What did you listen to at first? Options

[Preyobrazhenya]

How about some stories of what we started to listen to when we stopped listening exclusively to devotee music?

I still like a lot of the music that I was listening to right before moving in: The Clash, The Cure, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Sex Pistols etc.. In my earlier years, I was more of a Beatles, Stones and Who fan and I still love the Beatles and the Who.

One of the first things that my ex and I did when we moved out (and we were still chanting our rounds and doing temple service) was to buy cassettes of all the missed albums. Soon we were listening to Beatles, Stones, Traffic, Hendrix, Cream/Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, etc., in addition to my New Wave stuff. One of the first groups I really started to like at that time was the Smiths. They had just come out with Meat Is Murder.

There were a few occasions where I listened to stuff in the Temple. I remember one or two days in Gita Nagari when I was burned out that I took this old Rolling Stones tape I found in my trunk and went out into the woods with the tape recorder and tape and listened to a good part of Exile on Main Street. There were also some bootleg tunes - one of Keith Richards doing Brown Sugar with Eric Clapton on slide guitar - that version was awesome. I listened to that as well.

Later in Boston, we had Hurricane Gloria and all the devotees took that opportunity to listen to the radio so they would be able to keep up on Hurricane news (yeah, right). I got to hear the The Cure, Duran Duran (yuk) and Julian Lennon (which freaked me out because he sounded so much like his dad). I had headphones and would occasionally listen to the radio at night if I was bored.

[0madhavadasa0]

Hmm...I never stopped listening to "non-devotional" music at all, so I wouldn´t know anything about it.

[Brainiac]

I wonder why no one here likes Elvis? Is he just too naff or something?

[Chanahari]

Hmm...I never stopped listening to "non-devotional" music at all, so I wouldn´t know anything about it. 

I'm just the exact opposite - I didn't listen to any music before becoming a devotee.

But then I know that I was always a strange one. I didn't watch TV either.

[Dhyana]

I'm just the exact opposite - I didn't listen to any music before becoming a devotee.

But then I know that I was always a strange one. I didn't watch TV either.

Good grief. What did you do then? Suck your toe?

Trying to go back to see which music was first, after I stopped limiting myself to ISKCON music... Well, I listened to traditional Indian music, ragas and stuff. Bismillah Khan... then semi-traditional, like Ravi Shankar.

Then one day, an ex-devotee friend came to visit and gave my husband a tape of The Moody Blues. We put it on that night before going to sleep. I heard the first tone of the riff opening Nights in White Satin and I was floored, with tears all over my face. It was the memories of that song from when I was 17.

That got me hooked, and I began hearing in my mind all kinds of music I had listened to back in my teens. Songs came back and haounted me, giving no peace. I started chasing the music, some tunes I did not even know who sang, had to find that out first.

After lots of detective work I got Clannad. Then a collection of synth classics from the mid-80's. Deep Purple. The Doors. Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel, and so it went. Some I couldn't find in Sweden, had to go to Poland for that -- Polish groups and singers, some old and obscure but beloved. Also there I finally located a collection of old Soviet songs in original, including Vstavay, strana ogromnaya. That one gives me goosebumps each time I hear it. Ridiculous, considering it is so full of propaganda.

There seems to be something special about the music one listened to or sang in one's teens. A late priming or what?

[0madhavadasa0]

I have always loved: Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, KISS , Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and Indian classical music...

[Brainiac]

Now you're talking. Black Sabbath rules! Hendrix is excellent.

But while we're talking of re-entry into the mainstream etc., I admit that I am puzzled by the development of my liking for music with plentiful guitars. At first I was entertained by Red Hot Chili Peppers, and this progressed to Jimi Hendrix and heavy metal that included Black Sabbath (Mr Crowley), Motorhead (Ace of Spades), Slayer and Slipknot (The Shape). I'm puzzled how my liking grew from effusion of Chili Peppers to hardcore metal, but what the hey, as long as it has guitars its cool with me.

I still love listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers; 'Under The Bridge', 'By The Way', 'Universally Speaking', 'Aeroplane', 'My Friends', 'Road Tripping' and 'Californication' are all great songs and especially for the guitars!

