on top of my "black man epiphany" which pretty much involved me staring at this dude's face and studying his details for two hours straight

ok that makes sense yeah that is not normal!

Sigur Ros. Seriously...since their last album came out, they have made me appreciate life more and whenever I feel angry or sad or scared, I just listen to these guys. Even though I can't understand a word they are saying...they are a very monumental band for me. I started off kind of hating them, then went to kind of liking them, and now, they are one of my favorite bands.

linkin park helped me learn to express my emotional troubles through poetry 

ATARI you're so 2003.
This is 2008 bucko.

Which band, dare you ask? When I was a young Mormon and the eldest of five squealing brats, I was rather annoyed and seeking anything but what my parents had to say. Eventually, I found my musical vent. I caught myself actually stopping and listening to something that sounded absolutely blasphemous from a Christian standpoint in a bike shop and adoring it. So, I asked the proprietor, a lifelong friend of my uncle, what was playing.

It turns out we were listening to Depeche Mode's Playing The Angel album. For some odd reason, the lyrics all just made sense to me since I was drifting slowly into the lifestyle of the anti-christ I am today. That, and the music was interesting. However, the lack of female vocalists eventually became dull until I discovered a girl band which seemed questionably lesbian. Tatu.

Once I spent some time listening to the music, I eventually realized I thought it to be beautiful. My mind opened up to a few friends I had shut out because they had become lesbian, and before long, my lifestyle took another turn and I wasn't such a self-sheltered sheep.

Time passed, I found myself to take after some Wiccan and Pagan philosophy and caught myself listening to Helium Vola, something that encouraged this behavior in me. I eventually realized I was fearing my own sense of adventure, and I was fearing having my own opinion on the workings of our world.

A lot of music has not really changed me so much as comforted me while I changed, vented my emotions into others who listen to it and helped me realize my goal is as easy as singing along. One thing will always remain certain. Trance, techno and instrumental elements are ideal for me. They make me feel powerful.

I really don't like it when music people throw around phrases like "the band who changed your life", but I don't think I am overstating it when I say that RHCP changed mine! Seriously, almost every aspect of me and what I think about life has come from when I started listening to that band. I'm not being sarcastic.

I really don't understand why people would say the strokes, or metallica and other bands like that, and people who didn't have the RHCP fill this particular role probably don't get why I like them so much either. I think most people have this kind of attachment to a band, or at least most of the kind of people who come on these forums. I mean, now I realise that really the RHCP are kind of stupid and I'm not endlessly fascinated with everything about them anymore but when I think about them, their life stories (which i totally know), their music and just anything to do with them I get this feeling of excitement and happiness. It's cos they were the first thing in life I really went out to my way to discover for myself, I think. The first thing I had a really big interest in and it formed a lot of templates for how I deal with stuff now. It's impossible to articulate, but I think most people who have their life changing band will understand with me having to.

Maybe this kind of thing comes from needing role models or who knows what. I don't think that really matters, but it's definitely a lot more than just liking the music.

RHCP will probably be influencing me for my whole dang life even if I never listen to them again cos I've been set on that path. I'm pretty happy with it. I mean there are a lot of pitfalls and bad stuff, like the reason I let myself get so deep into alcohol was because the RHCP all had their drug issues and I used to think they were fascinating. I believed John's other universe spirituality stuff, and I thought I needed something like that so I started drinking. I took it way too far and now I got to quit but even my quitting drinking is being informed by John quitting drugs. It all ties in.

So yeah this band changed me a lot and even if I don't love them like I did when I was younger they are still my guys.

ATARI you're so 2003.
This is 2008 bucko.

03'.... those were hard times

It's kinda hard to say seeing as my life is always changing and what not so saying a specific band? No can do. However music has really defined me the past few years. Here's a little story.

In late 2005 I still had horrible taste in music, but I discovered Steve Vai, a guitarist with a finger in every music style around and it really opened my mind to what one guy can do with so many different sounds/style, so naturally through him I discovered Frank Zappa and I am still discovering Frank Zappa three years and 40 CDs later. The guy is the best thing in music. Ever. His comedy, his politics, his very approach to music speaks in levels very few are even near. Being a disenfranchised youth formerly of the suicidal/emo metalhead persuassion this blew my mind and such, he got me interested into music as an art, as an ideal, and how barriers can so easily be broken by music. His slick fluid guitaring is a major influence on my own. He got me into composing seriously, and while the stuff I do is kinda opposite to his music but I'd say what I've learnt and still learn from him is the major input into it.
Through Zappa I got into Freakout music and fusion and jazz and whatnot (and again still,always delving into these) where the openness in the music is just awe inspiring. Thigns lead to another, fusion and freakout lead to prog, prog lead to Canterbury Scene. Be about the time I'd left GW last year due to whatever troubles, and was really down. Kevin Ayers laid back approach to life became an ideal, but more importantly the acid fueld phillosophy of Gong frontman Daevid Allen really knocked some sense into me about how I see the world, and how I can see the world if I wanted. His lucid dream like sense of reality and purely open optimistic view of the world are things I am heading towards, and have helped me in a great many ways come to terms with so much.
Thanks to Daevid Allen I got really into space-rock lately as well. I've made one ambiant/new-age album and working on another (both instrumental experiences based on visions I've had around these new ideals I'm discovering), whilst also working on an Acid Mothers Temple influenced project. Discovering people like Zappa, Ayers and Allen allowed me to realise that I can be myself, and not need to compromise to other people's expectations, I can persue my own interests and passions and not pay attention to naysayers. It's changed my whole world outlook, my music outlook and as a painter I am finding myself being more influenced by what music I am listening to than the objective of the painting.

To be honest while I tend to stay quite far away from GW's music club, the whole DIY music attitude this place has is absolutely astounding and strongly inspirational, as an extremely amature musician myself, to see people like ATARI and DJ Soup releasing so many projects, seemingly uncompromising, it's really cool.

Yeah seriously Kaworu, those are some pretty unexpected choices! (okay except Steve Vai)

I'm still down with Priest's early stuff and some Maiden/bruce. I don't really listen to it much at all anymore though but it's probably amoung the only metal I would listen to.

i'd have to say blink-182. i don't know, i ended up getting a LOT of their shit. it was back in middle school so my even younger teenage music taste was crazy. idk then i get into a lot of "punk" bands and shit.

now my taste has improved! but some old bands still stick to me so whatever i guess it's more of a i can't shake them thing, since they were around when i was younger. idk though, now some of them sit in my music library but i don't actually listen to them often. i listen to stuff like modest mouse and i was playing nirvana albums on the way back home from a trip yesterday.

but yeah idk just teenage foundations. like i haven't listened to a blink-182 song in over a year, unless you count playing All the Small Things on Rock Band haha.

My life was never really significantly changed by music, but the closest would have to be Big Black.
My first reaction was something like "What!? You can do that?" Changed my whole perspective on rock music.

The Mars Volta - When I first heard De-Loused In The Comatorium in 2003, my mind was completely blown. These guys opened me up to the music that I like now, and made me much more open-minded towards music.