Quote Originally Posted by nobody
What's interesting to me about it is that many of my very favorite groups wouldn't put anything in this category.
Totally agree with that. Lots of listeners have listed faves here. I'm thinking the Q was more about opening new doors in one's musical imagination... Most of my fave rock albums were not super-revelatory (for me anyway), as much as I totally love em. A few were, but I'll skip those here because of time.
anyway....

1/ Hearing Bach organ music live in a large cathedral around age 8 (not an LP, but the music effected me profoundly). I didn't quite understand what it was, or why it made my neurons start snapping... (I'm still not sure). True genius need not be explained I guess.

2/ Discovering an old 78 of Spike Jones in a box of records of my Mom's. This happened before Zappa & the Bonzo Dogs, and maybe that's partly why I loved those wierdo's so much later on. As the twig is bent...

3/ Hearing Charlie Parker for the first time in a 7'th grade music class. Couldn't understand what the deal was at all, but I knew I liked it & wanted to hear more. "What the hel_ is this?" Opened a whole new world.

4/ Going to a series of classical concerts over a period of months as a young kid (great acoustics in this great old classic building that was state-of-the-art in the early 1900's). I'd heard bits of classical music on LPs that my dad usually played Sunday morning, and played some classical melodies myself while taking music lessons.... but listening to the power of a live orchestra as a young kid was pretty impressive stuff. Much like the difference between a cheap boombox and a great state-of-the-art stereo system. Brought classical music waaaay up in my young mind as having lots more depth and subtlety than what had been my general impression.

5/ Jimi Hendrix's first album. At the time I'd only heard about this new "great" guitarist who'd been playing in the UK for a while, making a name for himself, with praise from many current pop and Rock stars. My friend who played guitar in our cheesy R&R band had just gotten the LP and raved about it to me during a phone call. I got it myself the next day, sight unheard, and remember being mesmerized by the opening chords of Purple Haze. It was so different in so many ways from anything in R&R, yet it also had the foundation of everything that's great about R&R... rhythm, energy, passion, emotion... in addition to a great "sound," let alone excellent guitar. Whats amazing is that Electric Ladyland was just as mindblowing a year later... it's rare that a single artist can do that twice in a career. Those 2 LPs probably effected rock music as much as any others. Even quiet little modern alternative punky bands have have echos in them.

6/ Zappa's first LP Freak Out I bought because of the very (at the time) weird cover. I knew it was either going to be really good, or really bad when I opened it up (it's the first double LP by a rock artist) and saw a song called "Help I'm a Rock". Needless to say it had LOTs of "new" things I'd never imagined before in there. I started reading everything I could about this strange guy, and that led me to get a copy of...

7/ Poem Electronic by E Varese. Musique Concrete was the door to another whole musical world. I then got a whole slew of weird electronic albums... everything from such "popular" fare as A Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley, Silver Apples of the Moon & Switched on Bach, to Stockhausen, Tonto's Expanding Head Band, a series of "Electronic International Competitions" albums, Kayn & Nono, and many early Moog albums... some poppy and some advant-garde. That all led me to explore all sorts of Euro experimental stuff a few years later in this vein, especially...

8/ Klaus Schultz's debut Irrlicht, which sorta joined much of the "weirdness" factor of Zappa & M>Concrete with classic symphonic music. Although I first heard Tan Dream, it was this album that made a deeper impression at the time. There were then LOTs of "prog" type experimentations that came along in response; they borrowed and used lots of these new sounds, but few did it well or originally, although it was fun watching it happen.

9/ Hearing my first few Western Swing LPs that I'd ordered sight unseen out of simple musical curiosity. I remember being struck with the thought of "how could this great music be out there, yet still unheard by me". By that time (my mid 20's), there wasn't a whole lot of musical things I'd not at least casually listened to.

I suppose all that's a reason I still search out new and weird stuff... you never know what secrets and what undiscovered gems await being dug up.

...this could go on for a long time... I'll forgo my strange '66 punk & '77 punk stories, early blues artists intro, weird classical & weirder-still Euro-wacko artists for now. They weren't all quite as "epiphany like," as those above, but they did all slam open new musical doors.