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Stopped me from listening to crap music as a 12 year old and set me off...

...is a good call tho. opened doorways to literature for me as well, along with Sonic Youth and their heavy referencing.

Screamadelica opened me up to all things electronic, altho i don't think i picked that up until 92/93.

it was good being a sponge.

if it weren't for I Feel Love, Jean Michel Jarre, Depeche Mode, then Curve and MBV wouldn't have followed.

I'd say The Cure as they have enough back-catalogue for me to keep finding new reasons to get obsessed and I've been following their trail into lots of post-punk and 80s stuff.

The heights of their ideas and their absence after they broke up makes me strive for something that I am not certain of finding.

Who were my band when I was 14-17 years old. Whilst Morrissey has become a bit of an embarrassment now, his influence on me at the time was a pretty positive one I think.

Never looked back since

acted as my gateway from XFM / The Hits to the world of 'independent music' or whatever musical culture i engage in now

-Modest Mouse - Made me realize you don't have to love where you live, and that there was no shame in being from a shitty small town that you hate (I likely owe Isaac Brock my life)
-The White Stripes - Made me realize that the guitar is incredible
-The Postal Service - Made me okay with leaving a place I'd lived all my life
-Death Cab for Cutie - Helped me bond with the first person I ever loved
-The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree is responsible for me coming to terms with the abuse in my own life (I
-Radiohead - Taught me that bands can be fluid and ever changing.

I've written long-form essays on all of these bands (except for White Stripes), and I feel like it's some of the best writing I've ever produced.

When I was younger I loved the tunes, as I got older the production basically made me want to become a producer.

maybe Little Richard. Yep, definitely. You?

got into them as a angsty teenager, I did like reading and dabbled in politics but they really made me want to read and think. Came slightly too late though in a way, I had already gone down the IT / science route in school and career ideas so cut out history and suchlike.

As for music, weirdly it would be Green Day. I was basically purely into British Indie around the Britpop era, then heard Dookie and them singing perky songs in American accents just seemed really exciting and interesting compared to the latest Suede record or whatever. From there I swiftly moved onto a whole swathe of pop-punk, then 70s punk, then hardcore, post-hardcore, post-punk and everything that branches off that from Sonic Youth to Fugazi to whatever.

In some parallel universe I never watched 'All The Small Things' on CD:UK and instead pretended to like More Fire Crew with everyone else at school, starting a years-long spiral which ends with me living the life of a Plan B music extra.

Also, I'm a puerile idiot.

If it hadn't been for them I'd probably still be listening to Pato Banton and Inner Circle.

First music I heard that wasn't 'perfect' in it's sound quality and recording style.

When I first heard that Burundi beat of the drums, aged 12, I was sold.

Kings Of The Wild Frontier was my first ever album purchase.

Seeing the Iron Maiden video on TOTP for Run To The Hills opened my ears to heavier music, which I still love to this day.

if it wasnt for them, it wouldve taken me a lot longer to discover the good stuff, like miles davis, funkadelic, sly stone, can, david axelrod, stooges, mc5, etc blah blah

who I got in to in '99 at 15, when I responded to the heaviness and atmosphere and it set me down the path of loving rock music. The release of White Pony the next year then obliterated most of the other rock stuff I was just getting in to; it was complex, brooding, pretty and violent all in one and suddenly the straightforward aggression of their contemporaries wasn't enough. I was suddenly open to so much more. Mogwai probably came next, then Godspeed, then myriad other avenues, but if it wasn't for White Pony I don't think I would have 'got' them.

Hearing Blue Room on acid opened up a new dimension and path for me. I became more receptive to more experimental/weirder stuff and woke up a bit more to the potential and power of music and sound.

Endless days of sitting round my mates playing Goldeneye/Mario Kart and listening to Hello Rockview, Ixnay and Enema of the State. Less Than Jake are a bunch of metallers, playing ska punk, so that got me into metal and stuff, plus they covered some Slayer songs which is awesome and released a split EP with Megadeth.Also, discovering all the other punk bands they played with/same label expanded my music taste to more bands who sing about trains, cigarettes and getting drunk.

Blink 182 - like DanielKelly said, I'm also a member of the puerile idiot brigade.

Beforehand I used to listen to Fat Boy Slim, The Prodigy and the only Manics album I've ever owned (Everything Must Go). So yeah, pop-punk has a lot to answer for.

Are a popular choice, but with good reason. There seem to be so many kids who got into them through FIFA06 and that really good Premier League highlights video. They were my gateway into the heroin addiction that is being into music.

I probably wouldn't be into music at all if I'd never bought that copy of FIFA.

two weeks prior to hearing them bat out of hell 2 was my idea of perfection..things changed quickly