What music defines which parts of your life?

[Taverner]

For me, different music has defined different parts of my life. When I was in college (late 80's/early 90's) I did college radio, so a lot of the underground grunge/protopunk stuff defined that period of life for me. Anytime I hear The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Screaming Trees or Alice In Chains it takes me back to that point in my life.

Then in my Peace Corps days, we listened to a lot of Phish, Grateful Dead and Stone Roses. I can't hear "I am the Ressurection" without thinking of barrelling down a Thai highway at breakneck speeds in a beat up bus (and the smell of karo root cooking in the sun.)

What about you?

[Tosca]

1. Hmm...

Dylan, Lennon, Baez, Mitchell, Morrison. The great ones. The music that lasts and lasts. Immortal, sublime.

[Political_Junkie]

2. Was never a Gratefu Dead fan 'til

I spent a summer in the Colorado Rockies. One day we picked up a hitch-hiker and he asked us to play his Dead CD. It was a perfectly beautiful day, all us fellow travelers bonded as we traveled through the mountains. To this day, I love the Dead and think of the Rockies and that summer whenever I hear them.

[Lautremont]

3. Summer of 1990 was an all-Pixies summer

I had a friend who somehow programmed his cd player to repeat the first four notes of "Debaser" over and over again. That was a bit much even for me.

[Robb]

4. My love life is defined by clown music.

Elephant walk, etc. :D

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

5. Janet Jackson, New Order, Bronski Beat, Lloyd Cole

my coming out years in California during the mid 80s.

The, for my early Ohio years, Hothouse Flowers, Waterboys Fishermens Blues, Indigo Girls...stuff like that.

[southpaw]

6. 80's hair metal....

pretty much sums up my life from around 83 up to about 88...

[bleowheels]

7. I worked at college radio in the late 80's, early 90's too. I'm...

35 now but i still love the Replacements, Early R.E.M. (and still like them now), the Pixies, the Stone Roses, the Wonder Stuff, New Order, the Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen and Camper Van Beethoven-just to name a few Those 80's college bands defined me then and I still like so many of them.

Today, I have discovered so many bands that remind of those 80's bands. Bands like Longwave, the Stills, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the Rapture, the Walkmen and Franz Ferdinand. I also like Wilco and too many others to name.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

8. Good question!..................

Youth: Beatles, Paul McCartney and Wings (particularly "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey"), Steely Dan, Al Stewart, KISS and more 70's radio nuggets than you can shake a stick at.

Late grade school/Jr. High: The Who, Pink Floyd (got "The Wall" the year it was released for an Easter gift) and more Beatles.

High School: R.E.M., solo Robert Plant (particularly "Presence of Moments" LP), Prince, Lou Reed, Talking Heads and U2 (lots of U2).

College: Camper Van Beethoven, They Might Be Giants, Blue Öyster Cult, Black Crowes, Peter Gabriel and Screaming Trees.

Good times, good times.

[flamingyouth]

9. High school: MC5, 13th Floor Elevators, Velvet Underground

It was all a protest against stupid, plastic new wavey shit that permeated everything.

College - much of the same, add to the mix the Stooges, the Pixies, Radio Birdman, all the good Seattle bands from the late '80s and early '90s.

Post-college/early marriage - I was totally into proto-punk, like Rocket from the Tombs, Electric Eels, Styrenes, all that kick-ass Cleveland stuff, as well as the Pebbles/Nuggets comps, the Droogs, anything and everything off "Saturday Night Pogo," and '60s Northwest bands, the unknown stuff like the Bumps "Please Come Down."

Mid-marriage - Swedish shit like Soundtrack of Our Lives, Hellacopters, all eras of the Nomads.

Later marriage, I succumbed back into the music of my youth. I realized this lately about my musical tastes: I tend to really like songs where at some point (either early on or before the guitar solo), someone yells, "LOOK OUT!" (a la "Loose," by the Stooges).