When I was about 6 I used to recite the lyrics to 'Let's make the water turn black' on the way to school and back.

We had a Zappa compilation album 'Strictly Commercial' on CD (still got it actually) and along with many other albums SC and LMTWTB was what really did it for me.

At one point apparently I wanted to take the CD into school and play it for show and tell at my primary school when I queried further into this situation my folks just said, ''you should of seen your teachers face when Bobby Brown came on, it was halarious".

Incredibly boring non-story incoming.

I was browsing Youtube for some other music and bumped into "Lotus" by Dir En Grey. One listen and I had found my new favorite band. The end. Sleep well, kids.

I discovered most of them either through the library/book store (my library had a very good selection of CDs, same with Half-Priced Books) or on the snooty goth music message boards on AOL forever ago. I really cannot remember which band I was solely obsessed with first, though. I do remember buying This Mortal Coil's Filigree & Shadow at Half-Priced Books and falling in love with it and listening to it non-stop for at least 6 months (Friends coming over? Ignore them and lay in the dark with 500 candles lit with "Come Here My Love" playing on repeat instead!) which led me to Dead Can Dance. (A similar thing happened with Robbie Basho and Tim Buckley not long after, in part due to having heard TMC's version of Song to the Siren. There was a time where, instead of going to my theater class in high school I'd just sit in the empty auditorium and languish while listening to Buckley and TMC instead.) And I'm pretty sure I just came out of the womb liking Depeche Mode so it's harder to pinpoint where I started with that one.

HPB is on point, just bought a couple of gems from them today. They got good deals on everything.

I was 14 years old and high on Frank Zappa when I started to branch out by googling stuff like "artists like Frank Zappa." That led me to Soft Machine and The Residents which I immediately took to, but during the process I had downloaded this album with a pink cover. I decided to throw it on and felt gross. These dudes were just trying to be weird and I had my oh so special 14 year old time. I could've been masturbating. So I did.

Later on I came around to Trout Mask Replica and gave it a thorough listen after seeing it pop up a lot during experimental music discussions. I still didn't really dig it that much but Hair Pie Bake 2 really stuck with me with the ways that the guitars would trade off. I started thinking that there actually was something to this. I think that my relationship with the album was mostly listening to it occasionally but zeroing in on the tracks that I could wrap my head around, but what really brought me and TMR together was a trip I took with my friend and bandmate Stryder. We took the train to Northern California to see some of my family who agreed to let him come along and he brought a headphone splitter. We listened to it the whole train ride up and would listen to it after taking walks to explore the greenery nomsayin. I really began to fall in love with Frownland and quickly spiraled out of control with my adoration of the album.

About 6 months later, I joined MB.

My top favourite artist/group was for almost twenty years (roughly from 1973 thru 1989) Blue Öyster Cult. I fell in love with their music in 1973 because it was so gosh-darn weird, but at the same time melodic. I was in a mental hospital at the time, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. And the weirdness of BÖCs music fascinated me. So a mental illness disposed me to fall in love with the music of Blue Öyster Cult!

Well, way back in the dinosaur days in [BC-before computers] I was listening to the radio, and a song came on that blew me away.... I Want A Love I Can See, and I was hooked, and stull am.