If I were to just snip fishbicycle’s post, I’d be mighty close in terms if what I listened to… as opposed to my friends.
I could quote all of Los Cochinos and Big Bambu (especially in back of Science class), and I agree with Apostrophe(’) being the entry point to Zappa. I was also listening to In the Court of the Crimson King, Brain Salad Surgery, and George Carlin’s Toledo Window Box… his most drug-oriented album.
This was in rural Kentucky. Most of my friends listened to shit. 
Well, lessee here, that would have been around '71-'72. At that time I was hanging out with either of two good friends who lived next door to each other on Colgate Ave. in Johnstown, PA (and across the street from the family home of Rep. John Murtha, if that matters). Both friends had stereo-equipped basement lairs, and the records we listened to most frequently were:
Jethro Tull – Aqualung; the main reason for its inclusion here is that it was the first album I ever listened to via headphones; practically a trancendental experience. In retrospect, however, I always liked Benefit better
The Who – Who’s Next; I think I got this one mainly because of the badass cover image of the boys zipping up after a good piss. I was shallow, what can I say
Yes – The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge; we had much argument over the merits of prog-rock but we pretty much agreed that Yes and King Crimson were mostly worthy, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Genesis were mostly shite
Allman Brothers – Live at Fillmore East; although our closest relationship to the South was living in south Pennsylvania, we liked to believe that the Allmans somehow represented us. And besides, they were just so frickin’ cool.
The Band – The Band and Stage Fright; could never get over how they sounded simultaneously like a down-home jug band and the most sophisticated jazz outfit
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin III; I knew nothing at all about the blues at the time, but I remember thinking that the segue from the warbling buzz at the end of “Friends” to the insane, backwards-sounding slide riff that leads into “Celebration” was one of the greatest things I ever heard. Maybe it’s just because I got my first real kiss while this was playing.
OOPS!
Van Halen - 1984
Ok, I WANT to list all the cool bands I discovered later, but in truth I grew up in a rural backwards place.
so. . 1987-88
Def Leppard
Metallica
Billy Idol
Falco
Pink Floyd
Near the end of this period I discovered the Cure and the Clash and all those other things that people in normal places already knew of.
We were in that submarine together - you pretty much included my entire playlist except I would have started with the soul / R&B end of the spectrum.
Oh Man - WLAC - Eddie’s Record Shop (if my memory serves me right) - loved it
Guns N’ Roses. Appetite for Destruction. Led Zeppelin (we were old school).
Then Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam came along. Everything changed…
15 or 16? Circa 1980-ish, maybe 79, maybe 81, somewhere in there. High School age anyway.
Dark side of the Moon, side B. Over and over and over and over and freaking’ over again. Then Ted’s girlfriend broke the damn record and we went back to Tangerine Dream, Manheim Steamroller (or would that be Fresh Air? I could never keep it straight), Meatloaf, assorted classical, Nazareth, assorted Folk, Patsy Cline, assorted Southern Rock, assorted “classic” popular rock, Fleetwood Mac, occasional Pop, occasional Blues and once in a while, punk, Jazz and popular country. Never the other kind – Western – except for El Paso. There’s nothing that sends me down memory lane quite like a dozen drunk teenagers singing along to Marty Robbins.
We were an eclectic bunch of little nerds, actually, but we had a lot of fun.
Mid-90’s “alternateens” so we listened exclusively to:
Pearl Jam
Nirvana
Nine Inch Nails
Stone Temple Pilots
The Crow Soundtrack
Then 1995 rolled into 1996 and Ben Folds Five was born. And I made new friends. Friends that listened to Ben Folds Five.
Santo and Johnny – “Sleepwalk”
The Everly Brothers – “All I Have to Do Is Dream”
The Platters - “Twilight Time,” “Only You,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”
The Big Bopper – “Chantilly Lace”
? “Sixteen Candles”
Chuck Berry – “Johnny B. Goode”
Tommy Dorsey – “So Rare”
Johnny Horton – “Battle of New Orleans”
We liked serious music too – Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Chopin – mostly the Romantics.
The Norman Luboff Choir was big. And at night I listened to a lot of music that was really heavy on strings. It was from New Orleans and was either WWL or WLW. It was sponsored by a restaurant and I could never make out the name, but it sounded like “T Per Terries.” This would have been a few years back – almost 50 years.
