Your first KOL experience

[amykate1980]

So I was wondering how everyone got introduced to the band, like when was the first time you heard them play, saw them, etc. Sorry if there is already a thread about this but I'm still a little new to message board and haven't explored it fully

I'll go first

In May this year a friend had an extra ticket to a concert and ask if I wanted to go, never one to pass up a free ticket I said sure. I had never heard of the band before but that didn't matter. Got to the concert early, it was general admission so of course we head straight to the front, got introduced to The Features that night too. Then the Kings come on and from start to finish I was blown away by the music. I had an amazing view right in front of Matt. It was by far the best live show I have ever been to in my life. When they played Charmer in the encore I realized I had heard that same song on the local radio a month or so before. I remember thinking interesting but defintely good. So from that moment on I have been hooked. I went out and got all the cds and tried to find out as much as I could about this band. That is when I found out about their background and all that good stuff.

[mrsjjfollowill]

this has always been a strange topic for me because i can't remember the actual first time that i saw the Kings but i just know it was in the YAYM days because i clearly remember watching California Waiting on some performance show.......... sadly they didn't blow me away and i know it sounds terrible perhaps i didn't warm to them at first due to their 70's apperence

however i do remember the first time i saw KOL and thought OMG "who is this?"it was during the King of the Rodeo video and i saw Jared for the first time since he had "grown up" and i immediately got a huge crush on him!

so i decided to do some background information on KOL and i bought their first 2 albums surprisingly i LOVED their music and they won me over and from then on iv been into the band and loved their music because they are different and are not trying to impersonate other bands ........sorry i know that was long!

[talkdownthegirl]

I started listening to KOL in August of 2003, my first month of middle school (7th grade, 12 years old). My sister was going to Lollapalooza at Fiddler's Green & it was a HUGE deal to us because my parents let her miss a whole day of school to go with her friend. My sister had already heard of the Kings but there is when she got more interested (If I remember correctly she got Dazed & Confused with them on it & fell in love with Jared). A couple of weeks later, she bought Youth and Young Manhood & it seriously was one of the best records I'd ever heard (I think it was all I listened to for two/three months straight). I loved it so much, it was the raunchiest, most honest record I'd ever heard. I took a back seat to my sister who fell in love a little earlier than I did, but I was def a major fan....& have been ever since (I am now the major huge in the house because my big sister went on to fall for the Libs...go figure)

I started with that story because I didn't actually see them live until two years almost exactly after I started listening to them (became a fan of August 14, 2003 and saw them on August 15, 2005). I moved to Florida from Denver & they never come here (& I would always seen to miss their shows back in Colorado by like three weeks). Finally, they came here at the House of Blues with the Secret Machines and the Helio Sequence...it was the best concert I have ever seen, & now I get to see them for the second time on Wednesday...so I'm pretty pumped.

[alexa]

i just remember hearing molly's chambers for the first time on the radio, and then putting off buying their cd for the longest time. but i got around to it, obviously, and fell in love.

[mollysslightreturn]

I've loved them since hearing 'Molly's Chambers' and I felt an 'extra special bond' with them due to the obvious connection with my name. I went to see them with my ex in Birmingham in July 2005 and was staggered by their live performance.

I saw them again in the Birmingham Academy last April, at the Reading festival in August and I'll br seeing them again back in Birmingham in December. I fear this maybe the beginnings of groupie/stalker/serial killer behaviour.

[amycakes]

i remember seeing wasted time and molly's chambers on kerrang tv quite a lot, and i liked them then, but i didn't completely get into them until aha shake came out. then i was like yay i've found my thing!

[lauralimonada]

my cousin is a huge strokes fan and saw them on tour with the kings. he introduced "king of the rodeo" to my younger brother who would play it nonstop on the way to school in the fall of 2005. i remember thinking, "this music is interesting, it's like country but rock." haha

i really didn't think much of them again except that i wanted to see them live. i saw a couple pictures from the 70s look era of them and i thought, "they look weird." and i thought matt was fat! haha! that's mean! (and those pics were outdated!)

well, in May 2006 i really got into them more. i had a difficult time with my boyfriend and "the bucket" and "california waiting" really helped me through that time. i really hadn't heard much else.

then slowly but surely, i downloaded more of their music. and when they came out with BOTT in april, i bought the cd without hesitation. also, i was super pumped to see them at coachella!!! i wrote an article about them for my school's paper and that's where i found out more about their history and stuff (i didn't even know they were related!)

