I'm curious what ya'll like as music.

Myself, I grew up in the 70's and tend toward "classic rock", although there are some "current" stuff that I also like.

The wife and I tend to listen to jazz a lot also; and we've been to some local jazz clubs.

So, what is everyone else grooving to?

Everything.

I gravitate mostly towards rock, no specific genre, just rock. I have yet to find a genre where I cannot find something I like. I grew up around people who listened to swing and jitterbug, and everything since. My music selection is very diverse because of it. The only thing I have found that does little for me, is jazz and death metal (though I admit I have not heard much of either). Big band, swing, rockabilly, blues, soul, rap, metal, punk... Whatever floats my boat at the time. I have a rule with country though, I don't allow it in the car if I am driving. Otherwise it is okay as well.

I have a large music collection to say the least.

Despite what my neice once said, introducting me as "This is my uncle, he hates music" there is some stuff I like.  And, despite my own tendency to tell people who inquire of me, asking if the show/band was good, and I reply "I'm not the person to ask" - that I do try to listen to at least a few songs of every band I put on.

On my own time I like jazz, 1930s-1940s, and late 50s - early 60s stuff.  I like a lot of dance music, listen to too much Jerry Garcia and Bob Dylan, and love classical trios and quartets. 

But I do a lot of rock and I am in love with Joan Jett.

Lately, Jason Marz put on a good show, and I hated My Chemical Romance, who keeps on getting worse.  I'm doing Anti-Flag tomorrow, but that WarpTour stuff never gets better or worse.  Steve Miller was better than I expected, though Bonnie Raitt showed up and schooled him.  And the Ministry shows (he says this is the last tour) were powefull.

i grew up on funk and disco, especially british jazz-funk of the eighties, a tiny scene that my mum was part of. I never really grew up with any of the totems of music.

I first loved britpop when it came out and then punk - so then I drew the lines between the two and that is really good. I love post punk and all that.
I also love zappa and beefheart, howlin' wolf. I'm getting into outsider music.

Mainly I want to be excited with my music. And that needs surprise and creation.

Most anything.

I'm open to anything except rap and hip hop.

as long as the music is not over produced.  For instance, old aerosmith is cool / new aerosmith stinks

oh, and don't say anything good about mick jagger to me.

I grew up listening to Beatles, Bach, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Simon and Garfunkel, Pentangle, Patti Smith, The Who, Frank Zappa, etc. At age 19 I got heavily into playing acoustic blues and fingerstyle guitar music such as John Fahey, John Renbourn, Leo Kottke, Rev Gary Davis, etc. Shortly after that I discovered traditional Appalachian old time, Celtic, etc. I studied classical guitar for a while, and also jazz guitar. These days I mostly listen to (and play) acoustic music; bluegrass, old time, Celtic, blues, klezmer, Balkan, Scandinavian, swing, but am open to almost anything.

Z

PS, I even like the Candycane song w/ Charlie >

I did want to say, but didn't - so I will now... that the two best new acts I've seen in the last few years are
Gogol Bordello - gypsy punk music, very alive, awesome stuff
Rodrigo y Gabriela - as a very good musician friend of mine turned to me and said the first time we watched them "I think I'll quit now"

Honestly, all the people in here who think they can really play guitar need to watch a UTube vid or two of Gabriela playing and come back and tell me "Yeah, I'm that good."

gogol bordello are very good fun, i prefer a hawk and a hacksaw for the gypsy vibe thing though.

I like my music to be a little edgy - like PJ Harvey, Muse, the hives.

I can say what I don't like. I don't like country, or the sonic diarrhea that is jazz. I'm not a big hip hop fan but I like Missy Elliot. I don't like those generic music videos that generally feature gyrating black women and an ugly 20ish year old singer dressed like a young teenage boy with chains and diamonds on top. Seems like this describes every second one made in America these days. There also seems to be a rash of dull dull British bands at the moment. This was probably always true (just look at the 80's) but I really began noticing it with the strokes. On a similar note I dislike Kings of Leon - they are as much fun as watching paint dry.

there are lots of boring bands now, we'll find out who was worth remembering in a few years.

