The first time I ever listened to "Abbey Road" by the Beatles all the way through, it affirmed everything I'd ever believed to be good about the world. The sequence from "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" into "Here Comes The Sun" was physically uplifting (I was forced to lie down for the former and equally forced to get up and dance to the latter) and from there all the way through to "The End" I was experiencing music in a way I never had before.
Joanna Newsom's song "Emily" from Ys has a power over me that I simply can't explain or understand. It makes me feel as if I'm getting an uncommonly look at something that I really don't have a right to comprehend.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor just blows my mind in general but I really have to give the prize to Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada because it was the first thing by them I listened to.
The songs "Sleepy Silver Door," "Indian Bones," "Eyeless Gaze All Eye/Don't Tell the Riverman," "The White Worm," "One and Old," "At the Edge of the Wood," "Beyond the Fields We Know," and "Let it All Pass" by Dead Meadow (and I'm missing a few) have all transported me to various strange and bizarre headspaces in the past. I was a bit of a Dead Meadow junkie for a while and I think I may have built up a tolerance.
Colour Haze blow my mind on a regular basis but they do it unexpectedly. I'll be listening to an album by them and I'll groove to a song and then start paying attention to something else, and two songs later my mind gets drawn back into the music by force and I'm like "This might actually be the best song I've ever heard right here, wow, holy shit, um ... ::rock out rock out rock out:: ... what was I doing again?"
Baby Huey and the Babysitters made me cry completely spontaneously with their cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come." His unearthly screams just ripped tears out of my eyes completely against my will. It was incredibly affecting music.
Kyuss was the first band to blow my mind for real for real, actually, basically because a long time before I ever took any drugs I would go out at night and stargaze while blasting Kyuss through headphones, and shit would start moving. They were basically my first mind alterant. "Whitewater," "Space Cadet," 50 Million Year Trip," "Molten Universe," "Gardenia," "Asteroid," and "Spaceship Landing" were the primary culprits.
Jack Rose was the first guitarist I ever listened to who could play melody, harmony, and rhythm lines simultaneously. Just knowing that this was physically possible blew my mind quite a bit and I still tend to get lost in his more raga-esque songs sometimes.
Acid Mothers Temple blew my mind when I saw them live. It was like watching shamans summon noise demons to do their bidding.
I'll be thinking of more as I go along.
