Well, my selections may not be from as far back as some of you guys (being born in the later 70's) but I had spent most of my teens were spent listening to only music that was underground or uncool....  Oddly the crap I got into kept becoming mainstream which only served to make me one of those bitter skateboard punks who was pissed off that all my favorite bands were "selling out"    ha!   In the late 80's /real early 90's I was digging (for that time - off the wall bands like) EMF, Nirvana, Henry Rollins, Green Day, Bad Religion, NOFX, Lemonheads, The Pixies,  Misfits, Rancid, Minor threat, The mighty mighty Bosstones, lots of ska/3rd wave stuff too. 
  Emf had a couple songs.... Nirvana as you know  blew up huge!   Green day, a band I got in a fist fight once because I listened to them and some meat-head called it [link=mailto:sh@t]sh@t[/link] and he shut my radio off on me, blew up in 95, and I caught said meat-head listening to welcome to paradise a year later...  Bad religion was popping up in movie and TV sound tracks, rancid was on the damn radio, Rancid was on my radio and on mtv,  the bosstones were doing MTV spring break performances on TV!  
   I was pissed at the time.   In retrospect all of these bands and artists had put in their dues, toured their asses off for years and years, and wrote music people wanted to buy.  They were probably among the last to climb up the old fashion way without the use of You tube, myspace, facebook, or any websites at all really in the days of flyers, music shop posters, and word of mouth because they couldn't get on the radio or MTV at the time.  I digress... I am soo damn far off topic I can't get back to it.  Sorry!  I got roped into joining a coverband in like 98' and didn't know nearly any of the stuff on the radio because I had basically refused to listen to FM radio or watch mtv....  haha CORPORATE BASTARDS!!  Lol.  A lot has changed since then.