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Hmmmmm, I guess it all started with my dad's music collection, His favorite musicians and the stuff I ended up growing up with was U2, Led Zeppelin, The grateful dead, etc. Pretty much your average classic rock station playlist.
Hearing my dad play these tunes all the time kinda ruined rock for me, I never really grew an appreciation for it, but now that I am older I can at least understand the stuff somewhat.
Early on in life I got fascinated with computers, electronics, and gizmos of all kinds, the person most responsible for this happening to me was this man:
Still unaware that an electornic style of music existed(aside from 80's pop), I pretty much continued to ignore music alltogether.
Eventually I was at a visit to my Uncle's(he lived in Cali, by this time I had moved to NC) He was into some of the really early classic electronica in the 70's and 80's. I enjoyed this style but his collection was all vintage records, I only remember some of the larger names he had in his collection, like kraftwerk and george clinton. Unfortunately I had no idea how to find those kinds of music and assumed that it just didn't exist any more.
Around this time the Alternative rock became friggin huge. EVERY SINGLE person I knew could recite the lyrics to green day - basket case. I hated the song, I hated the style, I hated all the kids who picked on me because I didnt listen to that kind of music.(although I will admit that pearl jam - jeremy resonated in me a bit). I grew to resent all of music because I thought the reason nobody liked me was because I didn't follow it.
Resolving to no longer get picked on, I attempted to follow the alternative rock style, thinking that if I was somewhat familiar with it I could blend in with my peers and no longer get picked on. I wasn't happy doing this, U would sit by the radio writing down song titles; eventually I gave a kid a bloody nose on the school bus and kids stopped picking on me.
I was in middle school by this time, I took an orchestra class to avoid going to gym every day, I started playing the Cello. We played really simple stuff to learn the instruments, I got pretty good at it eventually and started trying to play songs I would hear on TV, like the James Bond theme which I enjoyed cuz I spent a lot of time playing goldeneye. Around this time I started getting really passionate about computers, I would spend all the spare time I had in front of my parent's PC, we didn't high speed internet access yet though(but I still managed to download a few naughty pictures). I discovered a proram called Qbasic, started trying to teach myself programming, made a bunch of silly PC speaker jingles with the lovely beep command, at this point in my life the closest I had ever come to enjoying music or doing anything remotely close to electornica.
This continued until high school started, what also came during high school was a new computer that actually had a sound card. EDM started showing up in movies and stuff(or maybe I just started to notice). I started looking for something to play with my computer's new sound capabilities, it was around this time that I discovered EDM through a project that was ran by hyperreal. They had a small collection of EDM made by ameteurs, classified into categories, I didn't know which category I liked best, so I got one of each, I found that I enjoyed the tracks labeled as 'trance' 'ambient' and 'industrial'. I ignored the other genres at this time because I assumed that they would sound like the shitty ameteur tracks I had just heard(bad idea).
1 year later came the dawn of napster. Every kid had an mp3 of sisqo - the thong song. I used this program to explore music and finally find out who my favorite musicians were. But I didn't know where to look, I hung out in the chat rooms asking for recomendations, and I went through the stuff on amazon.com picking out the most popular selections from the electronic categories. This lead me to alot of good stuff, and my first music purchases were Alice Deejay - Who Needs Guitars Anyway, and Paul van Dyk - Seven Ways(Out There and Back would be released very shortly) I filled my hard drive with what I assumed at the time was the only good form of EDM, trance. I joined TA at the perfect time for this, when file sharing was acceptable and the board was full of suggestions for music to DL.
Eventually I left napster for Audiogalaxy, around this time I got into other styles, and started listening to alot of EDM streams, discovering that there was alot more stuff out there to be heard. My hard drive would fill with awesome tunage without e having to search for anything, I took a liking to basement jaxx, discovered the amazing music from BT, finally stopped listening to minisrty of sound compilations, because now I knew better.
Come 2001 the TA's reduce referring to PvD as 'God' (armin was still God in training though) Progressive style is on the rise, I join in the badwagon somewhat and get some of those S&D Global undergrounds. I lost interest in progressive pretty quickly though, I found it boring. I get more involved in my local scene, having recently found a message board full of EDM fans based in my home state, earlier I had assumed that my local scene did not exist, boy was I wrong on that one.
The local kids were(and still are) mostly involved in DnB and breaks, I was still interested in trance, but now it was probably only 25% of my collection. I got into house alot around this time as well, I liked stuff like junior jack - thrill me, and timo maas - shifter.
I graduated from high school, things changed alot after this, the file sharing ended, I was finally allowed to go out and party(actually I wasn't but I was 100 miles away from my parents so I did anyway). I got bored of listening to one style at a time, I took a liking to the mixed kinda styles like John B, who had recently visited a club nearby. I stopped listening to so much DnB, kids were getting into this really obnoxious roaring rumbling 'gangsta' crap so I found myself following trance again. ASOT was HUGE, I joined the chat room, posted my OMG's in the forum while he played, it was great fun.
2003 came, my first chances to see some big name trance DJ's. PvD made his first ever visit to NC, I took my first ever extasy pill. I rolled my brains out and had an amazing time, so amazing in fact that I drove 5 hours to DC to see armin 4 days later to do it all over again(my avatar is a pic from that party). Sadly this was also my last time seeing a big trance performance(except tiesto at nation the next summer, which I didn't have very much fun at). Around this time trance was experiencing a bit of a revival in my home state, I met a bunch of really cool DJ's and producers who lived hearby.
Still, trance is on the rise in these parts, the parties are getting increasingly frequent and increasingly successful. The kids I met and started hanging around with are now getting booked are a large part in the growing momentum trance is getting around here. There is a house party that we have grown to call trance paradise where we all come and meet several times a year, sometimes spur of the moment after parties happen there as well, last time this happened DJ Micro showed up to the house completely unannounced.
School gets increasingly tough and I find I have less time for music. I've gotten more into computers as of late, recently I started following these demo scene productions, I guess that is where I am right now, following yet another scene that people say is dead. Anyway, for anyone who hasn't checked out the demo style, I suggest listening to this:
http://willbe.planet-d.net/demovibes.htm
I find the computer music style very refreshing and diverse.
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stuff from 70-80 sound so perfect to me, i'm in love. 