so my obsession officially started this year. april 2007.
:]

*edit*
oh yea! and my boyfriend got me YAYM and ASH in May as a graduation present!!! so now i have all three albums and i know them by heart...quite a leap from only playing three songs of theirs over and over and over heehee

[ticola]

ive been listening to them since the first time i heard red morning light, cant remember exactly when i was though.
Heard it through my friend and now we go as a pair to all the Kings gigs we can!
The first time i saw them was when they played Manchester Academy in the YAYM days, best concert because it was a small venue and it connected to the crowd which i love. Loved the hair aswell!
I saw them in the Apollo in April and that was ok although there was quite a lot of people.

Going to see them at Manchester Central on the 9th December. Im excited but not sure about that place as a concert venue its is quite long but not very wide from what i remember so it might be difficult for small people like me to see!

[SozzellLovesKOL]

i first heard them during the Aha Shake years because my dad was a fan, and he showed them to me and i really liked them.
strange because at the time i listened to loads of pop, not anymore though...you could say, they turned me.
thing is, i was without knowing it already a fan, because i used to sing mollys chambers alll the time since it came out. not knowing it was KOL, it was fate!

[niko]

I must have heard them on the radio or seen them on TV 'cos something made me go out and buy YAYM but I don't remember that first introduction to them. I listened to it a couple of times but it didn't really float my boat at first, listened to it a few weeks later and that time it just clicked. First time I saw them on TV after that I liked the fact they didn't look like anyone else (though ironically I didn't find hairy Caleb attractive until he cut it all off). Loved ASH when it came out, BOTT was more of a grower. Finally got to see them live in Bournemouth in July this year and my love for them tripled overnight; I've had all three albums on rotation ever since, and as soon as I got home from the gig I went online and booked tickets to see them again in Nottingham in December.

I hope they're around for years to come. BOTT showed that, unlike some bands, they have no intention of making the same album over and over and I'm really looking forward to seeing the direction they go in.

[nitemarehippygirl]

i cant remember my first kol expirience.

i remember i always wanted to take a better look on boys
esp matt (becose of his extraordinary resemblance to beck)
and finally this summer i went searching for their pics on the net
and while i was on it their my space played on call, charmer and fans in the background and songs got stuck in my heaad and and... that was it .

[Neon]

Well i remember constantly seeing Four Kicks in the jukebox in one of the pubs me and my friends hang out and play pool in - but i'd never heard it played. I always had the urge to play it cos i was always hearing the name Kings of Leon on TV the last few years and i really wanted to hear some stuff by them.

But my first experience was really when i heard the debut of ''On Call'' on Gonzo and loved it

or maybe it was hearing ''The Bucket'' on my friends Karaoke playstation game

I cant remember which came first *shrugs*

[antroolez]

my best friend's dad's friend worked for a radio station and he had their EP before it was released in 2003 and said you should listen to these I think they're good

from then on, I have been hooked

[moonagedaydream]

Back in 2003 I heard they would be opening for The Strokes. So a couple weeks before the concert I downloaded Happy Alone, and Red Morning Light (selected at random) and I actually liked them! I had no clue what they looked like, so when I saw the video for Molly's Chambers on Subterranean (or some show like that on MTV2), I just thought "Oh, hell no, that cannot be them" They looked way too much like their music sounded. I thought they were trying a little to hard, but I was interested so I remember looking them up on the net and reading that they were family, blah blah blah. I also remember stumbling upon a forum and everyone was just gushing about how hot Jared was.

Days later I was at the concert, being crushed by angry Strokes fans when the boys marched out in their 70s inspired getups at the Hollywood Palladium. Thankfully I was already aware of their image and I was prepared to concentrate on the music. I had only heard those three songs so most of their 40 minute set was completely new to me. I loved all of their songs, and I distinctly remember Jared making his spazz faces underneath all that hair (the pout/pucker thing seemed to be his signature face). Then he went totally nuts at the end of the set. Well, they all did and I'm pretty sure someone smashed their guitar into Nathan's (my friend and I were referring to him as Jesus the whole night) drums.

The next day I went and bought Youth and Young Manhood at Tower and listened to it every night while doing my Calculus homework. Everytime I listen to it now I think of logorithms and answers approaching zero. Anywho, I loved their music, but I wasn't really impressed with the band or their live show (just keepin' it real).