The Ramones
Nirvana
Sam and Dave (Hold on, I’m Coming)
The Flaming Lips
Leonard Cohen
Bob Dylan
Bob Marley
Mercury Rev
David Bowie
Nina Simone
Billie Holliday
Iggy Pop
Soundtracks of movies we liked (Trainspotting, Reservoir Dogs, Empire Records).
This would have been 1998 and we were a weird little bunch.
I’m still listening to most of the stuff though…
It’s amazing how my friends & I thought we were the only people listening to this stuff. And maybe in our small town we were, but my list is so similar to yours…
The Replacements - Tim & Let It Be
R.E.M. - Life’s Rich Pageant
Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
Police - Outlandos d’Amour
XTC- Skylarking
I’m still not sure how the Police album got stuck in our play list, but those 6 albums we played over and over and over and over.
My friends and I thought that Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime was the greatest thing ever. Other than that, it was a lot of Rush, Maiden & Floyd. My metal head friends & I were a little picky with our choices for head-banging. We stuck with CDs (tapes) like Helloween’s Keeper of the Seven Keys Part 2 and Fates Warning’s Perfect Symmetry.
Oh…I think it was the law when I was 16 to own Def Leppard’s Hysteria (although I liked Pyromania better), so I should add that to the mix.
Good Times…
No, I was living in a (relatively) small town at the time, too, and there was only a very small group of us (we sat at the “punk” table during lunch) who were into this stuff - we’d all buy Creem magazine at the 7-11 and catch up on all the latest “underground” bands. I remember making mix tapes for friends, and they acted like this kind of music was made on Mars or something. I remember being completely shocked when Long’s (a drug store chain out here) had a (cassette) copy of Lifes Rich Pageant for sale.
And hey, Outlandos D’Amour is a kick-ass album (except for “Be My Girl - Sally”). If you’d said Synchronicity, you’d have reason to make excuses.
Something tells me that if we’d been in the same school, we might have ended up sitting at the same lunch table. Thanks for the validation on the Police album, BTW.
If you have seen American Graffati, you know what I was listening to when I was 15. When I was 16 a group came on the scene and sort of changed music forever, the Beatles.
It is hard to believe the difference that one year made in Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Close, but no cigar. Randy’s Record Shop. 
Couldn’t get WLAC in Miami until…at the stroke of midnight, all at once there it would be, as clear as if it was being broadcast from downtown.
"Now with the Randy’s Record Shop Show from Gallatin, Tennessee, here’s…
Those DJ’s, I’ll never forget! Gene Nobles, Hoss Allen aka “The Rockin’ Hossman” and John R. They played stuff like Hank Ballard’s “Work With Me Annie”, “Sexy Ways” and other good stuff the Miami stations wouldn’t play. Their off the wall comments and jokes were great too.
They did neat stuff with ads for Royal Crown Hair dressing and baby chicks. (heh)
Oh, yeah; to answer the OP:
Buddy Holly
Chuck Berry
Elvis
The Platters
The Drifters
Johnny Cash
Johnny Horton
Marty Robbins
Everly Brothers
Jerry Lee Lewis
B.B. King
Jimmy Reed
Lightnin’ Hopkins
John Lee Hooker
Muddy Waters
Zoe, to answer your ?, The Crests made 16 Candles. Best slow dance song evah! (Well, it was if you took your girl to a dance for her 16th birthday. )
I can date my musical taste by the fact that I saw Poison and Warrant at Rupp Arena on my 15th birthday (10/13/1990). That was not at Poison’s peak; they were on the wane by then, and I was transitioning out of hair metal fandom as well.
I was a huge Aerosmith and Def Leppard fan at that point, but I soon went into a serious Clapton-worshipping phase that lasted for a few years.
I turned 16 on September 6, 1983. My musical tastes were out of date but no less deeply felt (or shared with my best buds) for all that:
[ul]
[li]Kansas: my favorite band by far. Discovered them with “Two for the Show” (1979?). Before I was 17 I had acquired every LP, from “Kansas” (1974) to “Drastic Measures” (1983).[/li][li]Supertramp: Crime of the Century (1974), Breakfast in America (1979), Paris (1979)[/li][li]Bands my best bud Rich liked: Triumph, REO Speedwagon, Van Halen[/li][/ul] Good times, good times.
Oh, and we were also band geeks, so…Maynard Ferguson. 
In A Gadda Da Vida