Music Tastes

You know, I was going to start a thread asking about 'Pop' preferences, like I did about rap, but figured I'd just break into a general music preferences deal.

A lot of my favored music from early days comes from being involved with friends who smoked pot and listened to heavy metal. It's pre-Rap habitat I tell you. So we've got the classics like Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Pink Floyd and others (you know, AC/DC, Aerosmith, etc...)

My mother likes the more mellow music and country and I'll tell you, I don't mind mellow rock like Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, Allman brothers Band, some Beach Boys and the Beatles, but man, I still can't stand Country Music. I can listen to some Johhny Cash and some Elvis, but not much.

Pop music isn't my thing. I can tolerate a few songs but it just seems that if you're not 15, then music in today's market isn't aimed at you. Sorry Britiny, Jessica, Ashely, Lindsy, etc...

I like Jazz and Blues, but don't know a lot about them. John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and others, I guess the Icons, are those I know and listen to frequently.

How about everyone else?

I could list bands and artists ad nauseam, that cross a lot of genres. I really don't have one particular genre that I listen too. There's good stuff to be found anywhere. I guess the only real req I have is that the artist is performing/recording something real. Doing it because they have to, they have something to say, rather than just to get paid.

I went through a phase in the mid-80s or so where I listened to a lot of pop music and big-hair rock bands. I still like most of that for the nostalgia factor.

I gradually migrated to New Wave in the later 80s, and caught up on a lot of stuff that had been coming out for the last decade. Love all that stuff. I don't consider it to be 80s music even; it's not the nostalgia about the music I like, it's actually the music.

Although that kinda died in the early 90s when Nirvana turned musical taste on it's proverbial head, a lot of it continued to exist underground. I struggled for a while trying to find what to listen to when grunge came up, buying a lot of back-catalog 80s new wave, wandering a bit into some Industrial, Trance and even Eurodance territory before discovering the modern synthpop movement, and it's related subgenres like electroclash, futurepop and whatnot. That's a huge part of what I listen to today in terms of "pop" music; stuff like Mesh, Beborn Beton, De/Vision, Apoptygma Berzerk, Cosmicity, Iris, Covenant, VNV Nation, and many, many others too numerous to list. You can hear samples of most of that stuff on Amazon too, which is cool.

I've never liked country music much at all. Probably a knee-jerk reaction against my environment growing up in Texas, where it was closely associated with driving shiny new trucks that never saw any work on any farm, wearing too-tight pressed and starched wranglers with a snuff ring in the back pocket, and talking like an ignorant hick.

I've also been a fan of "non-pop" music for a long time, though. Perhaps my years of piano lessons and later trombone playing conditioned me to appreciate a lot of Classical, Romantic, and other genres. The Romantic Era composers are my favorite, Tchaikovsky, the Russian Five (especially Rimsky-Korsakov), Wagner and others. I also like a lot of patriotic marches, like John Phillip Sousa and the like, but that maybe partly because "The Stars and Stripes Forever" has such a cool trombone part.

I also like a lot of orchestral movie soundtracks, and that's a real practical taste for a GM who likes to set the mood for his sessions with some music. Classics like John Williams, Alan Silvestri, Danny Elfman, Klaus Badelt, Basil Poulidourous and the like.

Stoner and hippie stuff, a lot of which was called "Alternative" back in the day. Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Widespread Panic, Phish, Tool, etc.

Classic rock. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Bob Marley.

A few vestiges of my metal days. Metallica, White Zombie, Rob Zombie.

And then people who don't fit any of my other categories, mostly Robert Johnson.

Right now I have on Widespread Panic's acoustic/bass/fiddle cover of Dr. John's "I Walk On Guilded Splinters". Awesome.

I don't know if I have any "taste."

I like bands that rock: The White Stripes, Jet, Tom Petty, Deftones, Queens of the Stoneage Blue Oyster Cult, Muse, Bush, and Foo Fighters to name a handful.

And then, I like a lot of random bands: Simon and Garfunkel, Elliot Smith, Counting Crows, and Barenaked Ladies to name another handful.

But, mostly I'm a rocker. I rock out.

Queen_Dopplepopolis said:

I don't know if I have any "taste."

I like bands that rock: The White Stripes, Jet, Tom Petty, Deftones, Queens of the Stoneage Blue Oyster Cult, Muse, Bush, and Foo Fighters to name a handful.

And then, I like a lot of random bands: Simon and Garfunkel, Elliot Smith, Counting Crows, and Barenaked Ladies to name another handful.

But, mostly I'm a rocker. I rock out.

Click to expand...

I forgot Veruca Salt. mmmm, chick rock.

... which also reminds me that I really love Fiona Apple and Tori Amos.

I too am all over the map when it comes to music. As an example, I'll look at what is on my desk at work right now:

Phantom of the Opera: Original London Cast
Mozart Symphony numbers 40 and 41
The Innocence Mission (Christian music, kinda folk/pop)
Peter Gabriel
Everything But The Girl
Chris DeBurgh
Kate Bush
Tori Amos
Deep Forest
Guster
Suzanne Vega
Eurythmics
BT
Carl Orff Carmina Burana
NickleCreek (Bluegrass)
Cara Dllon
Brian Eno
X-Press 2
Queensryche
Avril Levigne

I enjoy the 80's pop, the hair bands later in that decade, the corprate rock of the late 70's, and a hodge podge of other things. I really like dementia, the novelty songs that never get played on the radio anymore. I like the old do wop groups and accepella groups, though modern versions of them are hard to find.

Hmmm, well, I am pretty eclectic in my musical tastes...

So, cds by my computer at the moment:

P.J. Harvey To Bring You My Love
Red, Hot & Blue (Cole Porter covers)
Ben Folds Rockin' the Suburbs
Bauhaus Crackle
Creedence Clearwater Revival Chronicles, Vol. 1
Sequentia Dante & the Troubador
Portishead Dummy
Rasputina Frustration Plantation
Asylum Street Spankers Hot Lunch
Concrete Blonde Mexican Moon
The Bobs My, I'm Large
Ludwig van Beethoven Missa Solemnis
J.S. Bach Aufs Lautenwerck
Mediaeval Baebes Undrentide

So, yeah, a little bit from Column A and a little bit from Column B

I don't have a set taste either (big surprise - few people only listen to one or two genres.) My guilty pleasure is 80's rock and hair bands, because that's what I spent my late teens on. It's almost better to list what I CAN'T get into:

--The Doors and most of the 60's acid rock - too strange and trippy for me to appreciate - though strangely I like all of Pink Floyd
--Blues music. I'll take a shot now and again, but it's too depressing to enjoy on a regular basis.
--Big Band Music of the 40's - too slow for my taste, with exception of the faster stuff (the "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" type stuff).


Basically, if it's slow, I can't get into it, except for Rock Power Ballads and Grunge Ballads. If it's faster, I can dig it.