tuner channels (2-13).
A few years back, I read an article about a new device that Steve Jobs was touting. It played original music from a library where you could pick and choose what songs you wanted. He was personally meeting with record executives and big name musicians to get them on board. He called it iTunes.
I called my husband, the stock broker, and said, “Buy Apple.” Apple was trading at something ridiculous like 6. I kid you not.
I saw U2 on their Boy tour in the spring of 1981, playing at Ryerson College in Toronto. I had no idea who they were at the time - just “some New Wave band from the UK”.
I think I probably had a Sony Walkman TPS-L2 earlier than most anyone in the U.S. At least I was the first to buy one at the high-end audio shop I frequented, according to the owner of the store.
On planes, people would constantly either stare at me listening to it like I was an extraterrestrial or come up to me and do a “What the hell is that?” Although I flew a lot, I didn’t see anyone else with one for perhaps a year or so.
I picked up a book with an amusing cover sometime in '85.
pterry came late to New Zealand, but I was hooked before the second Discworld book was published!
I had my second set of ear piercings in '77, my eyebrow pierced in '83, my septum in '84 and was reading the Straight Dope in the Reader in '79.
I told everyone I knew from the 1970’s onward that they should learn touch typing. Those that didn’t are kicking themselves in this the computer age.
For my Christmas gift in 1992, my Toronto-dwelling brother gave me a hilarious album by some weird guys who called themselves the Barenaked Ladies. Apparently a friend of his knew the drummer.
My college roommate and I had great fun attending their concerts wherever we could find them. Usually the venues weren’t too big, and the concerts were unique and great fun.
Then, suddenly, they got insanely popular and started playing huge, impersonal venues, and they sort of lost their charm for me. They’re not any less talented, but it’s just not as much fun anymore.
The friend that knew the drummer is now my sister-in-law, and she still knows him, but I’ve never met him, much to my sorrow. I think he’d be quite entertaining in person.
As a male, I had an ear ring long before it became common. And not that it is common I no longer wear it.
In the early eighties I loved the soda pop ‘Quattro’ long before anyone else i knew.
Oh, hang on…
A new thing that might catch on is Felix Group PLC’s [EMAIL=http://www.themaxbox.com/max_box_info_2.html#SlideFrame_1]‘Max Box’, or it could be the next Laser Disk.