re: What Band/Album Blew You Away at First Listen?

Absolutely correct. Jon Landau wrote in a Boston newspaper about 50 years ago - "I've seen the future of rock n' roll, and it is Bruce Springsteen".
This will get a lot of downvotes, but Springsteen brought a new, rollicking and powerful kind of rock, with an energy that nobody had seen before. The Brits had dominated rock for the past decade (Rolling Stones/Led Zeppelin/The Who). If you went to a Springsteen concert from 1974-1984, you were exhausted and exhilarated.

RATT Out of the Cellar

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Guns N Roses was a hair band.

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Disagree. What, in your opinion, makes them a hair band?

Did they have long hair? Yeah.

So did Slayer, Metallica, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana, AiC, Pearl Jam, Iron Maiden, and countless other rock bands during the 'hair band' era (which in my mind is roughly 86-92). And a huge amount of bands going back 20 years before that.

To me, Poison is the quintessential example of a hair band. Having a good time, getting drunk, dressing in women's clothes and having better makeup than the groupies they were banging was hair band.

On the 'harder' 'more authentic' side of hair metal, you had Motley Crue. The fact that they were harder and more authentic than most, is less of a compliment to Motley Crue, and more of an indictment of the genre in general.

GnR not only had a grittier darker sound than bands like them, but the subject matter was completely different- the dark side of partying, heroin, exploitation, prostitution... street life. That was far more compelling and dangerous to those of us living in suburbia, at the time, than thinly veiled Warrant songs comparing pussy to cherry pie. While Poison pretended to have nothing but a good time, GnR was openly dancing with Mr Brownstone and putting 3 minute recordings of their girlfriends cumming on their records.

If you weren't around and into rock music at the time I can see how a person might think they were a hair band, but they absolutely were not. I was a kid when Appetite was released, and heavily into hair bands. GnR blew all that shite away for me at the time. They were the first band of my era (that I knew of at the time) that actually seemed dangerous.

hair band:



not a hair band:

Loved it then. Love it now.

Brian Wilson Presents Smile

Prefab Sprout’s Two wheels Good LP from 1988, I think it was

lots of great responses. I'm younger so for me it was my 8th/9th grade years where I had never heard something like this. It hit me at the perfect time and will always be special.