Note to Moderators: The 'guitar' smiley does not appear in the emoticon menu.

[0madhavadasa0]

But my all time favourite band is: Type O Negative! Check them out... Songs like Love you To Death, Christian Woman, Haunted, and Green Man. Very good and atmospheric goth rock/metal. A band that has been inspired by Black Sabbath, The Doors and the Beatles

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[Milla]

Preyobrazhenya,

I listened and listen to more or less the same groups that you mention. The Smiths, of course. And Nick Cave and the Velvet Underground.

When I finally left the temple I was nine months pregnant and with the arrival of my first child didn't have the time and the opportunity to delve into music. At that time my husband introduced me to the Cocteau Twins and other similar Gothic groups, and it was love at first sound for me. And Elizabeth Fraser's enigmatic lyrics matched perfectly my confused and scattered thoughts at that time. She even has one song where she just sings the Latin names of a class of butterflies.

Some time later I tried Pink Floyd, but it wasn't the same. Except for a few songs, I found them not at all so special as in my teens. Same with the Beatles . Same with Nrivana. What really did it for me was the Doors. With them I reconnected immediately to my teenage self and was so happy and relieved to feel echos of my teenage despair when I listened to them again.

A very suprising musical experience was my newly found taste for classical music which I used to hate because it was shoved down my ears mercilessly by my mother. One day, I saw a box of 20 CD's at the supermarket and felt that I should buy it. I started listening to them all the time and enjoying the beauty of that eternal music. I am even contemplating going to a concert, and that was the worst punishment I could imagine when I was a preteen!

Dhyana, you are 100 percent right about "Вставай, страна огромная"! My father used to play it full-blast at the beach, with majestic lime rocks and emerald sea as a visual background. He said that whoever wrote that hymn was a genuis. I can compare it only to Bach's Toccata and Fuga (organ piece).

[Chanahari]

Good grief. What did you do then? Suck your toe?

I didn't know boredom. I was very asocial - still I am -, and didn't explore the "subcultures" around me. So I mostly read then, and this is also true now - I use web too just as a big book.

(I still watch TV very rarely now. )

[Preyobrazhenya]

Good grief. What did you do then? Suck your toe?

I didn't know boredom. I was very asocial - still I am -, and didn't explore the "subcultures" around me. So I mostly read then, and this is also true now - I use web too just as a big book.

(I still watch TV very rarely now. )

I was never much of a TV fan. We have cable only so my son can watch ESPN 24/7. Of course, I do enjoy some shows - I have liked the animation shows such as the Simpsons, South Park, Daria & King of the Hill and I also like most of the Star Treks (haven't seen Voyager or Enterprise, though). I LOVE British Comedy - but I prefer to watch these on videos so I don't have to endure commercials.

How many of us back in the 80's (or any time for that matter), while still full time ISKCON devotees would go to visit parents and spend the whole time watching MTV or movies or whatever? I remember one such visit to my ex-in-laws when there was a Monty Python marathon on PBS. Both my ex and I indulged to the fullest - the both of us being big Python fans.

I remember the first non-devotee novel I read - Clan of the Cave Bear. I was hooked and still love the entire "Earth's Children" series.

[0Over_n_out0]

There was just something about Return to Sender (Elvis) that I liked.

[sarasvati_river]

I was raised in ISKCON but my parents were such big music fans that they were adamant that we kids listened to non-devotional music. I thank my dad for my classic rock education, and my mom for my classical tastes.

However, when my parents stopped picking my music for me, I started getting into more non-American-mainstream music. Most of the stuff I listen to these days is European or Japanese. European metal is so much better than American.

[0Over_n_out0]

I'm also about early 7 Seconds.

[Kalisurfer]

My love for heart felt roots music never failed to move this soul, be it before, during or after the temple years. This type of music can take the form of classical, world, ethnic, rock, jazz, Bluegrass and anything in between.

