Quote:
Originally Posted by golfmade
I'll listen to just about anything at least once.
|
I'm more or less the same way, though a lot of the stuff that gets play in nightclubs and on contemporary FM radio stations doesn't really do much for me.
I think working in radio and sitting down with editing equipment has given me a greater respect for electronic music and the thought processes that go into meshing samples together into a seamless piece, something many rappers seem to have a very tough time doing consistently. (I can't listen to Kanye's "Champion" because "Kid Charlemagne" is my favorite Steely Dan song.)
I feel like I've gotten to the point where my musical tastes aren't really going to take anymore wild turns. What's appealing most likely will stay that way, and the stuff that isn't won't suddenly find itself in my library all of a sudden. But I'm into a fairly diverse range of stuff. You can't live in Appalachia and not be into bluegrass, so I've got a little of that lying around, but not as much as I would like to. Just a couple of early Dillards records. I've got some older country - early George Jones, Roger Miller (if you can really call some of his stuff "country"), Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard - but I tend to stay away from newer stuff. My rule of thumb is to avoid any mainstream country released after about 1995, and I tend to gravitate toward more Western stuff because I like that arid sound.
Indeed, a lot of the stuff I listen to comes from my parents' days. I've got a little Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, some Ray Charles, a ton of British stuff (The Kinks, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, The Beatles, the list goes on) and a little of the wide sampling of American stuff from that time, some of it more radio-friendly (Hendrix, CCR, Steve Miller Band) and some of it, well, not (Warren Zevon, Frank Zappa).
I more or less skipped the 80s, though. A couple of good metal bands from that time (Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, although their best stuff was more in the late 70s and culminated with
British Steel in 1980), plus Van Halen, but not really much else to my liking. Maybe a little new wave stuff, but I consider that more late 70s. I'm pretty light on the 90s, too - grunge and Britrock are both hit-or-miss with me, but I do love Pavement (and, by extension, Beck).
From the last 15 years or so, I'm really choosy. I walk a very fine line with modern metal; Mastodon's "Crack The Skye" was awesome, but most of their other stuff has been almost instantly off-putting. I'm into a lot of the indie stuff, like Fleet Foxes, M Ward, The Shins, Vampire Weekend, and Deerhunter, but there are a lot of sound-alike acts that don't pull off the aesthetic very well. I still listen to stuff from across the pond, like Franz Ferdinand and The Libertines, and I'm always seeking out good British bands. I most definitely dig on the garage sound of acts like The White Stripes, The Black Keys, and The Hives (though the latter two have started to move away from that sound, and the former broke up). A little electronic stuff is all right every now and then, but I mainly stick to Daft Punk's early material when I need a techno fix. Then there's Radiohead, a band I used to hate passionately for making difficult music and have come to embrace wholeheartedly for making difficult music.
My favorite band of the last decade, though, has to be LCD Soundsystem. James Murphy is one of the few active songwriters that can go from silly and irreverent to emotional and serious in the gap between songs and pull it all off, and he does it better than the Thom Yorke or Ezra Koenig.
Lately, though, I've been on a huge jazz kick. Lots of Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, some Arturo Sandoval, and a little big band jazz like Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. Also a dash of Latin music, like Pérez Prado and Tito Puente. Also some stuff from the golden age of blues, like Magic Sam and Muddy Waters. I'm putting together some stuff for a lady friend who wants to broaden her musical horizons, so I'm trying to hit the earliest stuff first, and even though most of the better blues acts were electric, it's the same structure and style of music as it was between the World Wars.