For me it was the latter end of 86 or maybe early 87 ... sometime after that first m*****n promo had been aired on The Chart Show and I quickly started to investigate goth and similar bands.
The casette of FALAA was my first SOM ... then I picked up all the singles from Anaconda onwards ... they still stocked these in HMV at the time.
I spent what felt like a fair bit of time in York and Sheffield around then and I remember seeing all manner of interesting looking people wandering around ... some in intriguing band-related T-shirts ...
I also remember being very exited at seeing that Melody Maker cover with

in the autumn of 87 having not expected any further SOM output.
Ah, those were the days ... the second wave ... FOTN, AAE, Siouxsie, The Cure, Christian Death, The Damned releasing 'Phantasmagoria', Ghostdance ... etc etc etc
Of course ... I guess that the first wave was something else entirely ... many short-lived bands that it would have been great to have been around for.
Nurse! Where are my slippers?