Music has always had this spiritual dimension to it growing up. Listening to music that I liked was a way of transcending into a state that was so different than the everyday reality of living a working class neighborhood of Detroit in the sixties. My first foray into music that moved me was listening to my mother’s old 78’s, which were mostly big band music, Polka’s with some early rock and roll, such as Ray Charles and Little Richard. So it was not hard to fall for the sounds of early rock and roll & soul that produced Motown and the likes of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Kinks made the revolution in sound and lifestyle even more profound and the start of teenage life totally fab and groooovy, not to mention a change in dress, talk and longer hair.

Seeing local bands such as Bob Seegar, Ted Nugent, Alice Cooper, MC5, Iggy and the Stooges before their fame primed me for the hard stuff and liking the big acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Velvet Underground, Who, John Mayall and Cream easy to adjust to. Finding the source of the Blues being instrumental to all the new bands I liked, it was easy to go to the source and like Lightning Hopkins, Muddy Waters and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Once the Beatles broke up, George Harrison’s first solo album’ All Things Must Past’ album brought Eastern Philosophy and Krsna into my consciousness, which led to Ravi Shankar and classical Indian music.

The second wave of British Rockers, such as Led Zepplin, the Who, Black Sabbath soothed the need to rock heavy and prepare for the journey into David Bowie and Brian Eno, rock with an edge into experimental sounds and directions.

Once the overproduction of sound infused Rock and Roll, it was easy to go into the Realm of New Wave and Punk; listening to the Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Blondie, Clash, English Beat, Police, U2 and the of course Reggae.

This is when I moved into the temple, but I did keep my tapes and albums. I loved Kirtans and Bhajans and no doubt, a rip roaring Kirtan equaled my lust for head banging rock and roll, but I did find a need to sneak out in a car with a cassette player, which led to listening to anything I could get my hands on that still gave me the thrill of being able to go that place inside that transcended the reality at hand that was negative.

Today, I listen to anything that moves the soul and it is again any music that is inspired and not overproduced. Music by Yo La Tengo, Billy Bragg, White Stripes, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Keys, Cake, Beck, Bowie, the Decemberist, Floorian, Radiohead, Wilco, Von Bondies, the Waxwings, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and on and on and on, for the beat goes on!

Good music is just amazing stuff, it comes from the place inside that all good spiritual things come from and it is hard to resist, even when the supposedly spiritually pure call your favorites tamasic and full of maya.

[Tapati]

I was raised in ISKCON but my parents were such big music fans that they were adamant that we kids listened to non-devotional music. I thank my dad for my classic rock education, and my mom for my classical tastes.

However, when my parents stopped picking my music for me, I started getting into more non-American-mainstream music. Most of the stuff I listen to these days is European or Japanese. European metal is so much better than American.

American metal is definitely rather sad now. It was a bad time to bring back headbanger's ball.

What European metal do you like? Maybe we should all start looking there for the good stuff.

[Tapati]

I've been eyeing this topic ever since it began, but kept putting off my answer because it is such a big subject for me. I see in Kalisurfer's answer many groups I love (and some I haven't heard of--cool, something to investigate).

I also grew up working class with dips into welfare class during my childhood. I loved music from a young age, listening to what was available at home-classic country and western. I listened to Marty Robbins' Devil Woman over and over again until I knew the words. I have a good (not great) voice and sang all the time. In school I joined chorus groups and performed several times a year as a 1st soprano. I wanted to learn an instrument but we never had the money for that. I loved pianos and whenever I came into contact with one I'd be mesmerized and plunk out tunes as best I could with no training. I had no idea about chords but I have a good ear so I could pick out the right notes for simple melodies.

I progressed to Aretha Franklin and the realm of 60s soul courtesy of my Aunt Virginia, who married my Uncle Clyde, an African American, when I was 8. I remember singing along to "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!" My mom was enticed into buying Aretha Franklin's "Lady Soul" album and I pretty much wore it out and could sing it all by heart.

Of course I listened to rock music also courtesy of my babysitters and in the 60s was listening to Beatles and all of the other current bands, Elvis, whatever was on the radio then. I was buying singles by then but still in grade school, so I didn't have the money for albums. The sole exception: "The Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy" which was a cheesy production capitalizing on Star Trek's popularity. I memorized the Desiderata from his spoken rendition of it.