Then when I started college I discovered that we were all connected on "the network" and we could all "share" files, so I started downloading music like a mad woman. I realized that I hadn't been checking in on KOL. Did they have a new album out? I searched our network and found that some random guy had ASH so I "borrowed" it. I liked it but I didn't listen to it all that much because I was going through a Dinah Washington/Sam Cooke/Otis Redding phase, soon to be followed by the U2 phase.

Then two days before Coachella a friend called to ask if I could go. She had an extra ticket for Saturday, so I said yes! I looked up the schedule and saw that KOL would be performing. I was super excited. I hadn't been keeping up with them and would be great to see them almost 3 years after the first time I also did a quick search and learned that they had just released their third album.

I guess I had been living under a rock or something because I was completely taken aback when they hit the stage at Coachella. They looked different. They sounded different. I was convinced that they had replaced little big-haired Jared with some new sexy bass player. Jesus was suddenly clean shaven and looking good. The lead singer no longer had weird bangs (I was so relieved) and the dude on guitar looked nothing like that guy I remembered in the smoke-filled Palladium. And sweet flippin' willikers, they sounded so damn GOOD! On point and so powerful. I had to pick my jaw up off the grass and snap myself out of the trance. Like I said, I was kind of unimpressed by their live show back in '03 but this time it was the exact opposite. I was in total awe. All their touring has paid off in unimaginable ways. They've just improved sooo much (and just thinking about what they'll sound like in a few more years makes me all light-headed) All the new songs I hadn't heard were amazing, too. I was so thankful that my friend had invited me at the very last minute. It was fate, and even as she was there barfing in the grass next me, stinking up the place I was unphased because the Kings were just that good! I knew then that I absolutely LOVED this band.

Oh gosh, I just realized this is really long. Sorry! Once I get started on this band I really find it hard to stop.

Oh and because I was feeling really guilty about "borrowing" ASH. I finally went out at bought it a few weeks ago. It was keeping me up at night. haha.

[chichi]

My husband heard about them through Pearl Jam and we both fell in love with their music right away. The first time I saw them in concert was 2 years ago in Chicago. It was 2 weeks after my dad died, and my family thought I was kind of weird and insensitive for driving 6 hours to go see a band that they never heard of that soon after his death, but I just really, really wanted to see them.

Ever since then I've become completely obsessed with KOL and go to see them whenever I can. I haven't been this obsessed about a band in a long, long time. It feels good!

[fingersinthedirt]

i found out about the kings of leon from watching a movie called "stuck on you" with greg kinear and matt damon.

the songs sounded unlike anything i was listening to at the time. there were about 5 songs from YAYM on the movie and i watched the credits to see they were by kings of leon. i bought their cd online that night. 5-7 days later i fell in love with the entire cd. and trani changed the way i look at life.

this band has changed my life and i will forever be in debt to them.

[fingersinthedirt]

this was 3 years ago in high school and everyone thought i was crazy for liking them. went and saw them live in 05 with my boss and grew more obsessed. as did he.

[jamiemc]

Red morning light. When it was the soundtrack on one of the FIFA football games.

i was like OOOHHHHH!

Hooked ever since.

[amykate1980]

chichi said:

My husband heard about them through Pearl Jam and we both fell in love with their music right away. The first time I saw them in concert was 2 years ago in Chicago. It was 2 weeks after my dad died, and my family thought I was kind of weird and insensitive for driving 6 hours to go see a band that they never heard of that soon after his death, but I just really, really wanted to see them.

Ever since then I've become completely obsessed with KOL and go to see them whenever I can. I haven't been this obsessed about a band in a long, long time. It feels good!

I lost my mom in March and to discover them this year has been quite nice. Listening to their music just sets me straight when I'm feeling a little bummed. You know when you listen to most albums there may be one or two songs you like, not with the Kings. They truely are the first band that I have ever encountered where I love every single one of their songs.

[fingersinthedirt]

back in may of this year, i lost a grandparent that meant a lot to me. taught me how to play the guitar at a young age and showed me how to respect music, and not just enjoy it.

I had tickets to go to the show at the Pageant in St. Louis. I seriously debated skipping it, but instead left right after the services. my parents didnt talk to me for a while and my family thought it was really selfish of me to go to the show.

and in the midst of the sadness, for about an hour and a half, i lost myself to the kings of leon. their music has a way of putting things in perspective for me. and although my family wasnt happy i know that my grandpa wouldnt of had it any other way.