Do You Remember The First Time?

I stumbled on one of those 'Myspace quiz' style things on last.fm the other day. For the most part it was fairly pointless but I found myself enjoying trying to remember the details when it asked me 'When did you first hear artist x?'. Here are some answers recorded for posterity.

Super Furry Animals. I'm pretty sure I heard them first circa 1996 via the God! Show Me Magic single on a listening post in the big Our Price that used to sit on Culver Square. I didn't buy the single. I think I told myself I didn't like it, but was probably just justifying spending my lunch money on some actual food for a change. I have an oddly vivid memory of this, but it seems such a random thing to recall that I'm not entirely sure it's real.

The Apples in Stereo. A similar tale, but this time is was hearing The Bird That You Can't See over the instore sound system in the old Virgin in Cardiff. this time I bought the single immediately. It must have been about 2002

Pavement. I rented Brighten the Corners from Colchester library in the late 90s to check out this band I kept reading about. I didn't think much of it as first, except for Stereo, which was oddly familiar and also amazing. The familiarity makes me think I may have heard them somewhere before, but I can't be sure.

I found bands I've got into more recently don't hold the same strong memories of that first experience. It's all downloaded from a blog on a whim and blends into a weird musical nothingness with everything else I've downloaded that week. Songs I love these days are kind of growers that worm their way out of the otherwise averageness of my hard drive. I kind of miss that old feeling of being blown away from the very first listen. I guess it does still happen, but there's never a story behind it anymore.