For the Gypsy vibe, I really like Taraf de Haidouks, Kalman Bologh, and flamenco guitarist Paco DeLucia.

Z

I have eclectic tastes. My latest purchase from the Apple Store was 3 albums by Stan Roger (a Canadian folk singer who died in 1984, when, after escaping a burning airliner, he went back to rescue others). Folk music, including: The Weavers, Peter, Paul & Mary (been to a bunch of their concerts), The Brothers Four (and others from the 60s revival), Bob Franke, Patty Larkin, Nancy Griffith (and others from the 80s revival), Si Kahn, Odetta and Paul Robeson. I've a lot of Broadway show music. One of my treasures is Albert Schweitzer playing Bach organ music. And several LPs of Andre Segovia. There's a healthy chunk of classical music in my collection. Including a lot of early music. Some opera. I like jazz, especially swing, like Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. Jewish music from Debbie Friedman to Dr.J$ and the OJGs (Hip Hop Shabbat). Do the Clancy Brothers and the Irish Rovers constitute another genre? My collection and interests are probably weakest in Rock. Buddy Holly, the latest Paul McCartney album, and other bits and pieces along the way. Oh, and country music, represented largely by the Sons of the Pioneers. Finally, we come to the University of Michigan Marching Band and other marches especially Sousa's.

S

Folk music, including: The Weavers, Peter, Paul & Mary (been to a bunch of their concerts), The Brothers Four (and others from the 60s revival), Bob Franke, Patty Larkin, Nancy Griffith (and others from the 80s revival),

I have to warn you, if you pull out a guitar and start singing Kumbya or Michael Row The Boat Ashore, I'm outta here!

I did see Nanci Griffith pull off one of the most amazing shows I've ever been present at, and is the only act ever in the history of the Fillmore to be allowed to return to the stage after the house lights were turned up and Greensleaves had been put on (we were stunned).  I also saw Nanci Griffith, Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter just sitting on a stage together with two guitars just playing and singing their hearts out - it was very special.  I do very much miss Kate Wolf, whose song Across the Great Divide is one of Nani's best recordings, like she was made to sing it - though Willie Nelson does a damn fine job too.

If you like all that stuff you need to check out RyG, I'm thinking you will be blown away (as has been almost everyone who has seen her play).
Try the clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPhVpIlc1vs&feature=related

It's like Andre Segovia had spend a couple of years touring with Metallica, it might go a little something like that.

But for my money, day in and day out, night after night, show after show, I think the best current American band is Los Lobos. 

And you say you're not the one to ask about music! It's a cliche, but live concert music is special. I volunteered at a coffeehouse during the mid and early 80s. I only saw Nancy Griffith once there, because a year later she was too big a star for the coffeehouse scene. I also attended a Segovia concert once (I ushered until the University banned ushers with beards). The clip of RyG is quite good. Have you seen them live?

I understand what you say about the two folk anthems, but they and We Will Overcome and a couple more were such a part of Civil Rights that they still bring a tear to my eye. That music and that ethic were such a turnaround from my teen years during the 50s!

S

I always think of the great Civil Rights anthems as being We Shall Overcome, Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round, and Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.  One mild, one militant, and one, Eyes on the Prize, outright confrontational (its my fav, can't you tell).  Kumbya and MRTBA are more relics of the long forgotten "Folk Mass" movement that started in the Catholic Church (They had more nuns running around with guitars) and eventually spread to other faith groups.  Judaism was a bit different in that a lot of the religious songs are also folk songs in the first place.  You were far more likely to hear Kumbya and Michael at some campfire, at some vaguely religious type summer camp then at a Civil Rights Rally rally.