I didn't collect Beatles albums until they had split up. In Junior High I began to listen to them more and more and began buying their albums until I had every one, then I started buying their solo albums. Mostly I loved George and John's, as they fed my two sides, spiritual and political. I began reading about Hinduism from listening to George's albums, especially Living in the Material World and All Things Must Pass. My friend Carolyn and I celebrated our first Janmastami before even hearing about devotees.

I also bought a few Elton John albums.

I was desperately poor, so I also taped music off the radio whenever I could, many of the groups playing in the early 70s. But I was a fanatic about the Beatles. We collected books about them also, Carolyn and I, and had a scrap album, posters, the whole bit.

I gave them all up when I joined the temple.

In the brahmacarini ashrama there was no possibility to listen to anything, but when we went out we'd hear the radio played in public and my ears would perk up. I did love singing bhajans and was often singing most of the day, so I wasn't really starved for music. In Chicago we had a visitor named Kausalya dasi and she had the most amazing voice. Somewhere I still have a very old tape of her singing. Perhaps Bhaktavasya remembers her.

In L.A. I lived in an apartment with my first husband and yes, we listened to music and began to tape stuff off the radio and listen to the radio. Later we began to buy tapes and I went through a Led Zeppelin phase. It was the disco period and I heard it on the radio but didn't like much of it, and tried to find what non-disco music was out there.

In the 80s we had the hair bands...in retrospect they look so funny. I was in my early 20s then. I listened to r & b, Heart, Jethro Tull, The Who, Yes, Robert Plant's solo albums, Def Leppard, Foreigner, Laura Branigan, Michael Jackson, Journey, Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mack, Santana (from childhood, really), Police, Steve Winwood, Billy Idol, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Talking Heads, Culture Club, Asia,...that's all that comes to mind immediately. In the late 80s I also discovered women's music as well as pagan artists.

Oh, I see I have to go--I am meeting my husband--will continue later as my tastes continue to expand...

[0Srijiva0]

I am relaxing a little and I am not being so exclusive to devotional music, though I would say it makes up 85% of what I listen to out of pure love for bhajans. I am really into traditional Irish mixed with modern drunking bar-song-punk dance "arrg" music, the best example being The Pogues... I love classical Indian Instrumental and have been admiring the new Ambient Fusion sort of stuff like DJ Cheb i Sabbah...

I love playing surf-instrumental with a touch of garage...that would be the best way to describe it. Like Clint Eastwood Goes Surfing...

Today, for some reason, I cannot get enough of the Monkees
I have a deep love for Oldies, pre '70.... I never really got big into 70's-80's

I beleive in a nice balance as far as musical appreciation goes. I know what I love, and I think I love it because whatever it is, be it rock or bhajan, it is charged with Krsna. I see pretty melodies as qualities of God.

[0Stribor0]

In 80es i was fan of thrash, speed, and death metal scene along with the growing hardcore and metalcore music scene. Last thing i was doing before joining temple was riding in pro skate team and listening and trading lots of Black Metal and different industrial music.
My faves are today:
Raison D' Etre, Arcana,Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Corrupted, Boris, Sunn0))), Vinterriket, Velvet Cacoon, Om, High On Fire,Darkthrone, Dillinger Escape Plan, Mastodon, Ben Folds and also Ben Folds Five, Dead Can Dance,Xasthur, Leviathan.......
One of the artists i know and i am friend with is Mike Patton, but i doubt that anybody on this forum will remember or know him.He was initially singer of the band called Mr.Bungle and later member of the band Faith No More. Now he is solo artist.

I used to like straight edge but since 80es, that music as well as emo hardcore doesn't appeal to me because it is cheesy.

[Tapati]

Let's see, I left off in the late 80s, as I was discovering women's music and coming out as a lesbian. (Ok, it's easy for bis to get confused since everybody expects us to be one thing or the other.)

