Music you discovered later in life that totally blew your mind

General Music Discussion
#1

I think the title is self explanatory. What if any music did you discover later in life (past your teens to mid 20s) that absolutely floored you and made you wish you’d discovered it much earlier?

They say people stop discovering new music after 30 but I call BS on that.

One of my picks I just discovered in the past week or so.

Toy Matinee
Sort of a supergroup of monstrous session player talent masterminded by Patrick Leonard and produced by Bill Bottrell (produced some of MJ’s Dangerous it’s his voice you hear on the rap bridge of “Black Or White”) who worked seminal 80s pop albums such as Madonna and Michael Jackson.

Kevin Gilbert was the singer and played guitar and keys on the record, he died tragically young in the mid 90s, death by misadventure. I’d describe him as the American version of Steven Wilson. Very proggy leaning on everything I’ve heard him in his solo album Thud is highly recommended for those who like pop/singer-songwriter type music with prog leanings fans of Peter Gabriel, Steven Wilson, and Kate Bush will find a lot to love.

Gilbert was famously/infamously involved in the Tuesday Night Music Club with Bill Bottrell (who produced Toy Matinee’s lone album), David Baerwald, David Ricketts, (their David + David album is highly recommended great piece of mid 80s AOR) Brian MacLeod, and Sheryl Crow (who was his girlfriend for a time and played keys with a live incarnation of Toy Matinee). This led to Sheryl Crow’s debut album and her infamously acrimonious split after the album started making waves, with all the members of TNMC aside from Bottrell whom she later reconciled with and worked with on later projects. I grew up listening to loads of 90s Sheryl Crow as she’s one of my dad’s favorite artists and I saw he live on her tour for her second self-titled album in around 1996 or 1997, don’t remember much as I was but a youngster then just remember being obsessed with the bongos on “Everyday is a Winding Road” at that age. The TNMC later worked together on solo records from Susanna Hoffs (of Bangles fame) and Linda Perry.

Tim Pearce played guitar on the record. Here he is discussing it with the players involved.

It’s a masterpiece. No bad songs. If I had to pick one it would be “Queen of Misery” which was supposedly about Madonna. The bassline from Guy Pratt is masterful.

Needless to say I’ve been listening to this on repeat for the past several days.

Another artist is Coroner whom I discovered a few years ago. Very technical proggy thrash metal. Mental Vortex is their masterpiece but they have no bad albums. Power trio, like Rush fused with Megadeth.

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#2

Big fan of Thud, which I learned about on the old Bumblefoot forum ages ago. Great record, utterly tragic what happened with Kevin.

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#3

I think it takes more work as you get older, and you won’t put that work in unless you really about music. So, for most people that’s probably accurate. For musicians and music lovers, though BS.

Woods End is a Scandinavian sort of dark moody folk rock, I guess, band that I discovered within the last several years, and their “I” has been in HEAVY rotation for me. They have like 50 monhtly listeners on Spotify and I just became thweir 18th youtube subscriber, but I think this stuff is brilliant:

And, Nick Johnston is one of my favorite contemporary guitarists, only got into him within the last five years or so.

He’s had a huge impact on my writing, I think, in part because, well, I’m a Strat lover at heart and tend to favor somewhat lower gain tones for shreddy stuff, though with bluesy influences, and he’s a really good reminder that, well, I CAN write chiller, more contempative stuff, and not feel the need to always write heavier music if it’s istrumental gutiar music.

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#4

For me it was really getting into the old school style of death metal. I was already a fan of the melodic era of Carcass and the progressive era of Death from my mid-20s or so, but going back to their first three records and also discovering the Stockholm Swedish bands like Entombed, Dismember, etc. impacted me so much I wound up starting a band in that style.

Guitar player-wise, Yngwie has pretty much consistently been my #1 but in more recent years I really got into some guitarists I was more mildly aware of in my youth, but really gravitated towards them in my mid-late 30s, such as Michael Schenker, Uli Roth, Gary Moore, and especially Marty Friedman. I was already a big Jason Becker / Cacophony fan since my late teens, but it was only since discovering Marty was a USX player and thinking I could learn some of his lines that my appreciation for him grew to the point where I’d consider him a major favorite / influence at this point.

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#5

I love this cover

I believe that people like you will listen to new music for life—and me too—but I think that most people settle for something in their teens and early 20’s and then age with their artists.

But one thing that might change everything is AI DJs, like this one on Spotify. So far it seems to suck, but if they keep at it, perhaps it will start getting good…

I was trying to think about financial incentives here. If I am renting music, it’s fine if somebody wants to listen to Madonna for life. However, if I am selling CDs, etc. (are they even a thing?!), it’s great to introduce people to new artists. So it will be interesting to see what happens next.