I know that because I was a student at schools with all those nuns running around and Sister Whatawaste with her guitar (and as I have come to understand in some measure of compassion, a major problem relating to men and boys) trying to make the whole god deal it 'relevant' to us young people in the space age scientific age and its rock and roll soundtrack.  I'll give them points for trying at least, but by the time Sister Whatawaste got out her guitar and tried to teach us groovy folk songs from Africa we had already moved into Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles' White Album.  It just sounded lame.  Largely, because it was.

I know about the Civil Rights stuff because as Michael Savage would have it, I'm a Red-Diaper Doper Baby.  My mom was involved in all that stuff, anti-war, anti-nuke, pro Civil Rights big time, and I got hauled to rallies in the mid and early 60s, from the time I was about 7 or so.  Though with mom it was always that Dorthy Day type DEEP Catholic social justice deal, and not a political statement.  My mom lived a high suburban lifestyle complete with Caddy, a less socialist/commie type would be hard to find.  At any rate, I remember a lot of that stuff - indeed its very hard to forget, it was very powerful.  To say the least.  So I can still hear those voices singing

The only thing I did was wrong
Was stayin' in the wilderness too long
Keep your eyes on the prize, Hold on
Only thing we did was right
Was the day we started to fight!
Keep your eyes on the prize, Hold on

And that's a long way from Kumbya.  Though there is a weird tie in having to do with the kids who went down south to do Freedom Summer and all coming  back to their preppy East Coast schools with Odetta records.


And the reason I'm not the person to ask is that my opinion is not going to be very helpful to most people.  I don't see what they really want described.  And I'm looking at it from a different vantage point, and running it through a very different set of background filters.  I've worked 30+ years on show, some of the biggest, and at all the great venues, I've worked and toured with huge acts, and lot of stuff that no one remembers, I've done (more or less) 200+ shows a year while working.  So, that's a lot of bands.  And, I don't see the show from the same place.  I'm hiding in the wings, watching and hearing something very different.  Or I'm in the booth running a board or a spotlight. 


And yes, I've seen RyG several times live.  A band, not a bad one either, called Gomez was headlining the Warfield, and saw them playing in the Haight at a  record store and brought them in.  So we are setting them up, and they are playing - like inches from us as we worked around them at the last minute, and all of our eyes got big.  When they did their set, I actually went up into the hall to watch them, and so did everyone else.  That like never happens.

I used to love gomez, they were the archetypal student band just before i became a student and then dissolved, largely due to not having many ideas - they were a bit like they had based their whole career on becks's odelay. Whippin' Piccadilly was ace thouh.

I'm a kid of the '80's, so I got started on "New Wave" and skate punk. Some funk-rock can be cool. I listen to mostly alternative, New Age, and classical (esp Baroque) these days.

The best show I ever saw was Michael Hedges (rest in peace) and Michael Manring. There was more talent on that stage with just the two of them than in the entire Monsters of Rock show at Candlestick in '88. Nine Inch Nails put on a good show at the Edge in Palo Alto (long gone, now) back in '90, but I haven't seen them since.

Quote from: Shades O'Grey on April 09, 2008, 10:52:33 AM
The best show I ever saw was Michael Hedges (rest in peace) and Michael Manring. There was more talent on that stage with just the two of them than in the entire Monsters of Rock show at Candlestick in '88. Nine Inch Nails put on a good show at the Edge in Palo Alto (long gone, now) back in '90, but I haven't seen them since.

I saw Michael Hedges perform a couple of times, once w/ Manring. Among the best shows I've seen. I was pretty devastated when we lost MH.

In 1993 when I was going through transition, some friends of mine mentioned that MH had been journeying through gender... which didn't surprise me. Here's an interview where zie talks about it, go down to the Sister Soul question http://www.innerviews.org/inner/hedges2.html.

Z

Hedges has to be one of my favorite, if not my absoute favorite, guitarist of all time. Adrian Belew is up there, too.

Manring is just amazing. Watching him play just blows my mind.

Well I'll see your Michael Hedges (too much harmonics for my taste) give you Belew who is great, get Jeff Beck in there, and raise you an Adrian Legg  and a Leo Kottke who I think are both better players then Hedges.  But that's just me.