My general musical story is pretty much as follows...
The first musical experiences I can remember are probably from the early 1980s or from the mid-1980s. I was a child then, under 10 years old. My father used to have an old Beatles LP, perhaps some collection. I remember liking it. He also listened early Santana (especially Abraxas), and I liked that too. Later, still as a rather small kid, I remember liking Weather Report as well: "Birdland", probably "Teentown", etc.
In the 1980s, I often spent time listening to audio cassettes that my father had recorded from various Finnish radio shows. He sometimes just recorded shows without obviously paying much attention to whether the content was worth recording.
So I got to listen to a mix of pop, rock, disco, and all sort of other stuff. I remember liking some of that pop stuff, some of the disco, but also some of the more sophisticated music that had somehow managed to slip in to those recordings. I now know that I have liked, for example, Styx's "Come Sail Away" and Klaatu's "Calling Occupants..." for many years, but it wasn't until I discovered the Moon that I got to know who the artists actually performing those songs are.
In the early 1990s, as a teenager, I discovered eletronic dance music. I used to listen to it from radio. Eurodance (eek), some breakbeatish stuff like Prodigy, house music, a little bit of rap, and so on. A lot of that music was/is pretty cheap and cheesy, but something in it fascinated me anyway. At the same time, many of my schoolmates were usually into Metallica and other thrash metal bands.
In the mid-1990s, while still somewhat into that dancey stuff and obviously rap, I got again a bit more interested in the old rock. Saw Tull's Living In The Past somewhere and bought it. The music felt a bit odd, but I certainly liked it, back then (these days I don't seem to be so excited about the band). Other artists I can remember bying (even if it was just one CD per group) include Procol Harum, Fleetwood Mac, Jimi, Kinks (is that really rock? obviously), and so on. Also bought some Woodstock collection.
A few years later, I bought something by Airplane and Steppenwolf, and so on.
In the late 1996 (pretty late, yep), I started listening to Black Sabbath. They, the original 1970s band, are probably the band I've listened the most ever in my life. Sabbath paved the way to my modest trip to more metallic side of music: Bought some Anathema, Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride; all originally classified as "doom metal" bands, methinks. Bought a couple of Metallicas, something by Manowar
, Blind Guardian, even one Norwegian album that I believe was some sort of black metal. And so on.
In 2000 I more or less drifted back to dance music. Soon discovered goatrance/psytrance, which is psychedelic eletronic dance "music", often with ethnic influence. Astral Projection is one of the most well-known groups making that sort of stuff. I also believe Eat Static is often classified as a psytrance group, among others...?
In the late 1990s or 2000, around those times, I also started to get a little bit more interested in world music and folkish stuff, I think. Transglobal Underground's Yes Boss Food Corner (funky name) was probably my first album in that area...
Then, a bit over couple of years ago I discovered the Moon. As someone who had an idea about what prog. rock is but who obviously hadn't seriously explored the, hmmm, phenomena before, I took this place as an opportunity to learn more about the music. And since then I've discovered many interesting bands completely new to me and bought several nice albums. However, to be honest, not everything I've heard here has fascinated me. I must admit that I'm one of those oddies who doesn't care too much about Genesis or King Crimson...
-Methem