So I began listening to Holly Near, Alyx Dobkin, Ferron, June Millington, Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge (we just knew she was one of us) and other classic lesbians or lesbian friendly artists. I can't remember the name now but I even found a lesbian rap artist with some cool socially conscious material. I met some of these performers as they toured and I had my share of crushes. As 89/90 approached I was discovering Dianic Wicca and goddess music to add to my lesbian feminist tapes. I loved the intersection of religion and politics that feminist spirituality represented. I could have my Goddess and protest too. I began listening to Lisa Thiel and Libana, Gypsy, and other Goddess and spoken word material floating around the pagan community. I mixed in indigenous music and various other cultural tunes, anything that felt wild and witchy and set a good mood for rituals. In general I gravitated to women artists and women's energy. (Though I still had my bouts of listening to hard rocking men, I must admit. It was almost an illicit pleasure in the lesbian community, to listen to the boys...)

In 1991 my son's accident happened and I turned to music for the long drives and to help me sleep at night. Goddess music served the latter purpose, soothing me and reminding me that I was not alone. On the drives to the teaching hospital where my son was at I would listen to Seal...

But we're never gonna survive, unless...
We get a little crazy
No we're never gonna survive, unless...
We are a little...

Cray...cray...cray......Crazy

or Toni Childs' House of Hope:

children laugh
children cry
they're the future of our time
will they hold us to blame
for all the things we've turned away
I don't like what I see now
I don't like where we're going
I don't like it, no
you and I, we're getting older now
you and I, who will show them
if we don't show them how

I want to know is it true
is there a house of hope for me and you
I want to know is it true
is there a house of hope for me and you

In general any music that allowed me to get my feelings of worry, doubt, and despair out and express some hope of my son's survival was what I chose to listen to at that moment. I also bought The Lord of the Rings on tape so we could play it for my son while he was in a coma. I was imagining that he would be so bored laying there if he was ever conscious of sound in the room, and wanted to give him something I knew he loved to keep him entertained. When he came out of the coma he took great pleasure in this.

I also loved this (same Seal album as Crazy)

Jade,
A shade of pain and then we die.
Jade,
A shade of pain and then we die.
Jade,
A shade of pain and then we die.
But it's just the way...

Maybe that's the way you live you life but I know...
...you live... your... life...

Life... You see it don't always live that way

At some point I was introduced to Ani Difranco and I was fortunate to see her when the venues were still small, up in the front row. It was at that point that she released Puddle Dive. Blood in the Boardroom remains my favorite Ani song to this day, with some fierce competition.

During my son's teenage years he introduced me to Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Beck, Alice In Chains, Primus, and so many other progressive or alternative or metal bands. I in turn induced him to listen to Koko Taylor, Enya, Ani, Clannad, Dead Can Dance, Sarah MacLachlan, and anything else I thought might broaden his horizons. We really connected over music and spent a lot of time listening together. We went to see Pink Floyd (oh my god, have I even mentioned them yet?) when they toured in...93 or so. I love Tool for its sublime combination of hard rocking tunes with melodious vocals and often transcendental lyrics. Dave and I saw Tool the weekend before my heart disease diagnosis. I felt good that I at least got to experience that as I went into surgery. Actually we had tickets to see Billy Idol on the very day of my heart surgery. I made Dave go as that evening I was mostly sleeping anyway.

I listened to Tool a lot during my recovery. Much of Lateralus resonated for me.

Lately I am loading itunes and my ipod with a lot of different stuff, from oldies that I had been looking for and found on Apple's music store to new stuff that I've discovered or recently bought. I'll browse through my list at work for some names. Alicia Keys, India Aire, Alana Davis, Staind, Metallica, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Gwen Stefani, Hiroshima, Cold Blood (listened from the 70s on, saw them in concert locally), kirtans for my spirit mix, pagan tunes for same, comedian albums--Margaret Cho, George Carlin--Rob Zombie, 3 Doors Down, Enigma, Days of the New, Jerry Cantrell, Laura Love, Marvin Gaye, Patty LaBelle, Perfect Circle...the list goes on and on.