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#6

For me it’s Alkaloid - tech death/extreme prog metal

I’ve often wondered how much of an influence hearing stuff in my teens was. My absolute favourite album ever is one I heard at 16 (Nevermore - This Godless Endeavour), but what if I heard Alkaloid back then, and Nevermore at 28?

Would Nevermore’s still become my favourite ever, or would it be just a very good album?

I’ve talked with a bunch of co-workers (25-35 years old) about various works of media they love, and it’s amusing how many are things they experienced in their teens.

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#7

One of the things that aided me in finding a lot of new music was the period of time where I primarily used pandora due to its integration into the Xbox One. I made genre stations based on a few bands and discovered so much from this.

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#8

I’m also a long time fan of Kevin Gilbert, since Toy Matinee first came out.

Here’s a fun fact….I used to go see THUD play here in L.A. in the mid-90s, and for a number of shows, his guitarist was Russ Parrish, aka Satchel from Steel Panther!

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#9

Russ is a beast! I’ve also read that Nick D’Virgilio played with Kevin - I was a big fan of Spock’s Beard for a while.

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#10

He introduces Russ in this interview/performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGDDNQZ5PHg

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#11

Bluegrass.

Started listening to it after buying an acoustic guitar 3 years ago. It’s mesmerizing.

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#12

Completely agree! The current Bluegrass scene is really exciting as well, so many killer players!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to this performance, incredible musicianship:

#13

I’ve only just discovered late era Black Sabbath, literally this week. Having only listened to the first 5/6 albums previously. Heaven & Hell is incredible. My favourite album at the moment!

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#14

I highly recommend the Tony Martin era albums especially The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross, and Tyr. Highly underrated. The four they did for I.R.S. records were recently remastered about a month ago.

This might be Iommi’s best solo.

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#15

Mine was Jason Becker, tho it is perhaps an extension of my youth. He did everything I loved with an extra flair. His Als story just added to the admiration I think. I discoverd Jasons music around 31.

Though I also have to add Van Halen, Found about them/Him a few years after buying a guitar, 28 or so, and been obsessed ever since https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qcQ34iTswY

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#16

Oh, good call on Chris Thile - “The Phosporescent Blues” floored me when I was introduced to it 5-6 years ago.

This is nuts - the opening arpeggios are probably easier on mandolin than guitar, to be fair, but technique aside, this is harmonically pretty damned cool, too, and Thile makes it look effortless, playing it while singing.

Pandora changed their algorithm at some point, and I think this is a point keeping in mind when talking about “AI DJs.” I remember in the… mid 2000s, their “music genome project” seemed like it was run pretty literally, where it would take various characteristics, and with no other filtering return stuff that shared those characteristics. I found a TON of good music that way - in particular I had a “Bands That Sound Like Soundgarden But Aren’t” station that was a fertile ground, and introduced me to a few awesome rock bands I still love - Acroma, Manmade God, Slave to the System all come to mind.

Then, somewhere along the way, they reconfigured it so rather than their algorithm taking various characteristics about the feed song or band and giving you stuff based on that, they made it “smarter,” and decided that if you wanted bands that sound like Soundgarden, you probably want to hear Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, and Bush. Which, arguably, made it “better” for 99% of users. But it made it really shitty for finding new music. I understand at some point they reintroduced some sort of an option to choose between the two approaches, but I think it’s still important to remember that any “AI” solution is probably going to be optimized along much the same way as what Pandora already did with what’s arguably a simple form of AI, and that it’s going to trend towards a “give the people what they want” solution, rather than some sophisticated tool that’s going to help you find new bands you don’t know similar to old bands you love.

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#17

Shame on me as a groove lover, but Prince.

I always knew that he was a fantastic musician, but never paid close attention to his music. Now that I’ve been listening to him carefully, I’ve been constantly blown away by any new recording or concert I consume.

Just to share an example, this is rated R guitar playing (on his famous cheap Hohner Tele clone, btw):

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#18

If that’s the video I’m thinking about, the no-look guitar toss at the end… balls of steel.

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#19

Yep, that’s the video. Love his badass attitude. :sunglasses:

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#20

I’ll add Demon Hunter to my personal list. Wow as a person of faith they really hit the marks. They have that x factor that a band like Flyleaf had when I was in my teens and an ardent atheist/agnostic. I think it’s more they talk about the struggles that come with faith. It’s the same reason I find Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love to be one of the most compelling albums ever written on the subject of relationships.